Dreams

[Moodyfisherman]

My mom said she still dreams that she is smoking....she quit over 30-years ago......what a powerfull chemical concoction analogs are.

 

[Bernard Marx]

If your dreams are wild and crazy then your subconscious is unsettled for some reason―I believe this is indisputable. Dreaming about smoking or vaping might mean that you are pretty balanced on the whole (except for the small problem of your obsession with either). If you are trying to light a cigarette while riding a crocodile over a waterfall you may have cause for concern.

 

[DEAc23]

I almost never used to remember my dreams, but literally ever since I started vaping I have been remembering them more and more.

Since I've been vaping, my dreams haven't been affected. Not in any way I can tell. (Yet...)

But several months after I developed nerve damage in my neck and left shoulder, I began having dreams that are both vivid (intense, memorable) and lucid. I know I'm dreaming within the dream, and therefore can do anything I want. I can change anything I want within the dream. Think "Inception", except without the subconscious tearing everything apart.

It's been this way for seven years, now. And let me tell you from seven years of experience ... it's good to be a god.

(And no, this isn't one of my usual whimsical posts. Around half of the dreams I remember are, indeed, lucid.)

I would love to be able to dream like that, or even to be able to remember everything I dreamt for longer than a few minutes after I wake up My dreams are always really impressionistic or whatever, they aren't realistic or logical in any way shape or form. Also usually within 10 mins after I wake up I start to forget what my dreams were about

Oh and as a funny side note, I'm currently watching Fringe - Bad Dreams (season 1 ep 17)

 

[CKCalmer]

Oh and as a funny side note, I'm currently watching Fringe - Bad Dreams (season 1 ep 17)

I loved Fringe! It was the X-Files minus the inhibition.

I would love to be able to dream like that, or even to be able to remember everything I dreamt for longer than a few minutes after I wake up My dreams are always really impressionistic or whatever, they aren't realistic or logical in any way shape or form. Also usually within 10 mins after I wake up I start to forget what my dreams were about

When you awake from a dream - and I mean the MOMENT you wake up - focus your mind ONLY on remembering the dream. Go chronologically, from the beginning, one step at a time. If you can make it to the end and have an accurate "record" in your immediate memory, you'll likely remember it for the rest of your life. The ones I did that with I can still remember, in full. Some people will tell you to "write it down" immediately when you awake, but that never worked for me. Going to get the paper and pen (or laptop PC) caused an interruption between the dream and recording it. Do that, and you'll lose it all within a minute. I know I did. Maybe writing it down works for some people. It doesn't for me. I can't write as fast as I can think through a memory, and speed is of paramount importance after awakening. Dreams evaporate when you awake faster than the sleep from your eyes. Once I can think consciously through the memory of a dream before it dies, though, it seems to "program" it into my mind's "database", and from then on I will always remember it. I always have, anyway.

I'm writing a sci-fi novel in which dreaming is a central component, so I've been studying up on the science of dreaming. And since I've been vaping, even though I haven't noticed a difference in my dreaming, I still wonder if it could possibly have such an effect. I've searched and searched for mental effects of any of the standard ingredients of e-juices to try to determine if they could affect dream frequency, intensity or intra-awareness. I found nothing except for references to the well-known effects of inhaled nicotine, which we all know as former smokers. My lucid dreaming happened at the same rate, and the same way, when I smoked. I don't think I ever had one before I smoked (i.e., pre-1984), but saying that "nicotine must be causing my lucid dreaming" would be to claim false causation ("post hoc ergo propter hoc").

Assuming my neurosurgeon didn't implant a mind-altering device when he cut into my neck and bolted my cervical vertebrae together with screws and a titanium plate, I'd more likely suspect age as a key factor than anything else. I was 39 years old when my lucid dreams escalated to their current rate.

Anyway, here's some more about my lucid dreams, so anyone else here may be able to relate theirs if they wish. I want to first state that I am NOT an expert on sleep or dreaming in any way. All I will relate is my own, direct experiences with lucid dreaming.

