Thread: Menthol as a Dream Enhancer

I suppose we could do a simple pole here now and in the end sum up all our figures. What if we take all those categories and give them between 1-10 in terms of each of our experience. I think we should gather a bit more information at first, I'll be buying the tablets this week and I get get a better idea of how it feels again. From what I remember I had very similar dreams to Ctharlhie, very dark and surreal, often with themes of isolation or alternate dimensions popping up, an underlying sexual tone in many cases and throughout every dream an astounding sense of storyline no matter how disjointed it may seem at times.

I've only been part of this for a couple of days but for the effects of menthol have been the sexual content (erotic and romantic), violence, increased tangibility and colour saturation, violence, nightmares, surrealism, isolated sleep paralysis, increased hypnagogia...
Looking at all that you could mistake it as the description of calea or some deliriant. 0_o

From what I remember I had very similar dreams to Ctharlhie, very dark and surreal, often with themes of isolation or alternate dimensions popping up, an underlying sexual tone in many cases and throughout every dream an astounding sense of storyline no matter how disjointed it may seem at times.

I know what you mean, my first experiment felt like the menthol had strung a load of different dreams together to have the same storyline no matter how random or illogical the links were. Very strange.

Personally I think a change/addition would be a good idea. As Dutch points out, some sort of poll, or scale might help with summing up, etc.

I'm going to try and look over my DJ for the last year to see if there are any clues or pointers that I might have overlooked? A sort of 'going back to basics' if you like.

Sorry for the late reply everyone. Update: managed to get some peppermint oil so will begin experimenting soon!

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

I got the valerian root caps as Canis seemed to be having such positive results using it in combination with menthol.

I've not been doing as much with the valerian lately because it worked a little too well at getting me back to sleep. I suspected it (probably unfairly) of making lucidity more challenging. I had some cool dreams with it, though. Thanks for reminding me of it... I'll have to give it another pass at some point.

If I had to come up with typical menthol-ish dream characteristics that are typical, it'd be
Imaginativeness
Sexiness
Violence
Dark-themed(ness?)

Note that some of these may make crappy category names. Just what I've observed. An additional characteristic of menthol night is there just seems to be... more dreaming, I guess. Perhaps it's just more awareness. I don't know for sure. But the end result is me writing more stuff down, it seems.

Oddly, my early menthol dreams with lighter doses tended to be very whimsical and light-hearted. Comical, even. On the whole I don't find menthol dreams overly dark, and I can't think of many at all that were actually unpleasant.

^^ So, menthol can enhance these things? damn, 70% of my dreams usually contain some dark themes , anyways i got some menthol today guess i'll be updating here sometime over the next week.

Originally Posted by CanisLucidus

I've not been doing as much with the valerian lately because it worked a little too well at getting me back to sleep. I suspected it (probably unfairly) of making lucidity more challenging. I had some cool dreams with it, though. Thanks for reminding me of it... I'll have to give it another pass at some point.

If I had to come up with typical menthol-ish dream characteristics that are typical, it'd be
Imaginativeness
Sexiness
Violence
Dark-themed(ness?)

Note that some of these may make crappy category names. Just what I've observed. An additional characteristic of menthol night is there just seems to be... more dreaming, I guess. Perhaps it's just more awareness. I don't know for sure. But the end result is me writing more stuff down, it seems.

Oddly, my early menthol dreams with lighter doses tended to be very whimsical and light-hearted. Comical, even. On the whole I don't find menthol dreams overly dark, and I can't think of many at all that were actually unpleasant.

I'm interested in using valerian in tandem with B5/choline as I've read that B5 has the tendency to induce insomnia as well as exacerbate the effects of choline. I suppose it could be a good herb to counteract dopaminergic supplements tendency to cause sleeplessness (apart from any oneirogenic qualities it has in of itself).

I agree with your assessment of the characteristics of menthol.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

I'm interested in using valerian in tandem with B5/choline as I've read that B5 has the tendency to induce insomnia as well as exacerbate the effects of choline. I suppose it could be a good herb to counteract dopaminergic supplements tendency to cause sleeplessness (apart from any oneirogenic qualities it has in of itself).

I agree with your assessment of the characteristics of menthol.

Another good supplement for helping you settle yourself down during WBTB is L-Theanine. It's got a nice, subtle effect, which I'd describe as easing your mind and simply turning the volume down on your inner dialogue. When insomnia arrives, the inner tends to sort of take over, particularly for folks like me who are only clumsily skilled in the art of meditation. L-Theanine is good at dampening this process without knocking out the mindfulness that I find helps so much with WILD.

L-Theanine is also a dopaminergic, which gives it a nice role in all sorts of cocktails. BTW, when you mentioned dopaminergics, did you have any substances in mind apart from menthol's D2 activity? Just curious, because I've just recently acquired a few nifty dopaminergics (L-DOPA, EGCg, N-acetyl Tyrosine, etc.) that I'll slowly be incorporating. (I take this stuff pretty slow when starting out with a new supp.)

I agree, i tried L-Theanine & it help a lot, perfect for everything while on it i got some major near lucid like dreams, although i haven't tried it since like 09 i'll def. recommend it to all of you guys

Once again: the red part is important!

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

It's pretty cool, I did psychology A Level but I'm nowhere near as clued up as you, then again I'm doing English at uni now

Well thanks again! Hehe, well at least you've got more of a plan than I do. Now just reach my level of obsession and you'll be good to go!

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Yeah it was pretty awesome, I had no idea it was possible to influence your dreams to such an extent, let alone with mint of all things! Yay for menthol
The nightmare element didn't bother me too much, at least it was a pretty clear indication that the menthol had made an impact! I like to take on whatever my unconscious can throw at me, I've had enough nightmares/waking sleep paralysis episodes to be slightly distanced from it. If anything now I see nightmares as being like horror movies/video games you've made yourself that you don't have to pay for!

