The pandemic is giving people vivid, unusual dreams

At first it makes you feel more fresh, you start sleeping less and thinking more. Then half a year later you realise you haven’t slept well for a really long time.

Truly negative sides become more noticeable much later when it’s too late.

Over the years I have tried: meditation, trying to keep my mind off, going for a walk in the middle of the night, eating, not eating in the evening, working, drinking, weed.

The only thing that actually worked is just staying in bed with my eyes closed. No, you don’t sleep - but you still rest mentally by letting your concentration wander off.

Coincidence? No, I think everyone that participates in society has a rhythm that has been interrupted for the first time in a long time (many decades, see Eric Weinstein "Great Nap"), and the result is all of our cerebral hardware activating in the same way in order to make sense of this new normal. We are told it is temporary, but 3-4 weeks is required to form new habits, and the disruption has lasted that long for me.

On top of all that, after waking at 4am (as you also have been), I look at my phone. Nothing. Then not 30 seconds later, someone replies to one of my YouTube comments on a battery chemistry video.

(Bear in mind I am fresh out of a rather nightmarish vision, which from what I could tell was basically an assimilation of a lifetime of memories of every movie and video game situation ive ever experienced where there are hordes of invasive aliens or zombies. The implication of the scenarii was that I had access to plenty of guns and ammunition, but opted to go without because I did not think the situation was that bad. Then I realized it was perhaps worth worrying about and regretted being without a weapon, at which point I noticed all the invaders being attracted to a local heat source where they were destroyed, like Lost In Space (1998) where Joey from Friends overdrives the fusion core to distract and destroy the horde).

So after I read the comment I am immediately wide awake and completely engaged with the parent thread and video. I get onto an abnormally focused research vector for a couple hours (no need for coffee), and buy a few chemicals to experiment with.

Spent a few hours before the weird REM trip in a very long video chat with friends from way back in high school.

I suppose nostalgia is like an antidepressant at this point (antidepressant implies sweeping the dirt under a rug, which makes the room look cleaner but what made it dirty is still in the room)

If you’re having sleep trouble give it a shot.

I might remember one dream per month on average. It's not common for me. With this, I remembered dreams almost every night. And they were surreal, vivid, very strange.

I think it's because the body is reacting to an unusual infection. So called fever dreams from an infection are a normal thing. A high fever would explain it, however I never developed a high fever. There was a change in my sleep pattern, as for 4-5 of those days I slept for extended periods of time due to exhaustion (over two bad symptom days, I slept for 12 hours per day; normal is seven hours for me).

My symptoms were sore throat, mild fever, general sick feeling, some abnormal pressure in my chest, light congestion. I only had a light cough for two days. This all went on for two weeks, with gyrations in the severity (one day I'd feel ~80% normal, then stronger symptoms would return the next day; on and on it went; two of the days I felt sick enough to nearly go to the hospital (I decided to test only if my fever got to a certain line; now I might do a blood test after the fact)).

To put it into context, I haven't had a sore throat in six years; maybe one sore throat in a decade. I haven't had the flu in nearly 20 years. I get about one mild cold per year, which lasts a few days. I haven't been sick longer than roughly five or six days in my lifetime. Odds are it was the SARS-CoV-2 virus (I also had a prominent source exposure, a healthcare worker I know that has been xray'ing Covid patients).

The dreams have disappeared now and I mostly feel better. My dreaming pattern is back to not remembering anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

Tips for remembering dreams:

1 - Have a pad of paper and writing implement right next to your bed. I've actually switched to using a voice recorder, because it's way more convenient and I can talk much faster than I can write, so I really recommend it.

2 - Right before you go to sleep, consciously make the intention to remember your dreams and write them down when you wake up.

3 - Also, right before you go to sleep try to remember your day in reverse, starting from the last thing you did before bed on through your day to the first thing you did. The idea is to prime yourself for remembering what happened right before you awoke.

4 - When you wake up immediately write down (or record) what you remember. Even if the only thing you remember is a vague feeling, write it down. Getting in to the habit of recording your dreams will result in you remembering more of them over time.

5 - Restrict your body movement to the minimal possible after you wake up, until you've written down your dreams. I've noticed that even turning over from one side to another can make me forget a dream.

6 - If you have a long, detailed dream to write down, don't start writing it down in detail from start to finish. When I've done that I often forget the dream half-way through writing it down. Instead, start by writing down the highlights or key words or images from the dream, then go back and fill in the details.

7 - Get interested in dreams and read about them.

8 - Review the dreams you recorded and try to make sense of them. Try to figure out how they reflect your waking life, the people you know, and the concerns you have. Make connections between your dreams, and try to pick up on recurring patterns in them.

The more attention you give to your dreams and dreams in general the more likely you are to remember them. If your interest and attention fades and you don't care about them or are too busy for them and don't write them down, you'll remember less.

Having something interesting, notable, strange, exciting, or stressful happen to you also frequently results in vivid dreams, so it makes sense that an unusual, stressful, and terrifying event like the pandemic makes for vivid dreams.