I had this dream a while back but I'll share it because it was really memorable and also pretty traumatic, I don't usually bother to record my dreams these days but as soon as I woke up I was like HOLY SHIT. Better write this down!
Excuse the possibly vaguely racist undertones, I can't control what my mind serves up, as some elements of this dream definitely have a kind of reverse-colonialism type vibe and there are some racial stereotypes. Hopefully that's more of a reflection of cultural influences rather than some kind of subconscious prejudice, although I guess it could be a bit of both, the former probably induces the latter even in the best of us.
Anyway... so the dream starts out I'm wandering around a major city near where I live. There is this gym that I used to go to, and some people I used to know from those days, but there is some kind of work being done on it and to actually get in it's going to be necessary to climb up some scaffolding that doesn't really look safe. Some people are trying to convince me to go in but I am really not feeling like it and secretly decide to sneak away when I can. For some reason there is some kind of large festival or gathering going on in the same general area, and it is occasionally raining, so at some point I meet this group of very overweight people who are also planning to sneak away. This entire time also I am wearing really thick coke-bottle Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys style glasses - I haven't worn glasses for probably over 10 years after getting LASIK but I did when I was younger and was really insecure about it, although they weren't as caricature-esque as these ones were. For some reason also one of the first things I'd talk about to almost everyone I met was how bad my eyesight was. Just before I started to leave this weird gathering of indeterminate purpose which was strangely in the vicinity of a gym undergoing some kind of renovation, I encountered a large muscular black and possibly slightly Arabic homosexual man who was initially weirdly overfriendly. Then at some point he tried to kiss me and I pushed him away, but for some reason I was really weak and made a pretty pathetic effort. He looked kind of annoyed but left and I continued to sneak out with the crew of fat losers I'd attached myself to, excuse the fairly judgemental language but, that was what was in my head.
At this point there's a sudden dream scene shift and I'm walking down a pavement within some kind of large courtyard surrounded by high buildings. I realise I am being lead towards some kind of small dark looking doorway to some kind of bungalow vaguely in the middle of this courtyard, and I am also dressed up like a penguin, and have a small monkey of some kind perched on my arm. I am being lead by the same guy whose unwelcome advances I rebuffed earlier. I can't remember exactly what he said but it was something sinister implying I'd been drugged and was about to be raped or something. I started to turn around to escape but the monkey sitting on my arm started growling. Even though it was a very small monkey, I understood it to be very dangerous, and that it would attack me if I made any sudden movements. So I started walking very very slowly while I thought about what to do. Fortunately at that point some kind of weird bus which was empty except for 2 guys dressed in completely white suits started approaching slowly down the road. I stopped and started to say "help...! help...!" very very quietly under my voice as they approached. The bus stopped and they got off - I understood that they were staff in this place, which I now understood to be the embassy of some nameless and apparently fairly lawless African nation, but I could tell they were not really taking me seriously and thought that this was some kind of prank and I was also some kind of hired entertainment, which obviously, even in the context of the dream, was probably understandable. I could tell however that my captor was getting uncomfortable while these 2 guys hung around, and at some point, for some indeterminate reason, the monkey climbed off my arm and I seized the opportunity to jump onto the idling bus and make my escape. While I was turning it round and speeding back down the road towards a building which I somehow understood to be the entrance and exit from this place, the bus turned into a bicycle.
I initially made a slight wrong turning on these roads and turned back a short distance but fortunately no-one seemed to be following me. At this point it was nighttime, and I got off the bike and went into this building which was some kind of entrance bar/club inside, although no-one was there. I crossed the empty club to the final door to the outside world, which unfortunately was locked, but I was able to force it open and exited onto a large, wide driveway which sloped upwards. The surface of the slope was really slippery, and in order to make progress, I had to walk very slowly and carefully. At some point, when I could see the final barrier which somehow I understand to be the "border" between this bizarre sovereign territory and my home country - which, in actual fact, was just a barrier made out of rope - an alarm started sounding. I made it to the rope barrier however and initially tried to squeeze through but was not able to - I was eventually able to vault over it (it was not that high) just as some kind of police force from this insane embassy were running towards me.
As soon as I was just outside the barrier everyone pursuing me seemed to give up and were just kind of standing around on the other side of it. For some reason there was some kind of pub quite nearby, where everyone inside seemed to inexplicably already know who I was and have heard about some kind of kidnap. The clientele were split between people who were either friendly to this nameless nation and kind of passive aggressively annoyed at me for escaping and causing some kind of PR disaster, and those who were sympathetic to my plight. I borrowed a phone from someone in the latter group and called the local law enforcement agencies. For some reason at this point I found my voice didn't work properly, I was having a really hard time properly communicating or getting words out, which I attributed to the residual aftereffects of whatever drug I had been given which caused the memory gap from earlier.
Finally they arrived - although for some reason, they didn't actually come and meet me, I had to go out and cross a major road to get into their car, which actually was a really retro vehicle again with some kind of weird bar inside like the inside of a limo. While I was crossing the road, a group of people came up to me and started asking me about what had happened and suddenly one of them realised his watch was missing and they all started arguing amongst themselves. While I was walking away, for some reason I checked my sleeve and found I had it - implausibly some kind of skilled thief had both stolen the watch from this person and planted it on me for some kind of nefarious purpose. I turned around, gave this guy his watch back and explained what happened, and then proceeded to this weird retro limo police vehicle.
Inside they asked me if I had taken anything myself - and I had a sudden twinge of uncertainty, realising I had taken both kratom and modafinil earlier in the day (not in the dream - I really did do this). I decided I would not tell them about this because it would influence the kidnapping case to the negative, could probably be unjustly used against me, etc. I was just telling them how I was having trouble communicating when suddenly I felt the need to take a deep breath - as I did so, my entire visual field turned white except for a single word in block capital black text in the middle - LYSERGIC. This flashed away just as quickly as it had come and I suddenly woke up lying in bed.
Honestly, this dream was damn traumatic even if it is pretty amusing looking back on. There are probably some very transparent messages that could be gleaned from this, although I won't bother to parse them now, and obviously some of it is just psychic noise. After this I immediately abstained from all psychoactive substances except caffeine for just over 2 weeks. Modafinil does occasionally give me weird stress dreams... but this was on another level.