But yeah, it was interesting, I wasn't expecting such a distinct change in tone, I'll be looking to see whether the inositol really does mitigate the grimdark element to menthol. I also want to determine the cause of the insomnia, some sources point at B5, though it may merely be the size of the peppermint dose, I'm going to try combining valerian in the mix to bring back the shleeps

We are kindred spirits, my friend! I used to use deliriants, heavy doses of cannabinoids, and salvia for the sake of taking on those intensely nightmarish experiences. I've also become desensitized to sleep paralysis, I actually think it's pretty neat when there's a demon standing at the end of my bed.

About the insomnia, yeah, you may just want to try experimenting with your dose a bit. It sounds like you're sensitive enough to get good effects from the menthol, so it may be releasing enough dopamine and glutamate to keep you up. I would just try back down a little bit and see what happens.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Salvia was mad, more extreme than marijuana for certain, (and I've smoke very strong weed a couple of times and the salvia was only the x5 variety) I was trying to talk to this guy and all that was coming out was belly laughs.

Wow, if that's not the understatement of the year. XD Marijuana is a potent mental and physical psychedelic, but when it comes to hallucinations it mostly just opens you up to more easily achieve things like astral projection. Salvia is one of the most powerful hallucinogens known to exist. It can take you to worlds and states of perception that you can spend the rest of your life trying to understand but never will, without even taking you out of your body, though it can easily do that too if it wants.

Keep trying it. It gets crazier.

(Quite literally. It has reverse tolerance.)

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

I wasn't trying to hijack or anything, it just seems to me that menthol has a very qualitative effect rather than just 'lucidity and vividness 1-10' which always vary per dreamer. To be honest it's the way it affects dream content more than as a way to get lucid (which I suspect is a counter-intuitive attitude towards supplements anyway).

Oh, no worries at all! This experiment has been going on long enough that it's time for a shift in gears. See, I honestly started the thread to see how it would effect dreams, not to try to get lucid with it, but when it was helping people get lucid and changing lucidity it only seemed natural to try to gather information about it. Now we have that information, so it's time to start getting more in-depth.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

I'll probably leave ginkgo and hold on to get galantamine. I'll keep experimenting with menthol and inositol and see what happens

Cool, good luck with that then! I just read something neat about ginkgo yesterday too, if you're interested. It's a GABA(A) antagonist. You're probably not going to find many of those around that you can easily use.... It might be worth looking into if you are trying to make a memory stack or something! It could bring something to the table that other supplements just won't. I'm even starting to consider using it for a time dilation stack now.

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New format info starts here:

I'm up for this whole poll idea, you guys together have done a lot more field research than I have so feel free to do it however you want.

Originally Posted by CanisLucidus

If I had to come up with typical menthol-ish dream characteristics that are typical, it'd be
Imaginativeness
Sexiness
Violence
Dark-themed(ness?)

I have no problem with this, personally.... This is the kind of idea that comes to mind for me, based on that.

Example, with Notes, for reference.

Dose: 3503.5 mg Menthol (385 Honey Lemon Halls cough drops). The dose you took.
Side Effects: Stomach cramps, insomnia, vomiting, seizures, toxic psychosis, reconnecting with dead relatives, acceptance of the impermanence of life, and transient phases of amnesia leading up to a coma-like state wherein lucid dreams occurred. The side effects you experienced.
Sleep Duration: Just under 64 hours in a hospital bed. How long you were asleep for.
Cognitive: My mind was flooded with visions of a sadomasochistic hell which permeated the dreamscape, tinted by an almost intangible and overpowering presence of indifference to the human struggle which latched on to me and redefined how I view myself as a living entity. If it made you more imaginative, more impulsive, more delusional, or just changed your state of mind overall, put it here.
Sexual: Repeatedly I was restrained by a wide variety of demonic humanoids, grotesque, multi-headed monsters, and Lovecraftian horrors which held a persistent theme of having eyes and moving tattoos covering their bodies and forced to endure what seemed like an endless sensual agony as I was molested, twisted, torn apart, and rebirthed in ways unfathomable in any sort of sane reality. If there were sexual themes in your dreams, put it here.
Atmosphere: In every dream there was a sense of having to face a judgment sent down from a higher power for the sins I had committed in my waking life. At the time I knew that I must face these for the rest of eternity as it was my own fault for living a life of greed and corruption, and thus I was forced to watch as the other doomed souls who suffered around me were mutilated and disintegrated before my eyes, feeling endless despair and knowing that it was only so long before I would fall to the same fate as them. Describe the overall mood of your dream here, like if it was happy, sad, violent, or whatever.
Other Comments: Overall, it was a unique experience. It was qualitatively more intense than most other dreams I've had, but I was a little disappointed at the lack of control despite it being a lucid. This was a constant theme throughout the nights, and I think I would probably want to the lower the dose a little bit next time to avoid this. In the end though, it was interesting. It's not something I could do all the time, but I might make it part of a rotation for every other week. If you have anything else you want to add, or you want to talk more about the dream(s) specifically, do it here.

Alright, that's just the very first thing that comes to mind.... What do you guys think? Good? Needs tweaking? And of course, this is all still preliminary too, just trying to think ahead!

Originally Posted by CanisLucidus

Another good supplement for helping you settle yourself down during WBTB is L-Theanine. It's got a nice, subtle effect, which I'd describe as easing your mind and simply turning the volume down on your inner dialogue. When insomnia arrives, the inner tends to sort of take over, particularly for folks like me who are only clumsily skilled in the art of meditation. L-Theanine is good at dampening this process without knocking out the mindfulness that I find helps so much with WILD.

L-Theanine is also a dopaminergic, which gives it a nice role in all sorts of cocktails. BTW, when you mentioned dopaminergics, did you have any substances in mind apart from menthol's D2 activity? Just curious, because I've just recently acquired a few nifty dopaminergics (L-DOPA, EGCg, N-acetyl Tyrosine, etc.) that I'll slowly be incorporating. (I take this stuff pretty slow when starting out with a new supp.)