When I'm in a lucid dream, and when the lucidity and my control are both strong enough, I NEVER settle for realistic and logical places or activities. Maybe it's because I'm insane. Technically, it's called dreaming with "high-level lucidity" and "conscious dream control" that offers the ability to "do anything" in the dream. Most (maybe 2/3?) of the lucid dreams I remember are of that type, with the rest of my lucid dreams having lower levels of awareness and control. There are several general "types" of lucid dreams, although they really only mark mileposts on what is simply an infinitely granular range of awareness and ability within a dream. You can have low-level lucidity, lucidity with unconscious dream control, lucidity with no dream control, etc. If that last one sounds like being trapped in a prison, it's because it is.

There are also levels of physical "transference" during dreaming. Sleepwalking is one of the well-known forms of this. You dream it, and at the same time your body is, to some extent, actually doing it. Ever seen a dog who seemed to be dreaming about running? How about this one: Have you ever dreamed you were ...... in a public restroom, for instance, and then woke up and realized that it ... uh ... wasn't entirely a dream? I did that a couple of times in my mid-twenties. Thankfully I was in bed alone each time. Maybe physical transference is associated with stress. My twenties mostly sucked.

But anyway..... I've been to Mercury without a spaceship. I've flown like Superman and pulled up next to airliners at cruising altitude and peered into the windows. "Magical" flying in pretty much any setting is one of the most fun things to do when the rules no longer exist. It was my favorite thing to do, in fact, until I learned that I could have sex with anyone in the known universe. Any actual person, any fictional person, from any timeframe in history. All that's required is that I've seen them before. A single still photo is enough, but the more detail I have, the more detailed the experience in the dream.

Edit: OK, it's actually not sex all that often. It's usually conversation, which sometimes leads to something beyond conversation... a walk by a river, shopping for leather jackets and sunglasses (I do this one often; not sure why), jamming out with the original members of Pink Floyd, introducing a friend to my great, great, great, great grandparents. I spent an afternoon handing paint brushes to Michelangelo while he painted his masterwork in the Sistine Chapel. Why, I don't know. It was uncomfortable as hell standing on scaffolding for hours on end, even though I was my much buffer twenty-something self. And OK, it is sometimes sex. But not with Michelangelo.

I've driven a Lamborghini on a German autobahn faster than the speed of sound, and then I drove it on the moon. Speaking of which, there's magically air wherever I go. I did try to make myself not need to breathe once, but it didn't work. I "popped" right back to breathing, and there was immediately air to breathe again. Although I can change almost anything about myself in a lucid dream including my clothes, hair, build and age, I can't seem to override my autonomic functions. Weird. Maybe it's because I don't have to apply conscious thought to them when awake, and therefore have no experience controlling them to relate to in the dream.

I'm sure the possibilities are truly limitless, though. I bet I've only just scratched the surface. Sometimes I want to be high-minded and, for instance, debate Descartes about the true relationship between existence and sentience as addressed by "cogito ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am") now that we have artificially intelligent computers. Are they? Or are they not? And if they are, are we still? And if we're not, and yet we made them, then how can they be? And how will that change if they destroy us? Or if we destroy them? Or if we completely destroy each other? Will we or they have ever been?

Other times I just want to bang some model for ten hours until we both collapse, exhausted, in a pool of sweat. I've "been with" almost every female actress that I've ever fantasized about. Been married to some of them, in fact, while enjoying various "fun" careers, such as trillionaire philanthropist. One of my recurring favorites is my marriage to Olivia Wilde while enjoying a career as a hugely successful designer and test pilot of space cruisers. She somehow finds the time to always come with me on my flights while somehow maintaining her own acting and modeling schedule. Needless to say, time is a contextually fluid creature in a dream.

For some reason, my "lucids" end up combining space flight and romance more often than intellectual stimulation over a really great espresso. But I'm not a dirty-minded geek in real life at all. Really, I'm not. I mean it.

