Falling into Color, by Jennifer

Initially, it took me a while to fall asleep. The 5-HTP excited my system; I felt my heartbeat elevated and my mind was racing. Eventually, I began to drift off. Then I felt a pull, almost like when a car engine catches, a downward motion into the sleep state. As I felt that pull and moved into sleep, I saw a bright green flash. In the dream I then had, I was in the loft, lying in the bed in which I was actually laying, dreaming myself in my real life position and place.

I woke from that dream quickly, and after a short while lying alert, I felt the pull and again saw the flash of green and sunk into another dream of me in the loft, but this time different colors like swirling clouds filled the space.

I repeated this process several times over the space of maybe an hour and a half, waking up, falling back into dream with the green flash, an increasingly deeper emerald green as the night progressed. Each time I fell back asleep, the loft space became more dream like, the colors brighter, other people in the space up and moving around, not talking but dream drifting among the others who remained asleep.

The final time I returned to this dream, after five or six awakenings, the dream changed into an ocean voyage adventure.

Mermaid Home, remote dream by John

My girlfriend was helping me settle into her mermaid home. Beautifully vivid colors for all of this, sun-filtering through the kelp from above, and our home made of kelp woven airtight about air bubbles, creating rooms that ranged in size and dryness. She did a morning ritual that involved swimming in fast arcs in tight spirals around the kelp, and that woke up all the fish that weren't nocturnal. She was teaching me which fish were OK to eat; I had to ask their names first, and any named Frank were OK to eat because they were both tasty and predators themselves.

I nearly ate one of her friends, an angelfish named Liza, who facetiously told me her name was Frank, then made hilarious squeaky fish noises when I grabbed her. My girlfriend chided her, saying, he's a big guy and he gets hungry...you don't want to fuck around with that. Liza's eyes got very big and she regarded me solemnly before swimming off with a flourish of her tail.

Dream Images, by lissa ivy

Watching Nova Dream Special

Teddy Bear Pelt

Supplies for Dreaming

Remembering the Dream, remote dream by Phil

The dream was about remembering the dream. Inside the dream I was anxious to hold on to what wasn't even there yet. Then the dream itself became a kind of mixture of city and map, so I could simultaneously hold on to what I was doing as I was doing it, but what that was... other than some momentary fumbling with flesh... I can't remember, until the city became bright yellow and bounded, a layer over the city with the consistency of glistening butter, a golden but soft city. I remember seeing a corner of this and that the wall of it was inclined inwards. That's all I have retained.

Mexican Bingo Card, by Christine

I had lots of short dreams, all very colorful and mostly involving animals.

In one dream, there was an animal film festival. In another, I saw a brightly colored Mexican Bingo card where all the boxes were Mexican cartoon versions of animals. When a square that was on the card was called, a bug would crawl onto that space to mark it.

Insects in my knee, by Vibrata

In addition to the 50 mg of 5-HTP, I added 12.5 mg of diphenhydramine to help me sleep.

In my first dream, the setting started out as somewhat familiar – the loft, warmly lit, lots of people - mostly this dream group. There was a festive fell to the gathering; very chatty and active. An armoire was delivered. It was very large. I had some large insects living in my knee. They were creating poison which could be collected from the pus in the wounds. I was wiping up the poisonous ooze, not necessarily upset, at first, but it gradually became quite disturbing and at that point I woke up.

After my pee break I went easily back to sleep (thanks to the diph) and in the next dream session I was trying to create these art pieces and was working on logistics. This was a continuation from the previous dream session. I could see finished pieces and felt pretty confident in them, but needed to finish more of them.

In the next bunch there was slightly less familiarity to the dream settings. I was at a bank and had some very complex transactions to do. The man I was dealing with showed me a code word I needed to write down along with my signature to verify authenticity. The word was "Challel", or something like that, with lots of tall looping letters. I did some signing of things but before I was done the "teller" (?) got a phone call from his wife. His children were with him. I was watching them while he spoke on the phone and a very young boy with an innocent face, maybe 3 or 4, was muttering to himself, saying extremely vulgar things about some woman. I grabbed him and asked him, "What did you say?" The situation evolved into a whole inquisition into the boy's dirty language and his exposure to sexual situations. It was too much drama for me so I watched from the sidelines while a whole tribunal was formed around the subject; a dozen or so people sitting at a long table to discuss the boy.

Perhaps at that point I left that scene to go outside. Even less familiarity and logic. I was on a street at night. There were people out and about and it seemed like a friendly atmosphere, though strange. I met a man and his old black dog and the dog and I hit it off. The man was totally fine with me taking his dog's leash and walking off with him. The dog was really happy to have someone walking him and he started to run. I ran, too, and in striking contrast to most dream-running experiences, it felt really fluid and light, effortless and even exhilarating.