L-Theanine sounds like it would be great for catalysing WILDs if used in conjunction with menthol. I was looking into dopamine precursors after reading Yuschak's Advanced Lucid Dreaming (I now have much clearer idea of the functioning of supplements thanks to that), I was initially interested in phenylalamine as an L-Dopa precursor but L-Theanine looks interesting from what you said. What are your experiences of WILDing like having taken it?

Originally Posted by Alyzarin

Well thanks again! Hehe, well at least you've got more of a plan than I do. Now just reach my level of obsession and you'll be good to go!

I suspect I do have your level of obsession, just for literature and literary theory

Originally Posted by Alyzarin

We are kindred spirits, my friend! I used to use deliriants, heavy doses of cannabinoids, and salvia for the sake of taking on those intensely nightmarish experiences. I've also become desensitized to sleep paralysis, I actually think it's pretty neat when there's a demon standing at the end of my bed.

Originally Posted by Alyzarin

Wow, if that's not the understatement of the year. XD Marijuana is a potent mental and physical psychedelic, but when it comes to hallucinations it mostly just opens you up to more easily achieve things like astral projection. Salvia is one of the most powerful hallucinogens known to exist. It can take you to worlds and states of perception that you can spend the rest of your life trying to understand but never will, without even taking you out of your body, though it can easily do that too if it wants.

Keep trying it. It gets crazier.

(Quite literally. It has reverse tolerance.)

You seem to have a paradoxically healthy approach to drug use, it's quite refreshing

I think it's amazing that there's this whole world of experience outside of more destructive drug use that people never tap into because of the public discourse construction of substance use as criminal/lower class/immoral/whathaveyou.

Yeah I've read about the increasing intensity of salvia. A friend said he knows someone who took it and hallucinated that they were a rock for a thousand years.

Originally Posted by Alyzarin

Cool, good luck with that then! I just read something neat about ginkgo yesterday too, if you're interested. It's a GABA(A) antagonist. You're probably not going to find many of those around that you can easily use.... It might be worth looking into if you are trying to make a memory stack or something! It could bring something to the table that other supplements just won't. I'm even starting to consider using it for a time dilation stack now.

What's the action of GABA antagonists again? Also, tell me more about 'stacks'.

Originally Posted by Alyzarin

Example, with Notes, for reference.

Dose: 3503.5 mg Menthol (385 Honey Lemon Halls cough drops). The dose you took.
Side Effects: Stomach cramps, insomnia, vomiting, seizures, toxic psychosis, reconnecting with dead relatives, acceptance of the impermanence of life, and transient phases of amnesia leading up to a coma-like state wherein lucid dreams occurred. The side effects you experienced.
Sleep Duration: Just under 64 hours in a hospital bed. How long you were asleep for.
Cognitive: My mind was flooded with visions of a sadomasochistic hell which permeated the dreamscape, tinted by an almost intangible and overpowering presence of indifference to the human struggle which latched on to me and redefined how I view myself as a living entity. If it made you more imaginative, more impulsive, more delusional, or just changed your state of mind overall, put it here.
Sexual: Repeatedly I was restrained by a wide variety of demonic humanoids, grotesque, multi-headed monsters, and Lovecraftian horrors which held a persistent theme of having eyes and moving tattoos covering their bodies and forced to endure what seemed like an endless sensual agony as I was molested, twisted, torn apart, and rebirthed in ways unfathomable in any sort of sane reality. If there were sexual themes in your dreams, put it here.
Atmosphere: In every dream there was a sense of having to face a judgment sent down from a higher power for the sins I had committed in my waking life. At the time I knew that I must face these for the rest of eternity as it was my own fault for living a life of greed and corruption, and thus I was forced to watch as the other doomed souls who suffered around me were mutilated and disintegrated before my eyes, feeling endless despair and knowing that it was only so long before I would fall to the same fate as them. Describe the overall mood of your dream here, like if it was happy, sad, violent, or whatever.
Other Comments: Overall, it was a unique experience. It was qualitatively more intense than most other dreams I've had, but I was a little disappointed at the lack of control despite it being a lucid. This was a constant theme throughout the nights, and I think I would probably want to the lower the dose a little bit next time to avoid this. In the end though, it was interesting. It's not something I could do all the time, but I might make it part of a rotation for every other week. If you have anything else you want to add, or you want to talk more about the dream(s) specifically, do it here.

Alright, that's just the very first thing that comes to mind.... What do you guys think? Good? Needs tweaking? And of course, this is all still preliminary too, just trying to think ahead!

I really laughed out loud at all that. It looks like a good basis. It can be tweaked through usage I suppose and as a group we'll settle on the most representative format, but that already looks good as it is.

Originally Posted by Alyzarin

Dose: 3503.5 mg Menthol (385 Honey Lemon Halls cough drops). The dose you took.
Side Effects: Stomach cramps, insomnia, vomiting, seizures, toxic psychosis, reconnecting with dead relatives, acceptance of the impermanence of life, and transient phases of amnesia leading up to a coma-like state wherein lucid dreams occurred. The side effects you experienced.
...
Atmosphere: In every dream there was a sense of having to face a judgment sent down from a higher power for the sins I had committed in my waking life. At the time I knew that I must face these for the rest of eternity as it was my own fault for living a life of greed and corruption, and thus I was forced to watch as the other doomed souls who suffered around me were mutilated and disintegrated before my eyes, feeling endless despair and knowing that it was only so long before I would fall to the same fate as them. Describe the overall mood of your dream here, like if it was happy, sad, violent, or whatever.

This whole thing is great...

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

L-Theanine sounds like it would be great for catalysing WILDs if used in conjunction with menthol. I was looking into dopamine precursors after reading Yuschak's Advanced Lucid Dreaming (I now have much clearer idea of the functioning of supplements thanks to that), I was initially interested in phenylalamine as an L-Dopa precursor but L-Theanine looks interesting from what you said. What are your experiences of WILDing like having taken it?

