ssris, sleep cycles, & (lucidish) dreams

[cimorene]

A lot of SSRIs affect sleep and dreams. The one I'm taking now is known for increasing waking time and time in sleep stage 1, suppressing REM (? though this was a sleep laboratory and they only tested for a short period, whereas in RL you tend to get used to a new dose after 6 weeks or so), and sometimes producing that involuntary leg movement thing.

When I was easing up to the current dose, I had trouble falling asleep and was annoyed by waking up frequently at the slightest disturbance, which accords with studies. I no longer am aware of waking up frequently, but since then I have frequently had

• lucid dreams


• dreams where I can control things in the dream to some extent, not always remembering that I'm dreaming but frequently
  
  • a lot of the time I'm repeatedly struggling to remember that I'm dreaming, and repeatedly remembering but forgetting in between and consequently losing some of my ability to influence the dream
  
  
  • it's never effortless to control the dream, though. There's a lot of trying different things and seeing if they work.
  
  


• sleep paralysis


• knowing that I'm dreaming and struggling to wake up
  
  • because of this, some of these times turn into those dreams where you dream that you have woken up and gotten up, and then realize you're still dreaming, and when this happens it usually happens several times in a row
  
  


• talking and moving in my sleep - this might actually be that involuntary leg movement thing? I group it with talking in my sleep because it's always doing whatever I'm dreaming that I'm doing. Once I kicked waxjism pretty hard. The sleep talking is hilarious and it doesn't sound like normal talking - more of a strained whisper.

My theory is that I continue to sleep lightly and that I am in fact waking up many times per night now, but I've simply adjusted to discard the memory of doing so. When it happens, I simply wake up and realize that I've just been dreaming and immediately fall back asleep, returning to the dream but knowing it's a dream (until I forget).

The many dreams in which I knew that I was dreaming but still wasn't able to control the dream have included some hilarious and meta moments, such as

• I dreamed that I was hanging out with perhael at her parents' house (where I have never been in spite of our 15 years of friendship, because she lives in a country I've never visited) and talking, and then I said, "I guess I should go, so I have to wake up bc I'm obviously dreaming."
  
  I tried and it didn't work, and she tried to help me: "Did you try closing your eyes and remembering that you were asleep? Maybe you're not calm enough. Have a cookie." She tried to talk me through waking up the way you might talk someone into going to sleep, but then I dreamed her parents came home.
  
  I had to say hello to them, and greeted them with, "This is awkward; it's nice to finally meet you since I've heard so much about you, but of course, it isn't you since I'm dreaming." But they were gracious and her dad helped me by suggesting that I wake up by trying to fall asleep in the dream, which worked.



• More recently, I was having one of those dreams of repeatedly dreaming that I woke up, and in the dream I woke up somewhere with my parents and sister. I was very relieved to have finally woken up and happy to see them, and my dad offered me a cup of tea and I sat down in the sun and was telling them about all of the other dreams I'd just been having where I dreamed that I woke up only to discover I was wrong and how the mounting frustration through these iterations eventually became quite scary - where the scariness is just that I can't make myself wake up, not anything in the dream...
  
  ...and my mom said, "Oh, you were having a curly nightmare?"
  
  "A what?" I asked. She explained that a 'curly' dream was a dream about waking up (one or more times) and that a 'curly nightmare' was hence a nightmare about waking up one or more times, so just what I was describing. She seemed surprised that I didn't know this.
  
  "Ohhhhh!" I said, as I suddenly realized that it made perfect sense that there would be a term for this so she must be correct (without stopping to think that it was an odd term).