6 ms·

The Dreams of a Man Asleep for Three Weeks

83 points by yobananaboy 8y ago

voldacar 8y ago
This was a really enjoyable read - thank you for posting. I've always had difficulty remembering my dreams after waking, so I'm almost jealous of the amount of detail and realism he was able to retain, but then again, I guess 3 weeks of nothing but dreaming would do that
- bfrydl 8y ago
  If you want to remember your dreams you can train yourself to do so. Keep a journal on your nightstand. The moment you wake up, write down all the details you can remember. After doing this for a while, you will remember more and more and the memories won't fade so easily. You can also cheat a bit in my experience by waking up maybe 45-90 mins before you normally would, then going back to sleep. The dreams you have in this period should be more vivid and easier to remember.
  - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
    How do you ever remember to write in it after waking? I'm lucky if I remember deodorant first thing in the morning. I'm usually good 5-10 minutes after waking, but before then I rarely do things like shower and sometimes won't even make coffee. I guess I can talk to folks and be really mean at first - I don't remember these outbursts, though. It gets worse with bad sleep hygiene.
    - nessus42 8y ago
      I'm just like you in the morning, but I was asked to keep a dream journal for a creative writing class. I was sure it wouldn't work, but it did. Put the journal (opened to the right page) and pen right beside your bed where you can't miss it when you wake up. Write down anything that's in your head, even if it's just, "I don't remember anything." Eventually, you'll start remembering dreams vividly and be able to write them down. Or at least this seems to work for most people. I have no idea why. Of course, it probably doesn't work for everyone. But then again, what does?
    - bemmu 8y ago
      Have the notebook next to you in bed with a pen ready. If you need to get up to do it, you'll often forget all or most of your dream by the time you get to the notebook.
      - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
        That's the thing: I do have a pen and paper by my bed - mostly for those "going to sleep" thoughts but also so I always know where one is. I never remember until I've been awake and moving around for a bit. :)
  - voldacar 8y ago
    Sounds like a fun experiment. I'll try this and report back in a month
  - redka 8y ago
    You can also - and this has worked very well for me - do a little affirmation in your head before you fall asleep. Just say to yourself a few times: "I'm going to remember (all) my dreams". This is super easy and very effective. After a few days/weeks I was able to remember several dreams that I had that night. The cheating you mentioned also works very well and you can actually do it a few times with each nap being 10-20 minutes.
- echelon 8y ago
  I'm always curious about expository writing like this. I have pretty bad ADHD, so unless the topic is interesting or the information is summarized, I'd rather pay money than be forced to read it. (I noped out of this article pretty quickly.) What makes reading articles in this style interesting? It takes a lot of time, so there's definitely an opportunity cost.
  - joecool1029 8y ago
    >I have pretty bad ADHD, so unless the topic is interesting .... to you >What makes reading articles in this style interesting? People who are interested in the topic find detailed articles on that topic interesting.
- joecool1029 8y ago
  Everyone is different. When I was young, I was a natural lucid dreamer and had substantial recall. I wrote tons of my dreams down. There wasn't a time I thought this was unusual until many years later in school after my recall declined. When I reached high school, a teacher had explained the concept of lucid dreaming to a class that seemed skeptical. There was one other student aside from me that experienced them. In response to discovering this 'oddity', I ended up joining a community to log my experiences and discuss them... there's a large variability in the kinds of dreams and the ability to induce them. I ended up meeting my last gf on that community and she never had a lucid (her dreams were mostly fragments of the prior day's events) Mine weren't like that. Sometimes I would just fly around in environments that were similar to what I experienced in life. I would often just test to see what I could do (move objects with my mind, that sound of crap). Oftentimes, I would just live out daily events as either a different person or myself in another time and place. A hallmark of my logs was the amount of time I experienced in each dream, when I was very young I would experience what would feel like a week in a night. There were times it felt even longer, one time in kindergarten I lived out a portion of gradeschool and woke up crying because I realized the friends I made there wouldn't be in the real world. Today, I am an infrequent dreamer and not active in that community anymore. I can occasionally induce a short lucid dream if I have a quiet morning to myself and set an alarm to wake up a bit early. I find my recall goes up when I am teaching myself things. The recall is not related to the material I'm learning. So yeah, there's some variability in dreaming.
