CEVs right before falling asleep - being sober

[drseltsam]

In the last weeks I made an interesting observation. In the minute where you glide into sleep, I tend to have very mild CEVs. Not every night but every second or so.

The usual CEVs are colorful spirals which pop up for a few seconds and either go away or I fall asleep. Very seldom I see whole images of things for a second or so. These images are very colorful and usually show a single object like a rabbit.

Why do I post this in PD you might ask. End of December I took mescaline for the first time, a small dose but it gave me CEVs nevertheless. Right after the trip I could not remember everything from the trip but a few days later when falling asleep the memories (at least some) came back. Thus, I suspect there is some connection between the state I had unter mescaline and right before falling asleep.

I am not worried about this as I tend to have a pretty altered state of mind when gliding into sleep such as unusual sexual fantasies or dreamlike thinking. I find it rather fascinating and would like to hear your opinion in this. Did you experience something similar?

 

[cj187]

I sometimes have CEV when I'm falling asleep. It's actually pretty common. It's called hypnagogic imagery. It probably wasn't caused by taking mescaline but you may have noticed it because of your experience.

 

[StMorningGlory]

When I was growing up I had a thing called Hypocoginal Hallucinations. It was extreme. Terrifying. Shaped years of my life... but fast forward to tripping and it's the same. Like crazy similar. To the point that I could recognize some of my hallucinations from being 8 years old while 16 tripping on DXM.

I only had a problem with them again after I abused stimulants, which I will never do again. They went away after awhile.

Dreams and tripping seem, in my experience to be the same thing. Only difference is I can control my tripping.

 

[hotgirls.jpg.exe]

Yep, completely normal and quite common - would have to agree that you're just probably more likely to notice it because of your experience with a psychedelic. Trust me, it's infinitely preferable to the sleep paralysis that seems to be related to stimulant use.

 

[drseltsam]

Thanks for the numerous replies! I am really sorry for my arrogance that I did not google for "hallucinations falling asleep" - which would have brought me to the information. I simply assumed that there is a connection with the state I was in when taking the mescaline and thus posted it here. I would say that hotgirls.jpg.exe and cj187 are right that I tend to be more aware of hallucinations because of the mescaline.

I read a bit about the phenomenon and to me it appears to be mostly harmless if it does not disturb your sleep - which it does not do at all. I would describe the patterns as nice to look at I learned that one cause of this might be stress or anxiety. Anxiety is really not an issue for me but the last weeks where more stressful than usual. It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between stress level and these hallucinations.

Again, thanks for all the replies and sorry for not doing my research upfront

 

[Humble Bumble]

But then you would have missed out on the conversation

I think you may be interested in the book 'Psychedelic shamanism' by Jim Dekorne, in which he delves into the relationship between hypnagogic imagery and psychedelics. It's been a while since I read it, and while I don't think it's necessarily a terribly good book, it's an interesting read nonetheless. (you can find a free pdf online)

https://www.erowid.org/library/books/psychedelic_shamanism.shtml
http://dreamstudies.org/2010/12/10/hypnagogic-dreams-and-imagery/

 

[Solipsis]

It's not unhealthy at all so don't go looking for influence of stress etc. Unusual things happening at the border between sleep and waking are usually because of an improper switch from one mode to another, so still being a bit more awake when falling asleep etc. Also not even stress but just any big changes in your life or where you are can have an impact on e.g. how intensely you dream and of course how easily you fall asleep. Any involvement of drugs can also change how quickly or gradually you fall asleep.

Oliver Sacks has an excellent book called Hallucinations about the many peculiarities that can arise from our neurology, many of which are healthy phenomena but are very easily assumed to be unhealthy or psychiatric, or have been seen that way for a long time, just because it's out of the ordinary. Hypnogogic and hypnopompic phenomena are of course part of the book.

I've already participated in an online study about sober hallucinations in the sense of mistaking what the senses give us. Surprisingly I scored incredibly high in terms of signal to noise ratio. I thought I was a fried out hippie weirdo that would probably be hallucinating a lot (I have had mild HPPD type things from tripping a lot in the past but nothing serious). Instead it said I was pretty sharp fit for a jet fighter. :')

 

[drseltsam]

@Humble Bumble: Thanks for the link. I am not too much into these shaman things but I might have a look

@Solipsis: According to this page:

Sleep related hallucinations may be a direct result of alcohol or drug use, or could be due to insomnia, anxiety, stress or other factors. People with narcolepsy have a high rate of sleep hallucination occurrence.