But I did take Natalie Portman with me to the Andromeda Galaxy last month. And no, she wasn't dressed as Queen Amidala. That'd be too weird. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Well, at first she was.

We played with the tribbles and ate saltwater mussels freshly caught from Earth's North Sea while we were parked in a gorgeous nebula. The boat pulled right up next to the Millennium Falcon's cockpit and served us on a window tray. The mussels got perfectly steamed somehow between the nets and our plates. Took no time at all. Literally. And while we were making zero-g love in the top gun turret, I improved the scenery by moving us out of the galaxy along with the nebula, so that we could see the galaxy's smoky spiral arms just beyond the translucent blue and purple gas cloud formations. Or maybe it was the galaxy moving away from us and our nebula. Whichever it was, I know I didn't have to tell my pilot, William Shatner, to crank the engines and move us. It just.....happened.

(By the way..... Several years back, I gave the Millennium Falcon to Captain Kirk and Spock, and the Enterprise to Han Solo and Chewbacca as a joke. I guess it stuck, because they are invariably the ones I see at the helm in either location now.)

Sometimes I'll borrow an entire setting from a movie, and then make whatever alterations I want. I've been on Pandora with Zoe Saldana, except she was human while she was there with me. She was also a couple of inches taller and had bigger..... um..... jewelry. Yeah.

When I try to make up a completely new universe, or just a new place, it ends up being copies of things I've read and seen, real or fiction, throughout my life. Often it's mixed across books or genres, or even across astrophysical theories. Want a screwed up universe? Try to resolve Thor's realms with 11th dimension M-theory.

So, how does morality work in lucid dreams? Morality can be as fluid as time when you know for a fact that you're not really hurting anyone. I've tossed a few particularly nasty people from my past into giant spinning fan blades, for instance, and one was eaten by a giant version of a cat I used to have. But I always prefer the positive activities over the negative ones. I don't like feeling angry in real life, and even less so in a world that belongs in every way to me.

But since I can't forge new experience in a dream, lucid or otherwise - not actual experience - everything I create or encounter seems to be based on memory, estimation or both. I've never really driven a Lamborghini, for instance, but I've sat in one, and I drove a modified BMW M3 on C470 just south of Denver at 156mph when I lived there fifteen years ago, so I suppose I "bridged" the experiences when I took my Lamborian jaunt. Just as I bridge new places I'm trying to imagine with old ones I know well. I've never been to Germany, for instance, which explains why "my" German autobahn had American highway signs on it.

Somehow I can't do things that I don't even have enough actual experience to estimate. I've never driven a motorcycle, for instance. I've always wanted to. But no matter..... I can't ride in even my most consciously-controlled lucid dreams. Or maybe it's that I just don't want to ride badly enough. Oh well. Maybe one day I'll figure out how.

Now, I've also never visited outer space, nor have I ever been even tangentially close to doing so. But I've fantasized about it since I was five. I've read hundreds of books fictionally detailing space travel. I've seen hundreds of documentaries and movies which portrayed it realistically, and I've written about it. So altogether, I guess I have enough "pseudo-experience" to make it work in a lucid dream. Perhaps I've "tricked" just a bit of my subconscious into thinking I've actually done it at some point. So, maybe if I write a story about having a Ducati...

It's hard for me to think in infinite terms, even though there are no actual limits on your world when your world is, in every way, your own creation. I try to expand my repertoire of settings and activities, but I've never made what felt like noticeable progress at it. Maybe I just have to settle with what I've been able to do so far.

I do love to bring back people from earlier times into a modern, unified setting. I enjoyed debating Benjamin Franklin in person during a Garbage concert regarding why a compromise between freedom and security is not only reasonable, but has been required throughout every era of human history. I couldn't convince him, so I made him morph into Audrey Hepburn circa-1953. I transported us to the Via Condotti, materialized a Vespa, and... well, you know the rest.

