Jolted Awake Dizzy, Confused, and Hallucinating - Why???

First post, found the site while trying to find out what happened to me last night. Hoping there's someone here that can help me so i'll get right into it.

Had my wisdom teeth removed last Tuesday and on the instructions paper it told me not to lay flat for a couple days to help keep the blood clot intact but two days ago i decided to sleep in my bed again. Yesterday i couldn't do it and had to go back to the couch because it hurt my neck but i tried again last night and succeeded, sorta.

I fell asleep around 2:30AM (fairly early for me actually) and was pretty comfortable in my bed this time but had a headache all day yesterday that got progressively worse untill i fell asleep. It was around 5 though that for some reason i was jolted awake to an immediate sitting position with my eyes open, dizzy to the point of nearly passing back out, seeing wavy/spiraling neon colors turning my room into a trippy void untill it all went away about 30 seconds later and not knowing what room or who's house i was in. Whether i was in pain or convulsing, i'm not sure. I can't even tell if i was breathing while this was happening but this was the weirdest thing ever and i almost didn't want to go to sleep again for the night although i did and it didn't happen again.

Anyone think they know what happened last night? I asked the dentist and he said dental wise i was doing better than most of his patients at a week in but he wasn't entirely sure what could've caused the sleep issue.

Welcome to DV's, DJShift!

My guess here is that pain or discomfort woke you up, and did so so suddenly that your dreaming mind did not have time to shut off its contributions, so you got yourself a light show while your dreams faded after you woke up.

You probably were breathing just fine, but you felt a bit of dissonance as your dreaming body (which does not need to breathe) competed with your physical body for your attention.

What you experienced sounds like what is known as a confusional arousal. This is caused by a physiological activation in which the brain exits from slow wave sleep and is caught in between a sleeping and waking state. This activation was probably triggered by the emotional stress you're experiencing.