Ask HN: Do you practice lucid dreaming?

The commonly experienced downside is lack of real control. Once you get really involved, you just wake up. Nice if you can avoid that, but doesn’t work for me. I have to stay in the mid-zone that is similar to when you wake up but decide to sleep further.

After some success around ten years ago, I found that it’s not much better than just dreaming and gave up on it. Together with 5-HTP, normal dreaming is like a blockbuster compared to dull prose you can write yourself in LD. I don’t think that I could solve a “5 bullets vs 6 monsters on the block while on a jump stick” problem in LD. (The answer is to find an armed monster and kill it first to get more bullets). Or taking the knife out of perps hand and carving crosses on his knees. How can you come up with that in LD without waking up from laughing?

I figured out how to easily induce lucid dreaming for myself basically by letting myself become sleep deprived and then drinking copious amounts of caffeine before letting myself nap. Somehow, that almost always results in a lucid dream state.

Then in my lucid dreams, I often choose to dream about things that I wish were a reality in my real life, but that are not. Often relating to desired connections and relationships with people i’d like to have relationships with in real life, but can’t for whatever reason. Maybe it’s partly due to my anxious-avoidant attachment style, but I struggle to have healthy romantic relationships or even to maintain friendships for very long. The other reason I use lucid dreams (less often) is for exam preparation. I lucid dream that I am studying my course material etc usually the night before. Somehow it helps with recalling facts etc during exams the next day.

I never realized how exhausting it can be once you wake up.