[Joan]

Hi,

I'm a science writer working on a story for a chemisty publication on an unusual topic:
using dreams for creative problem solving. Most, if not all, chemists
are familiar with the famous story from the history of chemistry of
how Kekule discovered the ring structure of benzene in a dream.
Scientists and other creative folks have reported mulling over a
problem and making little or no progress, and then one day waking up with
the solution--perhaps as a conscious result of a dream, or maybe just
presumably so, because they had a dream and cannot remember the
content.

I'll be interviewing experts in this field, but I'm posting here
because I'm hoping to personalize the story a bit for chemists. If you have
had such an experience or know of someone who has, I would very much
like to hear from you.

You can reach me at jpsteph@interaccess.com.

Many thanks!

Joan Stephenson

[limpet chicken]

There are several herbs and entheogens noted for inducing vidid dreaming.

Entheology.org is a private forum but applications to learn are nearly always accepted, and these guys, although hippy types are very dedicated to studying these, among other entheogens.

Some noteable ones:

Silene Capensis.

Calea Zatecatichichi (spelling something like, hehe)

Entaada Rheedii.

The supplement melatonin (5-methoxy-n-acetyl-tryptamine) available over ebay very cheaply, is unlike other tryptamines, legal and NOT psychedelic, but is part of the bodys natural sleep hormone system, 3mg will induce the most VIVID, and amazingly lucid dreaming, very very safely (something like 60mg has been trialed in some study or other and found to be very heavily sleep inducing and produce dreams that are clear as day, but no negative side effects ofther than a deep dreaming sleep (not that that is negative)

Nicotine patches are addictive of course, but myeself and many others have reported dreaming vividly when wearing a patch.

I practise oneiromancy myself, the study and art of divination through dreams, I find it can give a lot, when interpreting the symbolic voice of the unconscious or subconscious mind, as to the problems and points to develop in my life, I am happy to help if I can in any way to advise you.

I right now, am going back to my green and sticky, sticky buds of an unnamed female herb in the Hop family, and my good old prescription opioids, morpheus calls, legally too, but post or PM me and I will advise whereever I can.

[pantone159]

Well, I don't have any actually relevant comments to make but I'll amuse myself anyways...

This New York Times article (registration required)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/business/31weird.html?8hpib
which discusses bad travel experiences, mentions the experience of one guy in China who was expected (being polite) to sample the food, decided that the most palatable item was the fried scorpions, so he settled for seconds of that, instead of eating the other stuff.  He dreamed that the scorpions were re-assembling themselves, and marching up his throat to attack and kill him.

On limpet's tangent, I have found that tequila (not ethanol in general, just *tequila*) seems to inspire vivid dreams.  I don't recall such an effect with mezcal or pulque (which come from the same plant) but I haven't tried those others enough times to say with confidence what they do.

Sorry I couldn't actually be helpful...  

[Bakegaku]

There are numerous techniques that induce lucid dreaming for those who don't want to take drugs  .

One is to make a habit out of checking your watch twice.  Interestingly enough, our brains aren't advanced to hold times for short periods of time or something... so if your watch says 0:00, and it's sunny outside, you might be dreaming.  If no such irony is immediately apparent, then check your watch again.  in a dream the time will change by around an hour (from my experience).  A similar effect is notable with book passages.  Just somethings to do if you ever suspect you're dreaming.

Other than that I can't help much.  For more on lucid dreaming you could always check out some psi sites.

[Joan]

Thanks to Limpet, Mark, and bakegaku for your responses.

[Donaldson Tan]

i think it is bad to even do work when you are resting. LOL.

[Qazzian]

If you get to the point where chemistry problems invade your dreams, I think you may be working too hard.

[limpet chicken]

Yeah, I get that a lot, chemistry and mycotoxicology, does my head in sometimes, when I can't get something off my mind, and I will end up going back on the damn PC and reading the last of god only knows what, it was a PDF on organoarsenic compound  uptake/synthesis by toxic mushroom species, and other generic stuff like that.

[Oldtimer]

I almost never dream at night. I feel that we may dream occassionally if "led" to think something at night - but I never trust my dreams for anything intelligible.

At most my subconcsious rails at illogical politics or Worldwar designs at night, and I wake in a sweating panic.

I can go months without a dream. No joke, and yes I am ready to prove it with a EKG or EEG {whichever it is, I forget}

Oldtimer

[Borek]

I can go months without a dream. No joke, and yes I am ready to prove it with a EKG or EEG

AFAIK that's - almost - impossible. However, what is very likely is that you never awake during REM phase, thus you never remember yor dreams.