  - kamih 8y ago
    It's interesting that you mention your recall increases when you're learning things. I've recently started learning and practicing new music, and when I focus, fragments of old dreams just randomly appear in my head.
mhalle 8y ago
The article ends with: > Only now I can wake up any time I want. The author talks about dreams, but dreams are just one aspect of the ICU mental experience. The line between dreams, hallucinations, and memories can collapse. Delirium in intensive care units is extremely common, affecting up to 80% of some patient populations. It is the result of a combination of highly vulnerable patients, extremely stressful situations, abnormal biochemistry, and powerful pharmaceuticals. It is poorly understood. This delirium can pose danger to staff and patient in hospital, and can have lasting cognitive impact on patients once they leave. PTSD-like symptoms are not uncommon and are certainly under-treated. Given how common delirium in ICUs is, most facilities have limited or no psychiatric staffing for ICU mental health support. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2391269/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2391269/ I spent three days in a coma as a result of hepatic encephalopathy, among other episodes related to end stage liver disease. Some day I'll write more about the experience. Incredibly vivid dreams are just one piece of it.
- zamalek 8y ago
  > Delirium in intensive care units is extremely common For some people a fever is enough. Somewhere in the region of 39C I start having what I can best describe "emotional hallucinations" or "hallucinations of the mind's eye." There is nothing sensory (auditory, visual, physical) in the classical sense, but I know that something is there and it is terrifying (even though I have always been aware that it's a hallucination). I had an unknown parasite, distantly related to Malaria, for two weeks as a child. This was just enough to push me into delirium. I "hallucinated" a black hole in my room, not one the size of my room, but real stellar proportions and gravity. I also hallucinated a radio chasing me around. I never saw, heard or felt either of them, I just knew that they were there, and were not there. I've had wildly vivid dreams ever since. They are blandly authentic. Some of them would probably make great movies. Every night I hope I have one of those dreams, but they are becoming less and less frequent.
- tzamora 8y ago
  Sorry to ask? What did you do to recover? Diet? Lactuloce?
agentofoblivion 8y ago
I get it, I’m cynical. But am I the only one that wonders how much of this is true, and how much “poetic license”?
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  The imagination has literally everything imaginable at its disposal. Considering the drugs they were pumping through his veins I don't see why we have to doubt the veracity. I've dabbled in sleep deprivation in the past and after four days it's as if I'm dreaming while my eyes are open, simultaneously sleeping on some level while still functioning in the world. It was as if totally random and crazy movies were playing in my head and my consciousness would uncontrollably alternate between them for minutes at a time, only occasionally giving attention to the one in front of my eyes.
  - newshorts 8y ago
    New parent here. The sleep deprivation thing is real. There were moments early on where I would lay on the couch hoping to get a quick 15 minutes in and almost as soon as I closed my eyes I would have dreams. The interesting part for me, is that as soon as I realized these were crazy and not reality, I would instantly zap myself awake. It made things incredibly difficult and I would have to close my eyes with the intention of not trying to detect if what I was thinking about was real.
- PinkMilkshake 8y ago
  It might be hard to believe if you have fairly normal dreams. I can easily believe it. My dreams are much stranger than that. The last vivid dream I had was of Anubis looking men emerging from eggs laid out in a grid. They clapped their hands chanting 'wolf men, wolf men, wolf men' while I had to fight their normal looking wolf pets.
  - whalabi 8y ago
    Any ideas what might be causing your.. imaginative dreams? Cheese before bed? Art-house movies? Art-house substances?
scoutt 8y ago
I rarely read articles that long, but I found this one fascinating. I can believe it, since I (both unfortunately and fortunately) have the most vivid, realistic, extremely detailed (and sometimes weird and frightening) dreams. Dreams that I can remember after years. Sometimes they change the course of days decisions, even life decisions. I can remember almost every detail, except for one: every time that I wake up in the middle of the night after dreaming the solution to a big (mine or global) problem, or an idea for "the next big thing". I recall saying "Yes! Of course! How could I not think about it before?!". The answer is there, at the tip of my fingers, then I wake up and, frustrated, can't remember what it was. I can remember though that feeling of having the click in my mind about the idea or solution being so rational and possible.

