Lucid Dreams Extra Credit Blog Post

Some say that lucid dreams are not possible.  I for one was a believer in that theory for a long time.  The sheer thought of being able to control something that was so fake and unreal really did not click with me until a few years ago when I got my wisdom teeth out.  I got very strong painkillers that helped a lot with the pain, but they also had some odd side effects.

One of those effects was that they made you extremely drowsy.  I read this and thought to myself “okay, a lot of things make you drowsy, it can’t be that bad.”  I took the pain medication and had a nice rest the first time around, but the second time I took the medication, I realized something.  I had not actually woken up.  My brain was creating a simulation of what waking up would feel like and synthesizing those feelings.  It went so far as to wake me up in the dream and give me more medication.  I then found out that I could change things in my dream.  I could walk around, people could talk to me and I could carry on entire conversations with fake people.  It was a really weird feeling.

At first it did not occur to me that maybe my body was still back on the recliner that I was laying on when I fell asleep so I went back and checked.  Turns out it was still there, and this is where the dream got really weird.  As soon as I realized that, I remember thinking, man, this is really weird.  Right as that thought crossed my mind, it must have triggered something, because I woke up.  Whether that thought was enough to throw me out of my dream state and back into reality, or if the pain medication had simply worn off, I will never know.  But what happened to me I can only classify as a medical induced lucid dream.

It was odd to be able to control things that I knew did not exist, but at the same time it was really invigorating.  To this day I have not been able to have another dream like that one, which makes me wonder if it really happened at all or if it was just a dream about a lucid dream.

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