I believe there were experiments done with people deprived of REM phase and the effects were catastrophical.

[Pelle]

Borek: Sorry to disappoint you, but I recently saw interviews with a few sleep-scientists, and deprived REM-sleep is apparantly not catastrophical. They said there are common pharmaceuticals that eradicates REM sleep with the users, but it doesn't seem to have any ill effects on them. Also they said it was a common misconception that you only dream during REM-sleep.

Sorry, no references ATM.

[Borek]

Borek: Sorry to disappoint you, but I recently saw interviews with a few sleep-scientists, and deprived REM-sleep is apparantly not catastrophical. They said there are common pharmaceuticals that eradicates REM sleep with the users, but it doesn't seem to have any ill effects on them. Also they said it was a common misconception that you only dream during REM-sleep.

Sorry, no references ATM.

Peretz Lavie, The Enchanted world of Sleep.

Unfortunately I have only a Polish edition, thus it will be difficult to quote exactly. Chapter 12 is about REM and it contains a subchapter on REM deprivation. Subjects were woken once the REM phase started. The longer the experiment was, the faster REM phase appeared and the more times subject had to be woken during a night. About 10-20 times during first night, but about 60 times in a third night. On 4th or 5th night REM phase started immediately once the subject fall asleep, thus it was practically impossible to continue the experiment, especially as it was enough for the subjects to close their eyes for the REM phase to start, even without 'formally' falling asleep.

Effects in humans - visible, although difficult to describe and classify changes in personality, plus disruption of learning processes.

In case of animals REM deprivation ends with death, humans were not exposed to such experiments long enough.

Perhaps word 'catastrophical' was too strong and 'dangerous' is better.

[constant thinker]

Hmmm very interesting what people think about sleep. I personally tend to be an extremely light sleeper and am conscious of people coming into my room or going to the bathroom (my bedroom is right next to a bathroom). All though this does seam odd and probably not true to most people, that is just what I experience during the night usually. I'm also not always conscious of what's going around me when I'm sleeping. This leads me to believe that I just tend to wake up a lot.

I can be dangerous to wake up sometimes though. I tend to wake up swinging when startled awake.

[limpet chicken]

Heh, I actually have chronic and pretty terrible insomnia, but for my medication, and without it I often cannot sleep for a week or more on end (although I do use a fairly large variety of psychoactives, I abstain, but for the odd occasion from all stimulants, excluding caffeine, I LOVE strong, espresso coffee, red bull and coke (the drink, although the other sort I couldn't see myself passing up ) but I won't drink any but coke after the evening, and then only moderate amounts, and I certainly won't chew coca late at night unless I am intending to stay awake all night anyway.

Once I do sleep however (even without my nightly dose of 10-25mg nitrazepam or upto 50mg valium) I am as hard to wake up as a brick, but when I wake up with a start after a bad dream if ever I have one, I have many times caught myself bolt uptight in bed having drawn the ninja sword (ninjato) that stays by my bed, so I pity the poor bastard that might ever try and shake me awake or tip water on me or some other nasty practical joke.

As for sleep now? theres 2 grams of dihydrocodeine and 50mg nitrazepam down the hatch, so its time for this mad scientist to hit the sack, I am actually starting just lately, keeping a dream-diary, I keep a notebook and pen on my bedside table, so when I wake up after a dream, I immediately write it down before going back to sleep.

Time for my before bed pipe, I really do find that nicotine improves both quality and quantity of REM sleep, well dreaming sleep, I can't look at myself to see if my eyes are moving rapidly when I'm sleeping can I , so every night, I smoke my pipe in bed before I turn out the lights, and so far I have been amazed by how well it improves dream recall.

Does anyone know of a physiological basis for the effect of nicotine upon dreaming sleep/dream recall? I am curious also as to wether other nicotinic agonists have the same effect, I plan on experimenting with arecoline also (found in Areca Catechu, the betel nut) and with, and although I do NOT advise others to do the same, but with *extremely* careful doses of cytisine, another nicotinic agonist, although it is a highly toxic pyridine alkaloid like nicotine, its the toxin found in Laburnum species, and the Mescal bean (Sophora Secundiflora, and totally unrelated to Mescal the drink, which comes from an Agave species, or mescaline/Mescal buttons, which come from peyote, and some Trichocereus cacti)