Sleep hallucinations may not need treatment, as they often occur infrequently and do not affect sleep quality. They may be a sign of mental stress though, or if coupled with daytime sleepiness, even narcolepsy.

An other page mentions pretty much the same. Both pages do not cite sources.

Probably you are right and there is nothing to worry about. I find them rather interesting. Tonight I had really a bad nightmare and I was waking up in between the episodes (haha) of the dream. When waking up I saw an orange background with white and yellow stripes on it moving very fast, like a TV with bad reception. Actually pretty cool.

 

[ordinary mind]

I've experienced something like this a fair few times, but for me it usually happens after waking up. To begin with I'll notice mild CEVs, but once they enter my awareness they quite quickly develop into fully fledged and colourful landscapes and I experience something approximating an OBE. When this happens, I usually try my best not to get too excited in order to extend and deepen the experience, but I find it difficult to prolong the experience for long (kind of like a lucid dream... when I'm aware of the fact I'm dreaming it often becomes difficult for me to stay relaxed in the headspace, and I end up waking up).

The experiences themselves are always distinct from lucid dreaming, in the sense that the imagery and settings are of a different style than the dreamworld that I am accustomed to. Normally I have dreams in familiar settings doing things approximating what I experience in waking life, but when I get these post-sleep experiences I experience scenes like strange futuristic cities, a cartoony graveyard, or on one occasion simply psychedelic wood-like patterning.

I'd actually be really interested to hear if anyone has any advice on how to induce these experiences, or increase their likelihood. They were actually really quite visually entertaining, but I haven't had one for around a year or so now.

 

[Xzbtya]

If you look at brain scans of people on psychedelics they mimic many of the patterns in the brain present during sleep yet you are awake. It's no surprise that this is common in people that have and haven't take psychedelics. Similar things can be seen in the Ganzfeld Effect when the brain is cut off from stimulation it begins to create its own. Prior to sleep to are usually in the dark and it is quiet so it's not surprising that some of these CEVs occur right as the brain is gearing up for full on dreaming.

 

[Solipsis]

I have had night terrors once: it was also extremely abstract / geometric. I saw a sort of huge white spinning disc with no reference to dimensions and it became fouled by black blotches which somehow caused resistance and drag on the disc. This kept going on which made the disc struggle more and more to keep spinning. I don't know why it would be important that it spins but you can imagine the metaphorical meaning perhaps.
When I woke up or was woken up I did not come back to reality but was still a bit stuck in the hallucination so I ran around panicked for a while.

The aforementioned "sleep hallucinations" seem ill defined. Hypnogogic imagery is distinct from dreams and night terrors are different still. To say anything about whether it is perfectly healthy or a sign of stress etc you need to be clear what kind of category experience we're talking about, imo.

What is described in the OP is hypnogogic imagery and I'm pretty sure it's normal either way.

 

[Volsam]

I have had night terrors once: it was also extremely abstract / geometric. I saw a sort of huge white spinning disc with no reference to dimensions and it became fouled by black blotches which somehow caused resistance and drag on the disc. This kept going on which made the disc struggle more and more to keep spinning. I don't know why it would be important that it spins but you can imagine the metaphorical meaning perhaps.
When I woke up or was woken up I did not come back to reality but was still a bit stuck in the hallucination so I ran around panicked for a while.

- this happens to me almost every time I would get seriously sick with illness. Also remember strong tactile feelings associated with discs moving and rotating and getting bigger. Started when I was maybe 2-3 years old as I remember it still - very powerful immersive feeling of fear, terror and desire to control... I even found a forum thread somewhere and people were discussing that particular and almost archetypical "dream".

On topic, I do get those CEV images before sleep sometimes, and especially during times of stress and too much cannabis consumed right before sleeping. The colors are predominantly reds and yellows, although they vary on occasions, and it can be 2d as well as fully formed 3d images. I find them amusing but sometimes they could be scary, just like any other mind production.
Also, on very rare occasion I would have auditorial hallucinations similar in quality of appearance to visual ones - there will be voices or beautiful music creeping in and every time I would consciously try to pay attention to it, it will dissipate in the brain fog again.