While it's well known that various prescription medications can affect sleep quality or mental clarity, far less attention is paid to how they can adversely affect your dreams.
Some medications dampen REM activity, dull your dreams, and interfere with dream recall. Others stimulate vivid dream activity, though not always in a good way. Through a couple of recent experiences, I've also discovered prescription meds can impede your lucid dreaming efforts.
Muscle Relaxers and Hyperdreaming
A few years ago, I hurt my lower back and was left with a chronic ache punctuated by frequent sharp, stabbing pains. After an MRI and weeks of physical therapy, the problem got worse instead of better. Acupuncture and massage therapy had no effect either. I couldn't sit or stand for more than twenty minutes without pain, and I couldn't find a position comfortable enough to sleep in.
My doctor prescribed Flexaril, a muscle relaxer that was supposed to dull the pain. I don't like taking medication of any kind, and I was resistant to the idea of taking a muscle relaxer but gave in because at that point the prospect of being without pain overrode any misgivings I had. The prescribed dosage was one 10mg tablet three times per day, but the doctor recommended starting with only half a tablet before bedtime so I could get a better idea of how the medication would affect me.
Half a tablet, only 5mg, makes you very sleepy but also has the entertaining effect of …Read more about how prescription meds can interfere with lucid dreaming
If you're looking for a quick way to relax, either for meditation purposes or simply to release stress and tension, this 10-minute brainwave audio track will do the trick. This is a track I designed for my company a few months ago as a free gift for our customers, and now I'm making it available to visitors of this site as well.
Instructions for using this track:
1. Do not listen to this audio track while driving.
2. Listening without headphones will provide light relaxation. Listening with headphones will give you access to …Continue reading
The dream blogging zone has been unusually quiet over the past couple of months. With the exception of Ryan, who continues to post great new articles over at the Dream Studies Portal, many of the folks who blog about dreaming have been silent lately.
I'm guilty of it myself. I like to think it's because we're all deep thinkers and need some time to ourselves to spend in quiet contemplation. In my case, the silence is partly because I've had an unusually long span of nightmares not worth writing about and partly because I've been working on content for a different project.
Last month, we added a new blog to my company's web site. We'll be posting articles, book reviews, relaxation and meditation techniques, and other new content a few times each week. Any articles related to personal growth and wellness that I would have posted here will now be posted to that blog instead.
The Reality Shifter blog will continue to focus on dreams and lucid dreaming, with occasional forays into the realms of consciousness and mysticism. Here is a taste of what's to come (listed in no particular order):
- Can a Computer Become Conscious?
- What Dreams Teach Us About Reality
- Feeling Physical Pain In Dreams
- Why You Should Stop Trying To Be An Early Riser
- Brain-in-a-dish Study Raises Questions About Consciousness
- Discovering the Hidden Meaning in Recurring Dreams
- The Most Common Dream Themes
- Can Prescription Meds Interfere With Your Dreams?
- Prophetic Dreams: Can Your Dreams Tell the Future?
Stay tuned for these articles and much more. The first of the new articles will appear on the site this week. If you'd like to receive it via email as soon as it appears online, please subscribe to receive email updates.
A couple of weeks ago in an article called Control Video Games With Your Mind, I mentioned the EPOC Neuroheadset from Emotiv that will allow users to control video games with thoughts, emotions, and facial movements. Another company called NeuroSky has a similar neuroheadset called Mindset in the works.
From what I can tell, NeuroSky's headset is not as complex as Emotiv's headset but they're working with a few other companies to incorporate accelerometer motion, eye-tracking and surround sound. NeuroSky's CEO, Stanley Yang, has mentioned other intriguing uses for the technology, such as controlling your cell-phone or MP3 player with your mind.
One big difference is that NeuroSky doesn't seem to have a software program that allows you to map game controls to headset detections, a feature already offered by Emotiv via their EmoKey software. I believe the mapping feature is going to set Emotiv's EPOC headset apart from the others because it means their headset can be used immediately with any existing PC games.
Without that feature, users will be forced to wait for …Continue reading about NeuroSky's Mindset neuroheadset
I came across this comic about dreaming on the xkcd web site. It's funny but it also makes you wonder why we take dreaming so lightly.
Before the end of this year, you'll be able to strap on a lightweight piece of headgear and control video games with nothing more than your thoughts. Emotiv's new EPOC neuroheadset brings us one step closer to Matrix-esque control over our environment. I can't wait to give this gadget a try.
Emotiv has also created software that allows you to map any keystroke pattern to a specific thought or emotion detection in the neuroheadset, meaning the EPOC can be used to control any PC game. Have you ever wanted to cast a spell, hit a homerun, or blast your alien enemies just by thinking about it? The technology to make it happen has finally arrived.
In a recent BBC News segment, Emotiv president Tan Le announced plans to release the EPOC later this year, just in time for the holiday season. If the headset works as well as they claim, it could forever change the gaming industry, and I'm sure it won't be long before other industries find innovative ways to make use of the product too.
Did I mention how much I can't wait to give this gadget a try?
