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Comment by _arvin | Hacker News Reader

One of the worst side effects of cannabis :[ I miss dreaming and REM sleep. feelsbadman

I hear this statement quite frequently, and used to agree with this. But now I get more hours of sleep and my dreams are very dreamy (9-10) hours of sleep. I use cannabis everyday. I have also tried DMT a few times, not IV though.

You still dream while on cannabis, I just don’t think you are able to record any of it to main memory. Actually from what I understand it we all dream a lot (with or without cannabis) we just can’t remember most of it.

According to Matthew Walker (Berkeley researcher on sleep), it does affect sleep. See this small clip, starting at 2:14.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lRp5AC9W_F8

The previous comment is still correct: even without weed we dream a lot and don’t record most of it.

Alcohol in our system at bed time impacts sleep as well. We’re consciously at rest (or blacked out from over consumption if that is ones thing) but our body is busy metabolizing.

Poor signal, YouTube isn’t loading. Not sure if the clip is similar, but as I understand it recording a dream and restless sleep from metabolizing substances are separate processes.

Indeed, in general we are not aware of how much we dream, because we don't remember. I should have specified better.

Weed and alcohol specifically suppress REM sleep, where most of dreaming happens.

Suddenly stopping weed or alcohol leads to a REM rebound, and people experience very vivid dreams. This association suggests they were actually not dreaming much before.

Huh, my most vivid dreams are when I go to sleep on edibles.

I'm guessing you probably don't do that 365 nights a year. It's not just a function of dose, but also frequency. If you keep your brain saturated with the stuff constantly for a long time, then go cold turkey, about 1-2 weeks later your dreams go off the scale.

I mean, I smoke moderately pretty much every night.

You only have to quit for a few days and the dreams will come back. After a week and you'll have some nights that are almost entirely dreaming.

I found they not only came back but after a week of no weed, for a week or so the dreams were really vivid, then after awhile settled into a more "normal" (what I'm used to) state.

Yes; that's almost universally reported by all regular cannabis users. Extremely vivid dreams (or nightmares, depending on the user).

According to Mathew Walker (sleep researcher) weed (and alcohol) supress REM sleep, so when you quit you get REM rebound, where your brain tries to make up for the lack of it. Hence the crazy dreams.

Take one day/night off smoking each week, take 1-3 MG of Melatonin an hour before going to sleep that night.

Enjoy...

I starting dreaming again after years since I stopped watching porn. Took me a bout a week of abstinence. There seems to be some merit to nofap. Might be placebo, but so far I'm not complaining.

I've experienced this as well. I wonder what it is that makes the dreams so vivid after abstaining from a neurochemical perspective.

Don't know if you meant literally, but no-porn should not imply no-fap. In general I think porn can be detrimental to a healthy sexuality.

Flushing tubes regularly is supposed to be important for long term health. Otherwise often silent infections can happen in places where there is no proper immune system to fight back

I personally dont miss my nightmares of which I had many. In that sense I consider it a good side effect.

It is one of the primary reasons I indulge.

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