Ah yes, the Yuschak book's great! I primarily used L-theanine to help beat insomnia when I was having trouble falling back asleep after I'd taken galantamine + choline. I have grown less dependent on L-theanine for an effective G+C WILD now but in general it does a wonderful job of quieting the mind. When I first started using galantamine, I tried to mostly hit DILDs with it since I wasn't yet comfortable with WILD, and L-theanine worked well there as well. (Now I WILD the great majority of the time if I'm using G.)

In general, L-theanine is great for helping stabilize you and lower the danger that you'll suffer from insomnia. There's no magic bullet for that, but it tilts the odds more in your favor without eroding your awareness.

The dopaminergic effects are more subtle, although I did have one LD where I emerged with this overwhelming sense of euphoria, took to the sky, and shrieked "L-DOPA!!" like a huge dork. A confounding factor there is that I tend to do ridiculous things in my LDs, so unfortunately it's hard to draw any far-reaching conclusions.

Originally Posted by CanisLucidus

In general, L-theanine is great for helping stabilize you and lower the danger that you'll suffer from insomnia. There's no magic bullet for that, but it tilts the odds more in your favor without eroding your awareness.

The dopaminergic effects are more subtle, although I did have one LD where I emerged with this overwhelming sense of euphoria, took to the sky, and shrieked "L-DOPA!!" like a huge dork. A confounding factor there is that I tend to do ridiculous things in my LDs, so unfortunately it's hard to draw any far-reaching conclusions.

I remember reading that entry actually. Do you think the dopamine possibly resulted in a less reflective level of lucidity?

I want to have a few combinations of supplements to reduce likelihood of tolerance as Yuschak discusses.

I'll take this opportunity to recount my experience from last night, but won't use the new format as menthol was (largely) uninvolved (not strictly true, I had a peppermint tea at lunch but I hardly think that constitute a potent enough dose to influence my dreams. I got quite drunk last night (didn't have dinner) and went to bed with the room spinning. Result, massive REM rebound. I woke up recalling 8 dreams including possibly the most vividly sexual dream of my life. (Things have a tendency to just go wrong in my sex dreams, things won't work as they should or just turn dark or bizarre, resulting in dream content that would make Dr Freud spit out his cigar. But this one was completely realistic). Which reminded me of DutchRaptor's experience of St. John's Wort and menthol used in tandem. SJW is a mild serotonin reuptake blocker, which results in less REM in the intially sleep stages, and a rebound in the second half of the night. I wonder whether there is a link between seratonergic supplements and sexual dreams?

One more thing: is the elimination half life of menthol short enough to be able to use it on a daily basis without desensitisation?

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

You seem to have a paradoxically healthy approach to drug use, it's quite refreshing

I think it's amazing that there's this whole world of experience outside of more destructive drug use that people never tap into because of the public discourse construction of substance use as criminal/lower class/immoral/whathaveyou.

Yeah I've read about the increasing intensity of salvia. A friend said he knows someone who took it and hallucinated that they were a rock for a thousand years.

Hehe, well you have to be smart about it if you want to do it right! I'm not just interested in getting high, I'm looking for the ultimate mind orgasm, and that requires some finesse. And menthol has been a very helpful step in this process! It really is a shame that people view drugs so badly, because things like this just amaze me. It is a wonderful underground world though.

Wow, a thousand years as a rock.... That sounds awful. X) Peaceful though.... Yeah, salvia is nuts. The time dilation is especially intense on it because it's often mixed with a heavy delirium. Ego death is common, I would say maybe even more so than with DMT. Every time I overdo it I have the exact same trip, too. I'm still not sure how to describe it yet, but I remember a little more of it each time. There's a zipper, like on a jacket, that's zipping down if you look at the image as a whole but zipping up if you stare at the individual zipper, without it ever actually changing direction... and the rest of it has something to do with putting a box of Trix cereal back in the cupboard, but I have to wait my turn.... I also remember seeing rows of tiny clones of my parents holding their hands together and in the air, but if you "flip" your vision like you could if you were looking at a drawing of a tilted cube so you seen the opposite form without the picture changing, it's more like a hexagonal grid of demented faces that I can't really make out....

It's weird stuff. o.O The last time I smoked it I was just chilling in my room at night and the whole thing started spinning in all directions and my mom would burst into the room with the door slamming, yelling at me about something, and then burst into flames and melt into the spinning background right in front of my bed, and then immediately afterward my dad would come in and do exactly the same, and then it would start with my mom again, and it just repeated over and over.... I kept getting closer trying to get a better look because I couldn't figure out if it was real or not. >_> Though right after I came down from that I smoked it again and I saw what I would call my mental self-image superimposed on reality and multiplied in a spinning wheel all around me, and they became gigantic and overcame me while I had a telepathic conversation with some kind of goddess or feminine entity about the merits of smoking salvia. That was pretty nifty.... Unfortunately I can't remember anything that was said lol. (Or thought, if you will.)

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

What's the action of GABA antagonists again? Also, tell me more about 'stacks'.

Well, first of all, if you have any sort of anxiety or paranoia then a GABA antagonist may not be for you, but other than it's probably worth considering. Essentially what it is is.... GABA is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. It lowers the levels and blocks the actions of other neurotransmitters and their receptors. That's why GABA agonists and GABA positive allosteric modulators, such as alcohol and valerian root, cause a loss of inhibitions, some memory disruption, sedation, and so on. They're basically shutting down the brain. So, what a GABA antagonist does is stop GABA and GABAergic drugs from working. The reason you would want to avoid it if you have anxiety is because, just like alcohol can calm your nerves, a GABA antagonist can rattle them if you're already predisposed to it. However, most people don't have a problem with this, especially at the therapeutic dose of something like ginkgo biloba. But that is a reason you wouldn't want to take more than the recommended dosage. Though ginkgo is pretty safe in this respect, most GABA antagonists can also cause seizures if you take too much, because they're allowing every part of the brain to operate at full capacity, which is bad. However, in safe doses, all this does is enhance your brain's activity. Movements become more fluid and you get more energy, you're kept a little bit more lucid, and your memory storage actually increases. That's one of the main factors in how ginkgo gets its effect.