I have a snippet of memory of seeing the Cirque du Soleil, and noticing some extraordinary costumes, all of them blue and sparkly. The costumes and set were all matching.

Overall, extremely colorful visions, long and elaborate sessions, very vivid. There was a dark, sort of night-clubby, saturated tone to much of what I was seeing, punctuated with occasional more sunny, crisp, summery scenes. Very pretty for the most part, except for the part about the bugs in my knee. Not terribly surreal - in fact upon reading over this summary, there's a lot in there that corresponds with what's going on in my real life. The overall "prettiness" is what stands out, and the experience of running without the usual ineffectualness.

Asshole Logo, by Nathan

I had a lot of short dreams, many of a sexual nature, with several recurrent logos that I would see in the different dreams. One of these logos was an A with lots of s’s over top of it, and it indicated that someone was an asshole.

In one dream, I had sex with an ex-girlfriend. Then when I woke up, she had gone but had written the logo on my leg.

Fake Beach, by Phoebe

I had many short dreams. In one, I was in my home town, though it looked different. I was talking to some people I know and I said something fairly banal, but when I did I woke myself up thinking that I had actually said the thing out loud.

In another dream, I was in the loft space where we were all sleeping. I was wandering around and I looked into a storage space that was off the front of the living room. There, a bunch of people who live in the loft space complex had made a fake beach out of blue and tan blankets, and were lying around on it as if they were at the beach.

Excellent Space, by Dean

I was being shown a building that I was considering buying. It was a three tiered space, a little like Project Artaud (in San Francisco) but also like a building from France in the 20s. The building had six enormous units in it and was downtown, somewhere near Alamo Square. My friend Pepe Lozan was with me, and kept up a running commentary as I walked through the building, pointing out its many virtues and encouraging me to buy it.

The walls were tinted concrete, an incredibly rich, saturated brown, very beautiful, all sculpted to look like fabric. There was a 300 seat theatre on the ground floor, and a sculpture and art studio on the second floor. Pepe pointed out that the only drawback was that the patio was too small, even though it was actually quite large.

Common Astrological Sign, by Zak

I had a lot of short dreams, all with very positive emotion. In one, I dreamed that everyone participating in person in Oneironauticum had something in common (this is the first time I’d met most of these people). I thought maybe it was that everyone present was a Cancer, like me. I remember exclaiming how great it was that we all had this thing in common.

Then I dreamed of pulling a guy down a snowy ski slope. He was in a stretcher, but he was OK. The whole thing was really comical, sometimes he’d be further down the hill pulling me, sometimes I’d be further down the hill pulling him. At the end of the dream, he was still at the top of the hill and I was at the bottom and we thought this was really funny.

Minutes of the January, 2010, Oneironauticum, by jennifer

Present at the January, 2010 Oneironauticum were dreamers Vibrata, David S., lissa ivy, Dean, Erik, Christine, David W., Stacy, Nathan, Phoebe, Zak, and yours truly, Jennifer.

We started the evening with a viewing of the NOVA special on dreaming, followed by a discussion of the contents. Several items interested the crowd particularly. One point involved the dreams of depressed people. According to the special, depressed people go right into REM in the first stages of sleep. This differs from the normal pattern of sleepers. I put together the below chart for the class I taught on dreams at Pacifica Graduate Institute. We’ve discussed these cycles before at Oneironauticum sessions.

We also know, from an interview with Elanor Rosch that we’ve discussed, that depressed people’s sleeping and dreaming brains function differently. Generally, for everyone, dreams in the early part of the night involve images and feelings etc. from the recent past, the day’s residue. During those early in the sleep cycle dreams, the are in the frontal lobes of the brain that are involved in logic and planning remain active (measured by blood flow and PET and fMRI scans). Later in the sleep cycle, the frontal part of the brain becomes inactive, and dreams begin to primarily involve other material, often with stranger, less normal content. But in depressed people, those frontal lobes stay active all night, the logic and planning parts of the brain keep buzzing along.

Oneironauticum participants talked about times in our lives when we’ve felt depressed, and about the higher percentage of unpleasant dreams, particularly anxiety dreams, we’ve experienced during those times.

Around midnight, we all took 50 mg of 5-HTP in tablet form (except for Nathan, who took 100 mg). Most of us chewed our tablets, a recommendation from a couple of the frequent 5-HTP users in the group.

In the morning, over brunch, we shared our dreams. Overall, we found the 5-HTP produced strong dreams, for many of us featuring vivid color. About half of us reported a series of short, intense dreams instead of long narrative ones. A few of us woke from and returned to the same dream several times, a quality that the frequent ingesters of 5-HTP claim is characteristic of the oneirogen. A couple people woke feeling that they had actually spoken out loud during a dream. Three participants reported feeling headachey and not well rested. As often happens, many of us also had dreams involving the actual space where we slept and other present dreamers.

