Advice for the sleepless

[Spenner]

I've had a pretty consistent problem with being overly aware of myself as I fall asleep. Last night was a particularly vivid journey to and back out of what was NEARLY a REM state, but never really peaked. What generally happens is that I'll become very relaxed and positive towards sleep, but I find that my inner voice is far too active. My narration of what is going on in my brain is just always there-- there indeed are times when I can channel it into abstraction (the most success is trying to "visually narrate" my mind in irrational things such as "my breath as triangles" which makes no real sense but it works to think about in the state). Oddly enough the concept of "salted caramel" took me by surprise as being something that lulled me closest to a deep sleep; I found that as my mind gathered associations from this one spoken word from my inner narration, the rest of the train of thought drifted into abstraction, void of language, which allowed me to finally relax into what I'd HOPED would be leading me to a dream. Well the salted caramel thing only took me so far, before I started drifting off into abstract imagery that grounded itself back into narration once it became too associated with narrated imagery (hypnogogic imagery generated into MC Escher-like patterns under my eyelids, which was a pleasurable experience-- i felt bodily euphoria, which also tempted me to narrate even more, and elaborate on reasons for feeling this positive euphoric shiver. There were also very recognizable swirls that made my mind narrate the word "circle, swirl" to. While this was a very relaxing and overall positive experience, it is NOT a healthy practice, and this happens every single night, sometimes with less self-narration, and thankfully with actual sleep for the most part. However from time to time I'll get bouts of this sort of thing, and it typically persists for a few days before I can't help but be too exhausted to have any kind of narration at night. What can I do to help minimize this sort of thing? Substances like melatonin and whatnot in my experience only aid this kind of hypnogogic stimulation, as well as most things in general, which is unfortunate. When I CAN get into a dream, however, melatonin and noopept are things which have given me glorious dreams, so I'd prefer to be able to continue using them... For the record, I don't necessarily WANT this all to happen-- I'm not constantly in pursuit of a WILD. Rather, I just want to get to sleep, but to enjoy the process of falling asleep (I feel I can't rush myself, mostly because I don't know how lol), and have a problem with being overly mindful of my brain's activity. Also for the record, this problem is consistent even when sleep aids are in the mix (which I try to avoid using, though doxylamine is a fairly regular go-to sleep aid), and while meditation is something I do all the time, I find that it's just part of my natural impulse to label a lot of the more in-your-face things that appear on the way to sleep. It's like trying to ignore any kind of response to an image of a dancing rainbow in front of your face.

[Sivason]

To fight this just use a mantra or counting to ten over and over. You replace your inner voice with something so repetitive your brain looses interest. I have slowly done the alphabet the last couple nights as I am going to do a task of the month involving the alphabet. Hope you can make this idea work for you.

[Rillay]

Hi Spenner, For sleep engage in early morning workouts and not within 3 hours to bedtime. Create your sleep schedule, get up at the same time each day and avoid taking naps in day timing. Minimize light, noise and extreme temperature during sleep and have the bedroom be dark and quiet.

[FryingMan]

Hi Spenner, For sleep engage in early morning workouts and not within 3 hours to bedtime. Create your sleep schedule, get up at the same time each day and avoid taking naps in day timing. Minimize light, noise and extreme temperature during sleep and have the bedroom be dark and quiet. +1 for all this. And: don't eat too much too close to bedtime (couple of hours at least). Have a light bedtime snack mixing complex carbs and some light protein+calcium, e.g., a small bowl of cereal, or cheese with whole grain crackers and a glass of warm milk (don't go to bed hungry). Write your waking life worries, to-do lists, etc. in a notebook and forget about them. Keep your bed and your bedroom neat and tidy, use your bed ONLY for sleeping, nothing else. Best is to get out of the bedroom entirely for: reading, etc., let the bedroom be a sanctuary for sleep and sleep only. If you can't get to sleep within about 30 minutes, get up out of bed, sit in another room, quietly focusing on dreamy thoughts, incubating desired dream scenes, or read material about lucid dreaming, then go back to bed. I've done this twice now on two different nights and both times I got right back to sleep after returning to bed. I started having reoccuring long back-to-sleeps within the last month, and I've since added daily rigorous exercise (preferably morning), going to bed rigidly at the same time at night, and getting up after roughly the same amount of sleep during the night (sometimes if I'm up longer for WBTBs I'll compensate the get out of bed time to be later). Try relaxing herbs like Valerian. If you still can't make it to sleep, try a tiny dosage of melatonin (0.3mg is considered to be enough to get you to sleep but not enough to interfere with REM). With all supplements keep the dosages really low at first and be careful about interactions. I bought some melatonin to keep on hand just in case I couldn't get back to sleep no matter what. Just having it takes the pressure off, kind of like a reverse placebo, I do not intend to take it unless all else fails. I have found that enacting these suggestions has dramatically helped: I am now regularly getting back to sleep at bed time and after wakings to make voice dream journal entries.

[Sivason]

Valerian gives me messed up non lucids. I have some kind of bad dream reaction to the stuff. Benadryl/diphenhydramine is a good sleep aid for dreamers. It wears of at the 6 hour mark, and that is great for a 5.5 hour WBTB. You can fall back to bed relaxed, but not be drugged during prime REM time.

[FryingMan]

Valerian gives me messed up non lucids. I have some kind of bad dream reaction to the stuff. Benadryl/diphenhydramine is a good sleep aid for dreamers. It wears of at the 6 hour mark, and that is great for a 5.5 hour WBTB. You can fall back to bed relaxed, but not be drugged during prime REM time. I do use Valerian on occasion, including last night, and I had a bunch of wakings with recall, but not very long recall for each one. I haven't studied carefully the dreams I have with it, I'll keep a careful eye out. The dreams didn't seem any stranger than usual, my dreams tend toward the pretty wild/wacky/bizarre anyway. I got back to sleep most of the time great, though, 3 or more times during the night so that's pretty helpful IMO. Is Valerian supposed to be a REM suppressor? I don't take very much, just 20-40 drops of tincture.

[FryingMan]

I do use Valerian on occasion, including last night, and I had a bunch of wakings with recall, but not very long recall for each one. I haven't studied carefully the dreams I have with it, I'll keep a careful eye out. The dreams didn't seem any stranger than usual, my dreams tend toward the pretty wild/wacky/bizarre anyway. I got back to sleep most of the time great, though, 3 or more times during the night so that's pretty helpful IMO. Is Valerian supposed to be a REM suppressor? I don't take very much, just 20-40 drops of tincture. I tried St. John's Wort last night for the first time and I have to say I liked it. I had two cups of peppermint tea and one cup of St. John's Wort tea made from loose SJW bits, about one teaspoon worth because I didn't want to take too much to start, right before bed, and I felt very nicely relaxed going to sleep. I did not experience vivid dreams or particularly themed dreams as many people do on SJW, but maybe that's because I'm used to recalling dreams now and "regular people" who aren't into LD usually don't recall anything. What I did notice was that at the approximately 3-hour waking, I had tons of recall, normally I just have one dream or a few fragments at that time. My first thought was "I'll never remember all of these scenes long enough to give them keywords to get them all journaled," there was that much content. I'm sure I lost lots of details but I did get down a number of different scenes.

[FryingMan]

I tried St. John's Wort last night for the first time and I have to say I liked it. This may have been a bit premature. While I slept and dreamed fine, in the afternoon I had a very strange buzzing around my front top teeth and the front of my face. It was very unusual (don't recall ever feeling that before) and could have been an effect of the SJW, I'm not sure. I took just peppermint tea last night and got to sleep (and back to sleep) fine, so I think I'll avoid SJW for now.