[viraptor]

While I wasn't diagnosed with any actual issue, I definitely didn't sleep enough during/after university. I didn't realise this until a few years later I started going to sleep at the same time as my girlfriend. And that was a huge change - like discovering that yes, you can actually wake up before the alarm and not need 5 of them. I got a similar effect too - some crazy intense dreams. It's a great indicator actually - any time I get too tired / go to sleep too late I don't have them. But go to bed around 10pm - I dream a whole story with multiple characters and long enough to make it a crazy movie.

On the other hand, recently I started looking at ways to get rid of dreams... they're just too much if they happen every night.

[hemdrup]

I have found keeping a routine of going to bed around 11 pm and waking up at 06:00. Results in highest creative performance. The time period from 06:00 to 10:00 is the magic hours :)

[heed]

The only thing I've found that reduces my intense dreaming is (believe it or not) cannabis use.

[facetube]

Not at all surprising; there's evidence that cannabis use suppresses REM sleep. Anecdotally, people who suddenly stop taking it after long periods of use tend to report unusually vivid dreams.

[mhink]

That's exactly what's happening with my girlfriend right now. She gave up cannabis after years of heavy smoking, and it seems like every morning she wakes up telling me about the intense, vivid dreams she had.

That said, while the quitting process has been quite difficult for her (irritability's through the roof- almost as bad as when I've tried to quit smoking cigarettes), she says she started feeling "better" almost immediately. Probably the best part (for both of us, haha) is that her natural appetite is coming back- and in fact, she's reporting that she's developing a taste for a lot of foods she previously didn't like because the flavor was too intense or the texture was too unusual. The only real explanation we can figure out is that the cannabis intensified culinary experiences to the point where she couldn't handle it, and so she just ended up avoiding a lot of types of food.

The brain is an interesting organ.

[Xcelerate]

Phenelzine eliminates dreams altogether, but that's probably the worst method of getting rid of them.