That's also why it gets put in stacks a lot, I guess. A stack is basically just what people in the nootropic, mental wellness, and physical fitness drug communities call your set of supplements that you take on some kind of rotation, whether it's every day, twice a day, every other day, or what have you.... For example, my current stack is:

x1 Mega B-Complex Vitamin
x1 1400 mg Fish Oil
x1 20 mg Noopept
x2 1200 mg Lecithin

Pretty basic, I know.... Some peoples' lists stretch on for miles, but I'm just not getting back into it. I used to take a ton of pills every day, and I've still got some piracetam lying around to add on to this stack in another week or two. So, when it comes down to something like a memory stack, you would of course want to use the perfect safe combination of supplements to increase your ability to store and recall memories, thus where the ginkgo could come in. However, for my time dilation stack, that's a whole other thing....

I apologize in advance, but I'm about to spew my views all over you. This is why I think it works the way it does. I don't know if you're too familiar with the different sections of the brain, but one of my favorite parts is the hippocampus. This is a major player in memory - like many things in the brain there are two of them with just slightly varying function, and without just one you'll be fine, but without having either properly functioning you'll never be able to form another memory again. I personally believe that this is because the hippocampi are where "we" are. That is because I believe that our entire perception as we live it, the entire sensory interface of the world we know, is simply the process of our minds recording all our current perceptions into memory. I don't believe in free will. I've read, seen, and experienced enough to believe that we simply justify our actions to ourselves as a way of promoting our concept of individualism which we evolved with over time to help our species grow, but that those justifications are just another result of the chemical reaction that caused whatever it is that we did. And the reason I believe this is because this conscious awareness of our actions is clearly not required for functioning. Both GABAergics like alcohol and alprazolam as well as anticholinergics like diphenhydramine and datura can cause states of complete "blackout" where you simply skip forward in time with no experience whatsoever while your body continues to function on its own. And both of these classes of drugs do it by powerful inhibiting activity of the hippocampus, and they're not the only ones. And that's why I feel that without our hippocampus, without our memories being recorded, we're more like high-functioning zombies.... Or plants, if you want to be a little less gruesome about it. Things that are alive, but not really "living".

Why is all of this important, though? What it comes down to is that I see the hippocampus as sort of a hub, which I think it demonstrably is. For your perceptions to all be recorded into memory through the hippocampus, they must all first feed into it to be compiled. It's interesting to note that the hippocampus and its outer layer, the parahippocampal gyrus, have cells specifically reserved for understanding where you are and how you're oriented in your environment. There are also parts which determine how focused you are, or how into your own mind you are. It also has a dopamine system which is used for recognizing sounds like words and complex images, among many other things. Normally these all just get input from the sensory parts of the brain which pick up external inputs, but that's not really what I'm interested in. What really gets me is the part of the brain involved in creating certain types of memory, and most specifically to me, the amygdala. Again, technically amygdalae, because there are two of them - they're each situated right next to one of the hippocampi. The amygdala is primal, subconscious mind. It's plays a core role in sexual stimulation, fear/aversion/aggression, the effects of drugs, and dreams. It works several times faster than the "conscious" mind and in fact shuts down the prefrontal cortex, where are logical decisions are made, in times of crisis such as during an extreme adrenaline rush to make sure that it can act as quickly as possible. This cutting out of logical processing is also what is generally responsible for making sex-related decisions you later regret, making stupid or dangerous decisions on drugs, and non-lucidity in dreams.

It took me a while to think about all this, but finally it seemed to make sense to me. Stimulating the amygdala also stimulates the hippocampus, which is easy since they're right next to each other. Stimulating the hippocampus is known to cause hallucinations, and the amygdala is what writes different instinctive emotions into memories, such as with reward and aversion, so you know whether or not to go back to something or avoid it next time. This is how both learning and addiction work. And that's when it occurred to me that it's all just a hallucination... those good and bad feelings are just internal inputs to change the way your memories are recorded in a way that helps you survive better. That made me come to the conclusion that well-structured hallucinations, which are known to correlate with intense amygdala activity, are the simply the result of this "memory altering" process being activated so strongly that the widespread disinhibition of the hippocampus begins to dramatically alter the variables by which our entire world perception is written.

The way I see it is this. The hippocampus stores everything that makes up our consciousness - where we are, how we feel, etc. - in this one big map and sends projections to the parahippocampal gyrus, which is involved in memory retrieval, to help us figure out what our next action should be based on whatever it is we're currently experiencing. It may seem odd to think that because clearly we're not constantly thinking back to full memories every time we make choices, but that's not actually how memories work. Whenever you remember a scene, you actually reconstruct it from scratch - every single time. This is why memory can be so fickle. What you're actually doing is sending a set of data, like recalling the way you felt at the time, to your memory retrieval system, which stores all the schema you've ever recorded - "the sky is blue", "cheerleaders are ditzy", "you can't walk through walls", etc., just constructs that your brain uses to remember how the world works - and telling it "This is what I've got, see what you can make of it." It will then do it's best to rebuild the memory based on using those same data inputs again. What's interesting is that this process is not influenced only be the sensory or external inputs to the hippocampus but by the internal ones as well, since it's all just the same thing. Your amygdala is always running to a degree, and I personally feel that this is where imagination comes from. Disinhibited dopamine in the hippocampus begins to find those sounds and images in places where they aren't, and because the amygdala is not running strongly enough to inhibit the prefrontal cortex, these "hallucinations" are within our lucid control and make up our inner monologue and visual imagination, respectively. This raw information gets sent to the parahippocampal gyrus as well, which creates a full sound/image out of it by using schemata and then projects it back to the external input areas of the brain so that it can be added to our sensory recording. I believe that's why the more you try to visualize something, the better you can actually "see" it. However, this level of activity is still clearly very weak and that's why our imaginations, unless you're just awesome at visualization practice, generally don't actually overlap into what we really see.

