I don’t really dream. It’s extremely rare to the point where I’ll have a handful in a year and I don’t remember them. Waking up with an emotional reaction to an odd dream inspired by life events or entertainment… Then the details slip away from me and I can’t even talk to anyone about the experience.

What’s it like for you?
Do you enjoy, dislike or analyze your dreams?
Is it really a window to the subconscious for you?

  • ButteryMonkey@piefed.socialEnglish
    4·
    7 hours ago

    I used to be like that, unable to dream/remember dreams. Turns out that was because I had nightmares and terrors and stress dreams and my brain simply didn’t want to remember them.

    I took a shaman drug (that I won’t mention, because I absolutely do not recommend it for anyone ever, and regret taking it myself) over the course of many months, and it absolutely gave me the permanent ability to dream and recall, and even consistently lucid dream (I don’t recall dreams every day, but at least once a week now). I now have a whole town that acts as a hub to get to all the places I’ve dreamed about more than once. It’s kinda fun.

    However, these dreams are massively emotionally taxing. I often encounter my mother (the point of the shaman drug is to interact with dead ancestors), so I’ve relegated her to a middle floor of “my house” so she’s easier to avoid… those experiences are… just so overwhelmingly taxing. They do help with some closure stuff even tho I know it’s just my brain making up both sides of things, but it’s draining all the same.

      • auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        31·
        5 hours ago

        I’ve taken every exotic research chemical and psychedelic you can think of. I can confirm hallucinations work the same with aphantasia.

        Although I didn’t ‘trip’, which is the delusional state people get into when they take pills/mdma and stay up for a few days. Start talking to plastic bags, on the phone with their hand, etc. might just be me though.

        • Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          3 hours ago

          This is a pretty specific usage of the word trip. Most of the time when people say it, they mean they had an above-threshold psychoactive experience (usually in the context of psychedelics). Don’t get me wrong, depending on what and how much you take you can certainly trip and find yourself doing that stuff. But many people use ‘trip’ or ‘tripping’ to describe experiences that don’t reach that point.

          You sound experienced, so I’m curious how you landed on this definition of trip/tripping and what you called your experiences instead (if you use a casual term at all).

      • ButteryMonkey@piefed.socialEnglish
        3·
        7 hours ago

        Good call.

        Hallucinations are fun, if they are purely visual and you know they are coming…

        I have olfactory hallucinations as well as occasional auditory (related to migraines and headaches, not drug use) and those are just very mundane. Lol