I've sat with Joan of Arc a few times, but I never know what I want to ask her. We just sit quietly, occasionally looking at each other, then looking away. Then she vanishes, often replaced by my pet Siberian Tiger, who does talk. A lot.

You can do anything you've ever imagined. But it's better than imagination because there's more of it present. It's all around you. It feels, in every way, real. Even the best imaginations who ever lived couldn't do that by themselves. You're fully immersed in a fully interactive "reality". And yes, you know you're going to wake up to your actual real life, although oddly you can't remember anything about what your actual real life is like while you're in a dream, lucid or otherwise. And when you wake, you won't even have a souvenir that you can touch and hold from the beautiful experiences you just had. But then you remember that your actual life is OK, especially because you'll be asleep again in a few hours, and that tonight, you might just get to return to heaven.

Now, if y'all will excuse me, I have a date with Kiera Knightly and Amy Mainzer at the Tannhäuser Gate to discuss bellybuttons. Let's go fancy this time. Where's my Enterprise-E?

"Han! Snap snap! These ladies are hungry, and we don't want to miss the C-beams."

 

[Verinuh]

Same thing still happens to me.

 

[jrs99]

I've posted this at least once too
I would always light up an analog, take a few puffs and then realize "oh yeah I quit these!"
Only have one dream so far about vaping and it was some kind of survivalist type dream and someone had taken my Provari.
I just remember I kept asking everyone where it was.
I usually don't remember my dreams and that's the ONE thing I really liked about Chantix was the crazy dreams.
Actually saved a few after I quit taking them and would pop one every once in awhile just for the dreams

 

[SazoidX]

I've been vaping for two years, and EVERY time I get stressed I still dream about smoking cigarettes. I think that smoking was stress relief for me for so long that my brain figures that's a good way to calm me down - even if it's in a dream!

 

[jackie38]

I havnt had any because i dont think of it all the time read a book before you drop off then you will have the book on yor mind instead of cigs and vapeing

 

[a wandering soul]

I sometimes have dreams where I smoke.. And I get down on myself in the dream. Happens less as I keep vaping.

Via spontaneous binary code

 

[3mg Meniere]

I had a dream I was (involuntarily) tripping a few nights ago. I need to start writing down my dreams--- they do disappear once I have been awake for a bit.

 

[HauntedMyst]

I've had this recurring dream since I started vaping where I'm floating through the clouds peacefully but then the clouds turn into fresh popped popcorn and I'm floating on the fresh popped popcorn and then I'm laying on the popcorn naked with Jennifer Aniston and we glide under this waterfall (well butterfall) of delicious melted but not hot butter and just as we're about to do it, a giant midget grabs the box of popcorn we're in and all I can think is in the dream I'm screaming "Go away nasty midget! I've got a naked Jennifer Aniston here covered butter!" He drops the box and I wake up and I'm angry because I could never get Jennifer Aniston in real life - especially not now since she had that damn restraining order issued. If I ever meet that midget, I'm gonna punch him...midget or not.

 

[Bernard Marx]

I'm trying to squeeze through some really tight attic door...or I'm trying to hold my breath so I can float and fly...or I'm totally lost...or my wife is walking around naked at a party...ad nauseam. Even so I try to remember them. They're at least interesting compared to waking stuff. (4 Non-Blondes 'What's Goin' On' excluded)

 

[Benzin]

I would dream of smoking all the time during the first months i quit smoking, tho personally i dint have craveings when i woke up.

Then eventually i started dreaming of vaping instead of smoking. So i guess its like CKcalmer mentioned, your subcontious needs to understand that you do NOT smoke anymore, maybe get him a PV too? lol

Just hang in there (resist the cravings) and youll be dreaming of your favorite ejuice in no time.

 

[KYBLUE]

Oh! I dream of a gennie with a light brown juice,
Floating, like a vapor, on the soft summer air.

OK, maybe not.