83 points by yobananaboy 8y ago

This was a really enjoyable read - thank you for posting. I've always had difficulty remembering my dreams after waking, so I'm almost jealous of the amount of detail and realism he was able to retain, but then again, I guess 3 weeks of nothing but dreaming would do that

bfrydl 8y ago
If you want to remember your dreams you can train yourself to do so. Keep a journal on your nightstand. The moment you wake up, write down all the details you can remember. After doing this for a while, you will remember more and more and the memories won't fade so easily. You can also cheat a bit in my experience by waking up maybe 45-90 mins before you normally would, then going back to sleep. The dreams you have in this period should be more vivid and easier to remember.
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  How do you ever remember to write in it after waking? I'm lucky if I remember deodorant first thing in the morning. I'm usually good 5-10 minutes after waking, but before then I rarely do things like shower and sometimes won't even make coffee. I guess I can talk to folks and be really mean at first - I don't remember these outbursts, though. It gets worse with bad sleep hygiene.
  - nessus42 8y ago
    I'm just like you in the morning, but I was asked to keep a dream journal for a creative writing class. I was sure it wouldn't work, but it did. Put the journal (opened to the right page) and pen right beside your bed where you can't miss it when you wake up. Write down anything that's in your head, even if it's just, "I don't remember anything." Eventually, you'll start remembering dreams vividly and be able to write them down. Or at least this seems to work for most people. I have no idea why. Of course, it probably doesn't work for everyone. But then again, what does?
  - bemmu 8y ago
    Have the notebook next to you in bed with a pen ready. If you need to get up to do it, you'll often forget all or most of your dream by the time you get to the notebook.
    - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
      That's the thing: I do have a pen and paper by my bed - mostly for those "going to sleep" thoughts but also so I always know where one is. I never remember until I've been awake and moving around for a bit. :)
- voldacar 8y ago
  Sounds like a fun experiment. I'll try this and report back in a month
- redka 8y ago
  You can also - and this has worked very well for me - do a little affirmation in your head before you fall asleep. Just say to yourself a few times: "I'm going to remember (all) my dreams". This is super easy and very effective. After a few days/weeks I was able to remember several dreams that I had that night. The cheating you mentioned also works very well and you can actually do it a few times with each nap being 10-20 minutes.
echelon 8y ago
I'm always curious about expository writing like this. I have pretty bad ADHD, so unless the topic is interesting or the information is summarized, I'd rather pay money than be forced to read it. (I noped out of this article pretty quickly.) What makes reading articles in this style interesting? It takes a lot of time, so there's definitely an opportunity cost.
- joecool1029 8y ago
  >I have pretty bad ADHD, so unless the topic is interesting .... to you >What makes reading articles in this style interesting? People who are interested in the topic find detailed articles on that topic interesting.
joecool1029 8y ago
Everyone is different. When I was young, I was a natural lucid dreamer and had substantial recall. I wrote tons of my dreams down. There wasn't a time I thought this was unusual until many years later in school after my recall declined. When I reached high school, a teacher had explained the concept of lucid dreaming to a class that seemed skeptical. There was one other student aside from me that experienced them. In response to discovering this 'oddity', I ended up joining a community to log my experiences and discuss them... there's a large variability in the kinds of dreams and the ability to induce them. I ended up meeting my last gf on that community and she never had a lucid (her dreams were mostly fragments of the prior day's events) Mine weren't like that. Sometimes I would just fly around in environments that were similar to what I experienced in life. I would often just test to see what I could do (move objects with my mind, that sound of crap). Oftentimes, I would just live out daily events as either a different person or myself in another time and place. A hallmark of my logs was the amount of time I experienced in each dream, when I was very young I would experience what would feel like a week in a night. There were times it felt even longer, one time in kindergarten I lived out a portion of gradeschool and woke up crying because I realized the friends I made there wouldn't be in the real world. Today, I am an infrequent dreamer and not active in that community anymore. I can occasionally induce a short lucid dream if I have a quiet morning to myself and set an alarm to wake up a bit early. I find my recall goes up when I am teaching myself things. The recall is not related to the material I'm learning. So yeah, there's some variability in dreaming.
- kamih 8y ago
  It's interesting that you mention your recall increases when you're learning things. I've recently started learning and practicing new music, and when I focus, fragments of old dreams just randomly appear in my head.