Where it really becomes interesting is how the amygdala becomes hyperactive during dreams. Since the external input systems are blocked out when you're sleeping, normally you'd just be faced with nothingness, but with the amygdala working so heavily it's pumping all kinds of junk data into the hippocampus, which will then begin to recognize sensory patterns in all kinds of places where they don't exist, and send them to the parahippocampal gyrus for figuring out. When this process is adequately active there becomes enough junk data to program an entire environment into the place cells ,and the signals relaying to the sensory areas of the brain become so strong that they begin to activate those brain areas as significantly as external input would. This, I believe, is how the dream world, and other out-of-body experiences, are formed.

Now this is all fine and good... but what the hell does it all have to do with time dilation? Well, as you're obviously aware, many hallucinogens can cause time dilation. The dopamine system has also been implicated in time dilation, and I believe that the way it works is that the more information your memory is recording all at once, the slower time seems to be passing for you. That would be why an incredibly intense adrenaline rush, which makes it so that you can process things extremely quickly to make life-or-death decisions, slows down your perception of time. And since those adrenaline rushes directly activate the amygdala, it just fuels my thought that the more active the hippocampus us the more data you'll be dealing with and the slower time will be. Now, it's interesting that lucid dreams work at about the same pace as waking life on a regular basis, but I started thinking about this. Hallucinogens, whether you put yourself in sensory deprivation or not, activate more focus-oriented parts of the brain than dreaming and they cause the hippocampus to be above normal activation, which is why the hallucinations can become so bizarre and intense. On the other hand, a dream isn't supposed to be doing anything other than mimicking waking life levels of activation. So wouldn't it make sense that, if it's doing its job right, time would flow at about the same rate for each? However, there is a cool catch to this. Internal inputs from the brain are going to be much easier to make much more complex than external inputs. That is to say, those external inputs are already generated when they're coming into the brain, but the internal inputs are being made by the brain itself, which means the more strongly you force the brain to become active the more intense those inputs will become. This is very easy to see when it comes to augmenting the effects of hallucinogens with other drugs and supplements.

And that ties us back into the start. The way the amygdala works, at the heart of all of this, is that all of these different emotion-based neurotransmitters project there and then block GABA activity, which lowers the inhibitory signals in the brain and allows the hippocampus to become more active. What it basically comes down to is that most things we could take to cause this action downstream - dopamine and norepinephrine precursors and cannabinoids - also have a REM-lowering effect when taken exogenously, which is clearly something we want to avoid. But, blocking GABA has actually been known to increase REM, or at the very least not effect it negatively (unless the dose is too large). In addition, blocking GABA would also effectively increase memory storage more than the other types of supplements, which would aid in recall as well. That's why the ginkgo biloba interests me so much. I actually found people talking about it having a slight time dilation effect when used in a memory stack, and that just makes me think that the same could be true in dreams. And if it increases our minds ability to generate dreams in the first place, there should be an additive effect in that increases the structure of the dream world, forces us to take in more information at once, and increases our ability to do so. The end goal would be increasing the amount of time we perceived ourselves as experiencing in the dream world. And of course, with wanting it to be a part of a stack, I would find other supplements to mix with it that could potentially synergize with it and enhance this activity without hurting the integrity of the dream.

Does that all make sense? I tried to make sure I brought it all back together in the end, but tell me if I missed something!

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

I really laughed out loud at all that. It looks like a good basis. It can be tweaked through usage I suppose and as a group we'll settle on the most representative format, but that already looks good as it is.

Awesome, that sounds good to me! I'm glad you liked it. And I'm glad it gave you a good laugh.

Originally Posted by CanisLucidus

This whole thing is great...

Thanks, I try. I honestly just made that example off the top of my head lol. I was just trying to imagine what a massively toxic dose of menthol might actually be like.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

One more thing: is the elimination half life of menthol short enough to be able to use it on a daily basis without desensitisation?

I wouldn't personally risk it, there does seem to be some sort of tolerance. But there's only one way to know for sure!

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

I remember reading that entry actually. Do you think the dopamine possibly resulted in a less reflective level of lucidity?

Oh you read that one? Ha!

By less reflective, do you mean that my mood was more "get out and play" versus "sit and reflect and fret about all the ways your dream control can fail"? If so, this seems like a fair conclusion to draw. It's hard for me to say how strong L-Theanine's dopaminergic properties are since I haven't studied up on the literature much. When I start playing with stuff like L-DOPA that'll give me a better basis of comparison, but right now I'd tend to say that the effect is usually pretty subtle.

Originally Posted by Alyzarin

I apologize in advance, but I'm about to spew my views all over you.

This is just a great post. When I say that Benadryl makes me feel like a zombie, I had no idea how literal I was being.

I still fail to understand how you keep all of this straight without notes. I have a hard time keeping more than 4 or 5 facts rattling around my brain at any one time.

I'm right there with you on being fascinated with the hippocampus. Did you ever hear about the study where they found that the hippocampus of a London cab driver was significantly larger than that of an everyday person? The size of the hippocampus actually corresponded with how long the person had been a London cabbie. I find that very cool: Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers

@Alyzarin; That whole post was just amazing. The stuff about the hippocampus is just fascinating in the context of the philosophy I've been reading recently. I may have to be careful over Ginkgo as I have struggled with OCD in the past.

@Canis; you could try mucuna pruriens, that contains L-Dopa rather than a precursor, though I'd imagine you'd have to go easy on the dose to prevent sleeplessness.

Also, that cabbie study is amazing, unfortunately that phenomena is probably going to be increasingly rare now with satnavs...

In Advanced Lucid Dreaming, Yuschak mentions liquorice as being seratonergic by blocking reuptake, could it be used as a more mild St. John's Wort substitute?

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

@Canis; you could try mucuna pruriens, that contains L-Dopa rather than a precursor, though I'd imagine you'd have to go easy on the dose to prevent sleeplessness.

