Question About Antidepressants And Dreaming

[Loopyfruit]

hi guys

Doing child development at college today and we were doing the stages of sleep (is REM and deep) and you only dream in the REM stage where you process thoughts and anxieties of the day and in your head.. A lot of the anti d's I have been on has had the side effect of nightmares and vivid dreams ( which I get ) does any one know if this is because they increase REM sleep therefore promoting processing of feelings???

Also does zopliclone work in the opposite way increasing deep sleep and therefore less processing and REM??

Any thoughts anyone has on this would be gratefully recieved

A very tired but wants to process loopy x

[Rael]

the only thing i would say is that i dont think zopiclone decreases the amount of rem sleep. i only say that because i take 1 or 2 7.5mg tabs a night and find that the frequency of vivid dreaming is just the same (ie a lot and bad).

then again i have been taking it for around 2 years now, so it could just be that it is not really working to the same extent anymore.

xxx

[Life is sweet]

Dear Loopy,

I LOVED and still do find it fascinating to learn about REM sleep and all the stages of sleep. So interesting to me! The idea that you have to go into REM sleep and process through the day's anxieties and worries so you wake up with your sanity is so cool to me. I know some medications can cause funny dreams, but I'm not sure too much more than that. I would give your doc a call who is prescribing them and bounce some ideas of of him. It might be a sie effect or he might be able to just lower the dose a bit, not sure, but I would call the doc about it.

Dreams can also be a source of, how do I put this? Recovery related healing? Dreaming about certain things can be helpful for you to understand where you are in your recovery. Sometimes it can help you have a better understanding of what you are really feeling. Whenever I have an important, meaningful or vivid dream I can seriously remember, I always write it down first thing when I wake up. I know keeping a journal close to your bed is good so you can write it down as accurately as possible. I've looked up some dream interpretation websites for the heck of it before and there is some interesting stuff out there.

I'm planning on taking a dream interpretation class (psychology of dreaming) next semester and can't wait to get involved in that!

Some bedtime rituals might help, like lavender pillow spray, sleepy time/herbal tea, hot bath, journal before bed about days worries, make a list of things to do tomorrow so you aren't thinking about them as you sleep.

Sweet dreams,

M.

[Tray]

i dont have an answer to that, what i wanted to share was this...

when i was on zopiclone, it zonked me out good to start with, but as i got use to it, i still i had the bad nightmare's, but cause i was zoned out, i couldnt fight my way out the nightmare as well as i can without sleepers, so in a way, it made them worse. at least if im not on sleepers, when i have a nightmare, i can wake up proper, where on them, im sooo drowsy, i cant free myself from the nightmare.