mhalle 8y ago

The article ends with: > Only now I can wake up any time I want. The author talks about dreams, but dreams are just one aspect of the ICU mental experience. The line between dreams, hallucinations, and memories can collapse. Delirium in intensive care units is extremely common, affecting up to 80% of some patient populations. It is the result of a combination of highly vulnerable patients, extremely stressful situations, abnormal biochemistry, and powerful pharmaceuticals. It is poorly understood. This delirium can pose danger to staff and patient in hospital, and can have lasting cognitive impact on patients once they leave. PTSD-like symptoms are not uncommon and are certainly under-treated. Given how common delirium in ICUs is, most facilities have limited or no psychiatric staffing for ICU mental health support. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2391269/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2391269/ I spent three days in a coma as a result of hepatic encephalopathy, among other episodes related to end stage liver disease. Some day I'll write more about the experience. Incredibly vivid dreams are just one piece of it.

zamalek 8y ago
> Delirium in intensive care units is extremely common For some people a fever is enough. Somewhere in the region of 39C I start having what I can best describe "emotional hallucinations" or "hallucinations of the mind's eye." There is nothing sensory (auditory, visual, physical) in the classical sense, but I know that something is there and it is terrifying (even though I have always been aware that it's a hallucination). I had an unknown parasite, distantly related to Malaria, for two weeks as a child. This was just enough to push me into delirium. I "hallucinated" a black hole in my room, not one the size of my room, but real stellar proportions and gravity. I also hallucinated a radio chasing me around. I never saw, heard or felt either of them, I just knew that they were there, and were not there. I've had wildly vivid dreams ever since. They are blandly authentic. Some of them would probably make great movies. Every night I hope I have one of those dreams, but they are becoming less and less frequent.
tzamora 8y ago
Sorry to ask? What did you do to recover? Diet? Lactuloce?

agentofoblivion 8y ago

I get it, I’m cynical. But am I the only one that wonders how much of this is true, and how much “poetic license”?

newnewpdro 8y ago
The imagination has literally everything imaginable at its disposal. Considering the drugs they were pumping through his veins I don't see why we have to doubt the veracity. I've dabbled in sleep deprivation in the past and after four days it's as if I'm dreaming while my eyes are open, simultaneously sleeping on some level while still functioning in the world. It was as if totally random and crazy movies were playing in my head and my consciousness would uncontrollably alternate between them for minutes at a time, only occasionally giving attention to the one in front of my eyes.
- newshorts 8y ago
  New parent here. The sleep deprivation thing is real. There were moments early on where I would lay on the couch hoping to get a quick 15 minutes in and almost as soon as I closed my eyes I would have dreams. The interesting part for me, is that as soon as I realized these were crazy and not reality, I would instantly zap myself awake. It made things incredibly difficult and I would have to close my eyes with the intention of not trying to detect if what I was thinking about was real.
PinkMilkshake 8y ago
It might be hard to believe if you have fairly normal dreams. I can easily believe it. My dreams are much stranger than that. The last vivid dream I had was of Anubis looking men emerging from eggs laid out in a grid. They clapped their hands chanting 'wolf men, wolf men, wolf men' while I had to fight their normal looking wolf pets.
- whalabi 8y ago
  Any ideas what might be causing your.. imaginative dreams? Cheese before bed? Art-house movies? Art-house substances?

scoutt 8y ago

I rarely read articles that long, but I found this one fascinating. I can believe it, since I (both unfortunately and fortunately) have the most vivid, realistic, extremely detailed (and sometimes weird and frightening) dreams. Dreams that I can remember after years. Sometimes they change the course of days decisions, even life decisions. I can remember almost every detail, except for one: every time that I wake up in the middle of the night after dreaming the solution to a big (mine or global) problem, or an idea for "the next big thing". I recall saying "Yes! Of course! How could I not think about it before?!". The answer is there, at the tip of my fingers, then I wake up and, frustrated, can't remember what it was. I can remember though that feeling of having the click in my mind about the idea or solution being so rational and possible.