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)