Thanks -- I actually own the very bottle of L-DOPA that you hyperlinked! I also have L-tyrosine and N-acetyl tyrosine to help round out my catecholamine precursors. (No phenylalanine, though.) I'm looking to roll through these one at a time and seeing what the effects are (with small doses initially, of course.) I space my supps out a bit, so I'm a few days from trying them. Should be interesting though!

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Also, that cabbie study is amazing, unfortunately that phenomena is probably going to be increasingly rare now with satnavs...

In Advanced Lucid Dreaming, Yuschak mentions liquorice as being seratonergic by blocking reuptake, could it be used as a more mild St. John's Wort substitute?

Huh, I hadn't thought of the satnav systems! No doubt that does ease the burden on the hippocampus. Yet another argument that the "cybernetic future" is already kinda-sorta here.

Hmm, you're right about the liquorice root! No idea as to dosage... I find liquorice sort of nasty, but I'd be interested to see how this goes if you try it! Inhibition of serotonin re-uptake by licorice... [J Mol Neurosci. 2003] - PubMed - NCBI

Originally Posted by Alyzarin

Does that all make sense? I tried to make sure I brought it all back together in the end, but tell me if I missed something!

Can you draw me a picture?

@Alyzarin - Good work on the table BTW.
It might be a help to put the specific time you took a supplement, whether it was before bed, or at WBTB; plus if you used a combo, etc. Maybe the data could be added in with the 'Sleep Duration' heading?

I know CanisLucidus keeps a very good record on the current template which clearly highlights quite easily when these supplements were taken which helps fellow experimenters on the thread, plus with overall data and record keeping for the future.

@Ctharlie - I went down to the sweet shop health food shop today as there is one near where my Bro. lives, namely Holland and Barrett.
I got hold of some 200 mg Oil of Peppermint capsules, plus some Clary Sage aromatherapy oil.

P.S: Regarding the Menthol (intake), I would give about 48 hrs at least as a general rule of thumb.

@Canis; Be sure to let us know how you get on! Also, I got the liquorice in capsule form, no need to chow down on allsorts before bed I read about lowering testosterone levels but that 1.6g everyday for several weeks!

@Highlander; have fun with those peppermint capsules.

------------------

I also got a mix of skullcap (Ryan Hurd of Dreamstudies says very good things of it), hops (I'm a dedicated ale drinker so anything with hops must be good), valerian and vervain; 60 capsules of a very interesting blend of dreaming herbs for £5!

I am however very concerned by all the money I've spent at Holland and Barret (and I haven't been able to start taking any of it due to exams this week >_<), mind you nothing compared to what I spent in cafes last term, I've banned myself from coffees. All in all I think I have enough supplements to keep me going for about a year's worth of experimentation.

@Highlander; As for the report template, I agree that the way Canis shows when he took the supplements is useful. Even details such as length of WBTB and at what point in the WBTB supplements were taken would be useful.

I apologize, I meant to comment on this before.... Let me just be the first to step out and say that this search for more serotonergic supplements is a bad idea. Serotonin is a red herring. It has detrimental effects on dreaming, and sexual performance. It's actually more likely to suppress sexual dreams than anything.

Every idea about serotonin enhancing dreaming is from information that was wrong or word of mouth that was misleading. Serotonin is part of the body's system regulating sleep, pushing towards deep sleep. It is the opposite of acetylcholine in this system, and if you know anything at all about dreaming, you should know that that's bad. The reason that 5-HTP is a good supplement is because of REM rebound, and nothing else. What happens is that serotonin is formed from the 5-HTP and REM is inhibited, and then it's removed from the synapse and metabolized and REM is allowed to occur, and it happens more heavily due to the build-up that occurred when it was inhibited. 5-HTP is the only supplement that will work in this exact way. Every other serotonergic drug in existence, like serotonin reuptake inhibitors, works specifically be increasing the amount of time serotonin spends in the synapse, and they all have half-lives that can easily prove destructive to dreaming because this process won't end until after you would have already missed lots of dreams, i.e. the REM rebound will take too long to occur and you won't benefit from it.

People think that SSRIs are good at making dreams more vivid, but this is again wrong. Nearly every, if not every, pharmaceutical SSRI in use inhibits the activity of both acetylcholinesterase and butylcholinesterase, meaning that they stop the metabolism of acetylcholine even more effectively than galantamine. Because the ratio of acetylcholine and serotonin rises together, vivid dreams can still occur. It is unlikely that the serotonin adds much more to the dream other than the anxious or violent themes often attributed to them, as one of the only natural states where serotonin is known to exist in normal amounts during REM sleep is in people who are clinically depressed. And when it comes to St. John's wort, you're probably better off just not trying to compare it to anything else. Seriously, just spare yourself the heartache lol. There are no other known drugs even remotely similar to St. John's wort, and its effects on serotonin are so minor compared to its overall pharmacological effects, which include inhibiting the reuptake of dopamine, norepinephrine, GABA, glutamate, choline, and glycine, increasing the release of acetylcholine, blocking the activity of NMDA receptors, inhibiting the metabolism of dopamine, and many other wonderful and terrible things, almost all of which are much more likely players in its dream-related effects than its effects on serotonin.

I also feel the need to mention that serotonin is not something you should play with nearly as easily as other brain and body chemicals (as if you should play easily with any of them). Too much serotonin can go wrong very fast, and for this reason even just the idea of stacking any serotonin-based supplements together or with 5-HTP could end very badly. Believe me, serotonin syndrome is an awful, awful way to leave this world.

I'm going to go out in a limb here and say that the search for replacement or even additive serotonin supplements is a dead end. 5-HTP is already the best of the best of the best.

I'm going to end this post here because I wanted to get it out before going to my next class, but I'm not going to have time to respond to other things before then. I'll get them when I get back, though!

Wow, consider me warned. I was aware of the possibility of serotonin syndrome and had read to be careful even of 5-htp, but if there's no point in pursuing serotonergics I'll take your word for it. I hadn't realised St. John's Wort had so much going on, I guess that means it shouldn't be stacked with anything (I haven't experimented with it yet).

