Dreams and other crazy things

As I alluded to in my previous post, dreams definitely spark my interest. When I was in high school, I would continually fall asleep at the dinner table while eating, or I would fall asleep in classes (what high school student doesn't, right?). The thing is that I was getting plenty of sleep every night. My mother decided to make me an appointment with a neurologist to see what the cause could be. It was agreed that I would undergo a sleep study overnight at the hospital to test for narcolepsy. What my doctor discovered was that within five minutes of falling asleep, I would enter a REM state, and remain in it for most of the duration of my sleep. Seeing that your mind is just as active in a REM state as it is when you're awake, the reason I was so tired was that I was never actually getting proper rest. From what I understand, narcolepsy occurs even in the absence of REM sleep, so I was never actually diagnosed with anything, but we did at least find out the reason for my fatigue. I liked to think of it as suffering from excessive dreaming. Years later a psychology professor of mine told me that people who deal with depression are prone to excessive REM sleep, and this could have been an explanation of what was happening at the time.

I also mentioned in my last post that I've had experiences with precognitive dreams. The book mentioned the possibility that we may be picking up on subliminal messages during the day and they manifest themselves in our sleep. I wouldn't doubt if this is the case. I'm open-minded on the issue, but whether precognitive abilities come from some sort of "psychic" source or from an ability to perceive things that aren't readily obvious, I don't think it makes them any less valid or worth looking into.

Another crazy dream experience I had was when I was prescribed Ambien (this was years after the excessive sleeping problem). I was prescribed the lowest dose, and on the third night of taking it, I think my brain exploded. I took my pill and crawled into bed as usual, only I didn't fall asleep right away. After a few minutes of lying there with my eyes closed, I started to see incredibly bizarre shapes and movements, so I opened my eyes. Much to my horror, the images were still there when my eyes were open, and they were becoming increasingly more bizarre. The first thing I noticed was that my walls were breathing and my bed felt as though it was on wheels; I could feel it rolling from one side of my room to the next. There were people standing around my room wearing top hats, chattering amongst themselves. I saw fraggles and Alice from Through the Looking Glass... it sounds insane, and it was. I managed to fumble out of bed and turn my lights on, hoping it would make everything go away. Between my bed moving and my struggling to get out of it, I ended up getting sick, which apparently solved all of my problems. Needless to say, I stopped taking sleep medication immediately. My doctor told me that it is very rare, but I wasn't the first patient to report having that side effect. Apparently what had happened was that my mind was asleep but my body was still alert; I was dreaming while I was awake. I did a google search to see what other kinds of experiences people had while on Ambien, and fascinatingly, a lot of people reported seeing the same thing that I did--people standing around in their rooms having a party. It made me wonder what chemical in the drug caused most people to have more or less the same hallucination.

I also mentioned in my last post that I'm able to tap into my creativity in my sleep, at least as far as songwriting goes. In reading chapter five, I realized that depending upon the art form, I go through a different process and have different means of achieving inspiration. With music, it is a much more passive experience, and I could relate to what some of the artists and writers were saying about it just having to come to you. With writing prose, though, inspiration has never been an automatic or passive experience for me. I've found that with stories and characters, I have to train my mind to be actively open and perceptive; it is usually the trivial or mundane thing that will strike me. Taking something seemingly dull and transforming it into something novel is what I strive for, and I actually couldn't relate to what most of the writers were saying about not being able to explain where their inspiration came from. Maybe it just comes easier to them than it does to me, but I definitely think writing differs from painting and music in that you have to make conscious strides toward inspiration. I'm curious to see if anyone else finds that they have different means of inspiration depending upon which medium they are dealing with.