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Comment by verisimi | Hacker News Reader

> I don’t enjoy the dreams anymore, I’m pretty bored of them now that I know what they probably do mechanically.

Why would you think that you know what the dreams are? Could you tell the rest of us please? Perhaps you are coming at this from a materialistic perspective?

I personally don't think there is anything straightforward about dreams. Whether you take a 'spiritual' approach (have you ever had a deja vu?) or a psychoanalytic view (messages from the subconscious, whatever that is) or some other perspective, there is nothing mechanistic or boring in dreams for me.

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I would like to randomly chime in here regarding antidepressants and dreams.

On Prozac I sleep well but have 100% formulaic dreams. I don't like them. Each one is a mildly to moderately annoying situation that I cannot escape from.

For example, I'm in a building or neighborhood and I want to get away from some antagonist or who knows what. Using much effor and willpower I sort of get away but in that instant it resets and I'm back to getting away.

Citalopram (Celexa) though.....those dreams were the opposite. Wonderful and enjoyable with a bit of flying. Lucid too, I often realized I was in a dream and learned to manipulate it at will as well as some flying.

Just pitching in my 2 cents here, and not sure if it is what the parent commenter meant:

When I "realized" that dreams and dejavu's are all, litteraly just in your head, and just memories and visualizations that your brain is connecting together, I realized that reality is the same. You're just getting signals and processing them. Wether they come from outside ("real") or from within yourself, it doesn't really matter as long as you can tell the difference.

what I appreciated about the realization of dejavu and dreams being what they are, was that it gave me a much firmer grasp and believe that I can control my feelings and escape to a little fantasy where this worlds rules dont apply. And also accept that when you're just feeling shit, it's fine for a while, just some chemicals not playing ball.

You’re on the right track!

I can tell you but it’s a bit depressing. So turn back yea who are happy! Don’t read this. I thought it was something spiritual/mystical when I was younger and I liked that a lot more! And if you wanna keep enjoying dreams collapse my comment right now!!!

Here’s the boring nightmare: so… your mind is thinking what comes next? What comes next? And it’s corrected repeatedly by information from the eyes and ears. Maybe the nose. It constantly corrects and that’s your ‘experience’.

When you dream the system is still running; just no correction from the eyes

so you see a man in your dream and your brain goes -> what’s next? And it’ll take a guess. If good: nicer dream. If bad: bad(der) dream. Frankly, it’s usually something (seemingly) random which counts as neutral.

When wacky things happen your eye input isn’t correcting, so things get pretty wild or tame depending on how good your brains prediction is.

Your brain is going through scenarios with no correcting input.

Since I realized this 8-9 years ago I’ve been trying to prove this wrong to myself.

I wish it was spiritual or mystical but it’s pretty conclusively my deluded half asleep mind doing this. I have said goodbye to loved ones in dreams, a physically impossible scenario and it’s like your living it, just no reality correction from the eyes or ears.

Most people forget their dreams, but I get 4-6 a night EVERY damn night and they are like being awake!

ps. If anyone knows how to reduce dreaming please leave a comment! I don’t mind dreaming, but I envy falling asleep and waking up 7-8 hours in the future ready for the next day.

> ps. If anyone knows how to reduce dreaming please leave a comment! I don’t mind dreaming, but I envy falling asleep and waking up 7-8 hours in the future ready for the next day.

I had many more / worse dreams when on anti-insomnia drugs, so if you are taking those I would suggest trying to stop. Although, getting off anti-insomnia medication is a terrible, terrible experience for a couple weeks (and get medical advice etc of course).

Antidepressants certainly affect my dreams.

Prozac: Bad,annoying dreams but mildly so. Citalopram: Good dreams, sometimes epic dreams. Venlafaxine: Not sure I dream. Makes it harder to sleep too.

Regular cannabis/THC use is pretty famous for reducing REM sleep and dreaming.

I don't consume often, haven't in years, but I remember having pretty wild dreams after, so I wouldn't get a good rest. So there is a difference with regular documentation?

Sleep apnoea can cause a lot of dreams, as it causes you to be half awake. So definitely get yourself tested for that.

I can induce sleep paralysis by sleeping with a pillow over my head pretty consistently. I’ll get double checked. I thought apnea caused tiredness more often but I usually feel pretty good in the morning.

Does that mean you lucid dream since that realization? Or because you know that dreams are just an illusion you are bored?

I know dreams are just hallucinations but it doesn't make them any less interesting for me. I lucid dreams sometimes and I enjoy that state the most, so much that when it happens I keep waiting to go lucid every night for next few nights until I forget about it. Some lucid dreams are so cinematically beautiful I remember them for a very long time. Bad lucid dream helps waking up because I know it's a dream.

Very bored of them. Been lucid dreaming since 6-7. The novelty has worn off when you get so many chances

Thanks for your thoughts.

Have you considered lucid dreaming or astral projection? The idea that you step into your dream and control yourself; that you can direct yourself in your dream state to explore whatever-it-is. You can go to places of your choosing, as you are not bound by the body.

If you look into these experiences, you find many people who say they learnt about parts of material reality, that they are then able to verify materially.

These ideas are highly intriguing to me. As you are someone with such a capacity for dreaming, you could certainly try these ideas out (ie explore in dreams then verify in reality), if you haven't already. If you have tried, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.

> If you look into these experiences, you find many people who say they learnt about parts of material reality, that they are then able to verify materially.

The opposite is true: the CIA wasted lots of money on this, and they came up entirely empty handed, obviously. It is very very thoroughly debunked.

> If you look into these experiences, you find many people who say they learnt about parts of material reality, that they are then able to verify materially.

I can do this, too, but usually while I'm awake and bored. Reality is quite redundant, and we get all sorts of information from all sorts of sources, and sometimes I can put the puzzle pieces together and deduce things I "shouldn't" have known.

This power doesn't extend to localised information, such as the value of a hidden dice roll, and it's quite mundane. A generalisation of cold-reading. What Sherlock Holmes would call deduction, though it's actually abductive reasoning.

Examples: • Entering a building, imagining design constraints, deducing the presence of exactly one lift, inferring its location, inferring the existence of an extra wing behind the building (to place the lift in the middle), extrapolating observed foot traffic, and guessing which floor and corridor a particular office was. • Listening to someone explain geopolitics for half an hour, and inferring that they're a double-jointed insomniac.

Yeah I think a lot of it is having a strong imagination and going along with it for a bit.

Lucid dreaming is fun and you should try it. It’s tough to get the hang of in the beginning but a very interesting experience. If you do it well it’s whatever you imagine: done poorly, you’ll get close… but your own expectations might hold you back. When you wake up you can reflect on those and plan how to do better with your more capable conscious mind.

I have not astral projected but I’ll look into it and if I remember I’ll message you after a few months

> Your brain is going through scenarios with no correcting input.

But this is pretty interesting as your subconscious is bubbling up into your ego!

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