Opioids Weird opiate withdrawal effect..anyone know what I mean at all?

[Bomb319]

This usually happens on the first or second night of starting to develop seriously uncomfortable symptoms like goosebumps and shivering, hot flashes, etc. but also just before insomnia and restless legs render sleeping difficult to impossible.

Anyway, I'll eventually drift into a light, uneasy sleep and have strange dreams that always seem to show the same general characteristics at this stage - whatever it is I'm dreaming about (which usually seems a lot more vivid as well), it keeps on repeating and repeating, making me start from the beginning each time. I know that sounds vague, so a rough example would be...if I were sent to prison, let's say and dreamed about escaping and finally feeling freedom, everything would sort of reset and make me relive it in a very similar or identical way all over and over again. Meanwhile, I'll often partly wake up each time being extremely groggy and know that if I were to just wake up fully, I wouldn't have to deal with whatever barrier I had to keep facing. Yet I'm never really awake enough to really try this, and am very tired so I keep going through it again. It's very strange.

Also, those dreams are never so straightforward, but usually incorporate some sort of magic or impossible phenomenon I feel I have to fight, then do it again and again in slightly different ways. This is tough to describe, but does anyone think they might know what I'm referring to and have something similar? Just curious. It almost certainly stems from falling into a much more restless and uneasy sleep than I have been while on opiates.

 

[DeadElvis666]

Yeah I've been withdrawing from opiates and your description sounds about right. Last night I had a really intense dream that my town was being invaded by soldiers and we were fighting them off in the woods with rifles. It was very realistic and I was intensely afraid of dying or my loved ones being killed. It sucked pretty bad. Realistic bad dreams like that are the worst. It's hard to wake up in a good mood when you spend all night dreaming about people with guns trying to kill you.
I think with withdrawal has something to do with it. I don't really remember my dreams usually, but when I'm withdrawing from opiates my dreams are vivid and usually really scary.

 

[Bomb319]

Yeah, for sure - although what I'm describing is just a bit different; it's the repetition that was notable, although as you say, it was much more vivid and jarring than usual. Often I don't even remember my dreams if I've taken opiates. Last night was just weird, though...I dreamt there were two visible parallel images of the world - one of which was normal. the other of which was being controlled by a bunch of people with me who were severely distorting it somehow to mess with me. seeing if I could figure out what it was that they were doing, and which universe was the real one..lol weird, I know. They were lengthening ledges and pathways so that everything I could see was changing and distorting randomly. The key part of this dream though is how I kept getting back to the "normal" world in relief, only to find that these people were still messing with me, and almost immediately started changing it where I thought I was safe. Then I would ALMOST wake up - thinking very clearly that if I woke up, the universe would finally stay consistent without this happening again. I mostly unconsciously then decided to try fully waking up, but felt so groggy and tired that I immediately fell back into the dream, and the same thing happening. Then I'd partially awake again, over and over until my alarm went off, and I knew I had to finally get up. Even then, I was very groggy for quite awhile because of the inadequate and short sleep, and didn't regain full awareness for awhile - though obviously I became conscious and aware I was out of the dream. It was so weird.

Normally I'd never bother explaining such a weird, nonsensical dream; however my essential point here is that it's a good example of one of the more subtle effects of withdrawal (for me, anyways): disjointed half-sleep with repeated partial awakenings (sometimes sleep paralysis occurs in me at this point, where I try and try to move my arms or legs but find I'm nearly paralyzed; then I finally break free and immediately snap out of it). But the more intriguing part of this is that the dreams that accompany this type of restless, w/d related sleep always seem to involve some sort of REPITITION; I try hard to do one thing, succeed, then go right back to square one with some degree of annoyance, fear or both. This repeats indefinitely until I wake up. This seems to be the common factor in all times this uncomfortable sleep has occurred with me.

Did I explain it better enough this time for you guys to at least have some vague realization that you know what I'm talking about and have experienced the same thing too?

 

[bingey]

I get the sleep paralysis thing too when in early heroin withdrawal ad I think smokin bud will take care of this problem along with lack of sppetit a;sp

 

[poloblue]

If I'm w/din from opes or even if I don't smoke sometimes I will have super vivid nightmares, used to keep getting the same one only it would progress a little more each time. Hated it. Other then that ya I never remember my dreams lol

 

[noone1]

I get this too but I have a history of night terrors and sleep paralysis.

 

[024liakam]

Ive had OBEs from heroin withdrawal, ill go into sleep paralysis and itll happen during that or ill just become concious while im already out due to light sleep and poor sleep, I like it

 

[manboychef]

Yeah sleep paralysis thing. It happened a lot on subutex. A counselor at rehab explained why this happens when on opiates or withdrawaling from them. Basically you go into an extremely deep sleep, deeper than normal sleeping patterns on opiates...then when your body is deprived of opiates you cannot achieve that level of sleep you are used to and you will feel like you are awake while your body is asleep. I hope i remembered that correctly. He got really into detail and I saw a butterfly outside that caught my attention..yadda yadda yadda.

I had lots of extremely vivid dreams my first month in rehab. Lots of repetitious dreams. Lots of waking up panicky and still only remembering fragments of the dream, then falling asleep again and a new dream is made out of the fragments. Keep a journal man, thats what I did. My roomies at rehab hated me cos I kept using a flashlight to right random things like "stole pie from window, old woman chased me with crowbar"...but its funny to go back and read those now that I am not using opiates.

 

[Bomb319]

LOL

I seriously love this post. You're talking about opiates, and are suddenly like "Oooh, look! A butterfly!" lol It's like a random, ADHD type thing to happen and the way you inserted it into the post was the same :D Then your "pissing people off with the flashlight while writing about stealing pie from the window" story would have made me spit water out all over my screen if I were drinking it.

 

[Crashing]

It's just the reverberation of your (subconscious) energy waves. Your waking life influences your dreaming life, you seem to be getting a literal transcription of the cyclical nature that is opiate addiction.

Every action has a reverberation, like a drop of water. Drug use causes a splash, it's waves often break the barrier.