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Comment by dtkirby | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised there's no mention of inducing/controlling lucid sex dreams for therapy or entertainment, but maybe I'm weirder than I thought.

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I've found it's pretty hard to induce specific dreams, but once I'm in a dream it's straightforward enough to modify it to my liking.

The hard part is altering the dream significantly without leaving a theta state and collapsing the dream. It all becomes about energy management. For example, two nights ago I found myself in a dream, and a few moments after I walked outside I realized the scene was too bright and noisy, and that my brain would wake up too much processing it.

So I had to hurry back inside, but I couldn't run either or that would release adrenaline. It took a lot of concentration and deliberate movement to get back inside before my dream fully collapsed, and it did collapse soon anyway minutes later.

With lucid sex dreams, it's similar. Energy conservation is key to extending the experience.

I haven’t had many lucid dreams, but this mirrors my experience. Whenever I realise I’m in a lucid dream, the trick to keep me in it is to manage how much control I exert. If I start to direct it too much I can feel myself waking up and have to “let go” and not react to what’s happening, letting the dream carry me wherever it seems fit. After a while I begin to feel consciousness drifting away and can again exert some modicum of control to explore my surroundings. Rinse and repeat, until I inevitably wake up.

I only experienced lucid dreaming as a child. And perhaps one or two times I would find my crush and give them a kiss. I dunno how I feel about lucid dreaming now. I tend to remember dreams and I like to interpret what my subconscious is trying to express through what happens. If I consciously just try to engineer some scene of maximum pleasure instead would something be lost

Absolutely. Lucid dreaming is such a gift, and it would be a huge disservice to yourself to waste it purely on dopamine-seeking hedonistic scenarios. It's a chance to deeply explore the mind and test hypotheses.

As an example, one thing I like doing is telling my dream subjects that they're in a dream and studying their reactions.

>studying their reactions

Well what are their reactions?

Induced LDs back when I did it were fairly... fragile, so to speak. It was annoying, but if you got "lost in the moment" in the dream you could easily lose lucidity. It's likely still a problem with modern methods of LDing.

So you mean, lurid dreams?

I used to be into lucid dreaming, a pretty long time ago. I stopped mostly because in order to reliably enter them and remember the dreams just involved too much stuff that messed with me getting enough sleep. But I did read one of Stephen LaBerge's books on the subject. I'm pretty sure it was "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming", but I'm not certain it was that one. But it definitely mentioned sex in dreams as a motivation, at least early in his practice. So I certainly don't think your the first or only person who's had that thought.

You guys are having sex dreams?

If I know anything about humans, this is a good vehicle to get investment for innovation - porn has been a silent driver of internet technology.

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