[ErikRogneby]

Lucid dreaming is exhausting. When I was younger I trained myself to maintain that thread of control as a fell asleep. It is an incredibly powerful experience to be able to command every aspect of reality. I didn't wake up rested though, it was the exact opposite. Managing both my own actions and decisions and the entire world I was interacting with wiped me out.

As a side note, it was much harder to learn to stop doing it, than to start.

[david-given]

I can't do it (or rather, it's happened maybe once or twice in my life) --- I don't have a strong enough grasp of reality! When I'm in a dream, I am playing the character in the dream, so any strange events will always come across as completely normal to me. Which means most of the standard lucid dreaming tricks won't work on me.

Interestingly, however, I do get another thing, which I haven't seen described anywhere, which I'll dub false memory syndrome: while in the hypnogogic state on the edge of sleep, sometimes my memory will change. I'll still be me, unlike with ordinary dreaming, but with a whole new backstory. Unfortunately I don't remember the new backstory afterwards, so all I retain are second-order memories; memories of thinking about the backstory.

e.g. once I was suddenly convinced I'd committed some sort of crime or other, and was wondering whether to try and run or resign myself to going to prison. No idea what the crime was now (I'd quite like to know what my subconscious was worried about).

This has happened to me so often I will occasionally think, hmm, this is odd, I wonder if it's false memory syndrome again? Which is a classic lucid memory trigger. Except I'm not really asleep, and I will always decide that it's not.

After waking up from the one described above, I was really relieved to find out that it really was false memory syndrome.

...hang on, the police are at the door.

[nickpsecurity]

You should avoid lucid dreaming. It can fuck up your mind if it already is too flexible in how it handles memory or reality. False memory syndrome + strong, lucid experiences that mimick aspects of your real life (including relationships) seem quite risky. Neat as it is, one's sanity is a much more rewarding experience. :)

[Danilka]

The device is build exactly for the people like you!

[nickpsecurity]

Used journals and reality checks like looking at mirrors to get started easily. Random stuff, flying, fu... plenty of fun for a while. Then, I got to experience what lucid nightmares were like and that kind of made me hesitant. Plus my mind incorporates new things into dreams quite like my thinking in genersl does. Example of how that sometimes went bad was seeing Inception and getting stuck into 5+ deep dreams I wasnt sure Id wake up from. Simpler example was doing a whole shift to wake up in reality for work feeling the whole shift (wth...). Just said screw it lol.

Trippy part is that dream "experts" seem surprised by much of this. They should study lucid dreaming more, esp under brain scans. Might learn stuff.

[learning_still]

I'm an avid lucid dreamer and have never experienced any such exhaustion.

[llamataboot]

I agree. I got up to the point where prob about 50% of my remembered dreams were lucid and I was pretty good at fighting the urge to wake up and the uncontrollable nod back to unconsciousness. Many years after I quit actively lucid dreaming, I still had "semi-lucid" dreams very often and it often seemed like my dreaming-self was somehow less free and more attached to my waking-self because of it. ie; i was much more often myself and preoccupied with waking anxieties in my dream.