Originally Posted by CanisLucidus

This is just a great post. When I say that Benadryl makes me feel like a zombie, I had no idea how literal I was being.

I still fail to understand how you keep all of this straight without notes. I have a hard time keeping more than 4 or 5 facts rattling around my brain at any one time.

I'm right there with you on being fascinated with the hippocampus. Did you ever hear about the study where they found that the hippocampus of a London cab driver was significantly larger than that of an everyday person? The size of the hippocampus actually corresponded with how long the person had been a London cabbie. I find that very cool: Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers

Thank you. Oh, and you have no idea how right you are! Have you ever heard of (dun dun dun...) scopolamine? They call it the zombie drug, and it contains a major natural anticholinergic skeleton that drugs like diphenhydramine mimic. It's the most psychoactive chemical in datura, one of the most beautiful tantalizing seductive potentially dangerous drugs there is, at least in "recreational" doses. It very much proves my point though, in more than one way. It causes you to justify every bizarre thing you do with delirious nonsense, and it does basically turn you into a zombie for up to several days, with possible aftereffects lasting an incredibly long time. It's one of those drugs that even druggies usually don't do....

I honestly don't know either though, I really should start writing all of this down before I come to regret slacking off one day lol.

But that study... is... awesome. It makes perfect sense, too.... Just like... holy shit... their brains must keep track of so much space around them... imagine the fucking vast landscapes their vivid dreams could contain.... Or what a hallucinogen could create.... Oh my god....

Guys, I think I found my passion. I'm going to move to London and become a cab driver.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

@Alyzarin; That whole post was just amazing. The stuff about the hippocampus is just fascinating in the context of the philosophy I've been reading recently. I may have to be careful over Ginkgo as I have struggled with OCD in the past.

Thanks. I'm glad you found it interesting. Care to share a bit about the philosophy you've been reading? I'm interested in that as well.

I totally understand about the OCD, and can relate. If you do decide to try the ginkgo, what I would recommend is either having valerian root around to take and neutralize the effect, or, preferably, just a shot or two of hard liquor to get it into your system quickly. Both are GABAergic and should cancel it out. Though, for the record, if you can smoke weed and get pretty high without having to deal with anxiety, you'll probably be fine. There are some other pharmacological differences, particularly in those involving memory and perception, but one of the major mechanisms of action of cannabinoids is to lower GABA release throughout the brain. That's where the stereotypical stoner paranoia and panic attacks come from. It's unlikely that a supplement dose of ginkgo would lower activity more strongly than a decent dose of weed.

Originally Posted by Highlander

Can you draw me a picture?

@Alyzarin - Good work on the table BTW.
It might be a help to put the specific time you took a supplement, whether it was before bed, or at WBTB; plus if you used a combo, etc. Maybe the data could be added in with the 'Sleep Duration' heading?

I know CanisLucidus keeps a very good record on the current template which clearly highlights quite easily when these supplements were taken which helps fellow experimenters on the thread, plus with overall data and record keeping for the future.

Will you accept an illustrated emotional response? I'm better with abstract stuff.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was thinking, keep doing it the way Canis has. I think that'll take care of it pretty well. And thanks!

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Wow, consider me warned. I was aware of the possibility of serotonin syndrome and had read to be careful even of 5-htp, but if there's no point in pursuing serotonergics I'll take your word for it. I hadn't realised St. John's Wort had so much going on, I guess that means it shouldn't be stacked with anything (I haven't experimented with it yet).

Yeah, I would definitely be a careful mixing St. John's wort with things. I wouldn't totally count it out though, either. The first night I tried it as a dream enhancer I used it along with smoked damiana and I had some of the most psychedelic dreams of my life. With so many things it does, it's no wonder it can have such a crazy effect.... I tried taking a high dose of it with menthol once too but it caused really heavy insomnia and stomach cramps that had me in the bathroom for a while. Knowing what I know now, it was probably from too much dopamine and glutamate floating around.... It was interesting though, I actually had a mild dissociative effect from it. Definitely wasn't expecting that, but it is a NMDA antagonist after all. The fact that it blocks dopamine metabolism specifically really interests me too....

There's actually an interesting sort of connection between it and menthol, though. You know how capsaicin activates TRPV1 and menthol activates TRPM8? These stand for transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily V member 1 and transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily M member 8, and they're the hot and cold receptors, respectively. Well, hyperforin, one of the big main chemicals in St. John's wort, activates transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily C member 6, or TRPC6. That's supposedly how it gets its ridiculously widespread reuptake inhibition effects. It's interesting stuff....

Originally Posted by Alyzarin

Will you accept an illustrated emotional response? I'm better with abstract stuff.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was thinking, keep doing it the way Canis has. I think that'll take care of it pretty well. And thanks!

Yeah that would be cool. No problem BTW.


Wed May 8th 2013

Dose: Menthodex cough drops (x5) = 74 mg (approx) taken during WBTB
Side Effects: Gripey stomach
Sleep Duration: Before = 5.75 – 6.5 hrs (WBTB 55 min) After = 3.5 hrs (approx) Total = 9.25 – 10 hrs
Cognitive: My overall recall seemed better? I experienced HI/a dream quite easily whilst resting, post WBTB.
Sexual: Yes, a bare-chested (Ex) GF in a bedroom scene.
Atmosphere: A general mixture of themes. A couple of famous people featured also. Nothing really emotional, etc.
Other Comments: The sexual type dream seems a recurrent one where I experience some ‘delay’ or ‘interruption’, or lack of privacy. It is not exclusive to Menthol usage.
There was a varied storyline to the (non-lucid) dreams in general where they seemed to blend together, although nothing really stood out as such.
Before taking the Menthol, pre-WBTB, It was a bit of a warm evening, inc. in bed initially which may have influenced my sleeping pattern.
I have had better results when taking a much lower dose of Menthol, especially when coupled with a low dose of Vitamin B6 (10 mg) which I often combine during WBTB.

T.O.T.P. The radio. CPR demo, etc - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views