The next Oneironauticum is Sunday, January 24

The next Oneironauticum is Sunday, January 24. For this session, we’ll be working with 5-HTP (short for 5-Hydroxytryptophan), a supplement derived from West African Griffonia plant seeds, available in most health food stores or vitamin sections of supermarkets.

5-HTP has oneiric properties because it is involved in the production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in the regulation of sleep. Serotonin is also involved in the regulation of mood. Many anti-depression drugs (e.g. Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft) function by increasing serotonin levels in the body.

Commercially available 5-HTP usually comes in dosages of either 50 or 100 mg per capsule. Interestingly, given its relationship to serotonin, some people report that the vivid dreams produced by 5-HTP can slip into nightmare at high dosage. Others report intestinal or stomach upset, particularly if taken on an empty stomach. Unless you are already familiar with your preferred dosage of 5-HTP, offset these possibilities by ingesting a single 50 or 100 mg capsule with food in your stomach.

As always, anyone is invited to participate remotely, joining our world-wide network of dreamers who go to sleep with the common intention of incubating vivid dreams by using the same oneirogen. To participate remotely, take a capsule of 5-HTP on the night of January 24 before bed, or simply go to sleep with the intention to join us in our group dreaming experience. Anyone who participates, either in person or remotely, is welcome to post their dream experiences to this blog.

Possessed by the Devil, by Stacey

In the middle of the night, I got up to go to the bathroom. When I got back into bed and fell asleep again, I had a dream that started with me getting up to go to the bathroom, then coming back and getting into bed, only it was the wrong bed. Jennifer came over to talk to me about it and I realized that hours had gone by that I didn’t remember.

Then suddenly I realized that in that time I had been possessed by the devil. At that moment, I relived the experience, felt the devil pass through me and the sensation of not being myself any more. The energy of the devil ran throughout my body, my veins. It was a terrible feeling. At the end of the dream, somebody posted on Facebook that I had been possessed by the devil.

Annoying Visitor, by Juliana

The dream took place in the space where we were all actually sleeping, and in the dream we were all there asleep in the midst of Oneironauticum. This guy came in and was walking around the apartment.

He started hovering over me, getting really close and in my face. Jennifer yelled at him, told him that it was totally inappropriate for him to be there. Then his friend started trying to make excuses for him, saying he was on something, not in his right mind. I wasn’t sure if he was real or an astral projection.

chase dream, by deam

I dreamed that I was being chased by a giant floating brain. I was with a friend from my childhood. We used to play that we were on Mars. The brain chased us through that real/pretend Mars setting. I wasn’t sure whether the brain was real or was my friend’s delusion, but still it chased us and we ran. This went on for a very long time.

Heartbreak Dreams, by jennifer

All night long I had heart rending dreams involving my spouse. In one dream, He admitted to me that he and his girlfriend had actually be together for a very long time, that they had several children and an old Victorian mansion together. We stood on a cliff overlooking the ocean as he told me this. Then he walked away in one direction, toward his girlfriend who I saw standing in the distance, and I got into my VW and drove away in the other direction. I knew I would never see him again and felt a tremendous sadness.

In another dream, I was searching for my spouse in a crowded carnival setting that was sort of Burning Man but not. I had a sense of great urgency, as if something bad would happen to him if I didn’t find him. Finally, I spotted him in the midst of a posh cocktail party, everybody dressed in very fancy clothing, speaking in very refined manner. He was with a good friend of mine, and I realized that they had gotten married some time ago but nobody had ever told me. He was very angry at me for coming to the party and insisted I leave.

I had several other short dreams, more like vignettes, following the same theme.

minutes of the October, 2009 Oneironauticum

In attendance at the October, 2009, Oneironauticum were dreamers lissa ivy, Erik, Vibrata, David, Dean, Nathan, Juliana, Stacey, Katherine, and yours truly, Jennifer.

We gathered between 10:00 and 11:00. Before going to sleep, we discussed dreams we’d had in which we’d died. Many of us had heard the same myth in our childhoods, that if you ever dreamed you died, you would actually died, but most of us had at some point died in a dream. Personally, I have died many times in dreams. I vividly remember the first time, around age 10, when I was thrown from a car crash into a pool of warm water. The sensation of death felt considerably more peaceful than I expected, though I woke extremely frightened. View a film by Naropa Sabine that depicts a recent death dream that I had in 2007.

Around midnight, we all took B-6 and Melatonin before bedding down. Though dosage varied among dreamers, we all took between 1 – 3 mg of Melatonin and 100 or 200 mg of B-6.

Over brunch the next morning, we discussed our dreams. Many of us agreed that we had had unpleasant dreams, filled with urgency, anxiety, or simply disagreeable goings on. We decided to eliminate Melatonin from future Oneironauticum sessions.