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Heroin Sleep Paralysis/Nightmares and Heroin

T

tdawe1

Bluelighter
Joined
Sep 24, 2009
Messages
51
Last night I had one of the terrifying nightmares as a result of what I believe to be heroin, and was wondering if anyone else had had similar experiences.

I had been doing a lot of heroin and decided to lie down in bed and entered the nodding/halfawake/dreamlike state that I'm sure all opiate users are aware of, after a couple of hours this became more of a full on dream and I began to have the sense of something evil but always just outside my sight/comprehension, and it was like I was like I was trying to escape it. This climaxed when the "presence" paralysed me, I was trying to scream but I couldn't and it felt like I couldn't breathe, and after a period of time (I couldn't say how long, I shot back into consciousnessbut I had such an irrational fear I could not return to sleep for 7 hours.

Is this a known phenomenon with opiates? Is there anyway to prevent it happening again? I will definitely refrain from opiates late in the evening after this..
 
sounds like your mind woke up but your body didnt. after a nightmare.
theres a name for it, i cant think of it right now, but its happened to me before without drugs.
its pretty freaky huh
 
Sleep paralysis can be relatively common with drugs that disturb sleep. I used to get it quite a lot when I was using GBL. Not sure what to suggest about it to be honest, hopefully someone else is more knowledgeable, other than to try to avoid falling asleep when you're on drugs.
 
Opiates don't help you sleep when you go to bed on opiates its more like going into an 8 hour nod off. Do you know what i mean by nod ? that's when you do enough to come in and out of reality a lot. And you kind of day dream stuff while you are on the nod then come to because you think its really happening. That happens while asleep on opiates. you also don't get proper sleep on opiates. Its happened to me a lot. The paralysis is called petrified its when you become so terrified from a dream that you are too afraid to move a muscle. It wears off after you realize the dream is over. It happens to people with ptsd a lot. Wait a few hours after your last dose before sleeping. Like at least 2 hours.
 
I've had episodes of sleep paralysis for a few years, and yes, it's terrifying. As far as I can remember; I've never had an episode while on opiates. That includes everything from heavy/sustained heroin use to light/infrequent pill use. Last week I had a particularly bad episode(got stuck in a loop of dreaming I had sleep paralysis, waking and actually having it, repeated about a half dozen times before I said screw it and took a shower and stayed out of bed) and there were no opiates in my system, nor was I withdrawing.

For me it seems to be totally random, your circumstance may just be coincidence.
 
This is a known phenomena, with or without drug use. I have experienced it a handful of times.

What you experienced is called a hypnagogic hallucination, or sleep paralysis.

One might wonder why this happens to them. In the basic sense, when you wake up, before your body does, and you have to struggle not to freak out for a few minutes until you regain ability to physically move your own body - this is because your motor neurons aren't active during REM sleep. If you experience REM sleep, then wake up, your body may not be awake but you will.

To counteract this I have trained myself how to focus on twitching just a finger tip (of course this isn't something someone panicking will do, you have to have experienced this enough times to logically come to the conclusion you'll have to work around this carefully and not by trying to jump up at once because it won't work), then when I can, I'll start moving my whole finger, hand, arm, etc. - eventually I will have enough motion going on to wake myself up. If I can get my thumb/fingers to move, I'll just poke/pinch myself until I wake up.
 
KINGCRIMSON said:
Opiates don't help you sleep when you go to bed on opiates its more like going into an 8 hour nod off. Do you know what i mean by nod ? that's when you do enough to come in and out of reality a lot. And you kind of day dream stuff while you are on the nod then come to because you think its really happening. That happens while asleep on opiates. you also don't get proper sleep on opiates. Its happened to me a lot. The paralysis is called petrified its when you become so terrified from a dream that you are too afraid to move a muscle. It wears off after you realize the dream is over. It happens to people with ptsd a lot. Wait a few hours after your last dose before sleeping. Like at least 2 hours.
Click to expand...

I am aware I wasn't properly asleep, I did detail that in my post, but otherwise this is, I guess, exactly what happened - I have never had any sleep paralysis before, so it took me by surprise, although obviously this kind of trance-like state is common on opiates.

I believe the reason I am linking this with heroin usage is that heroin tends to induce this state of "hypnogogia", however it is for me usually pleasant (or at least neutral) experience.

edit: CaptainHeroin and all others that replied,, thanks for your detailed posts, they were very informative.
 
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You're welcome! :)

Sleep paralysis has happened to me more times than I care to remember, so whenever it happens, I know exactly what to do.

We get threads time to time about people who experience this, it's a fairly common occurrence on its own, so maybe for those of you who haven't had it happen yet, when it does happen on a drug, you can be well aware that the drug might lend to the experience but isn't the sole cause of it. :)
 
Hey I know this post is old and I'm new here to bluelight. Just wanted to add a few things if anyone comes across needing to know the best remedy I'm aware of to handle this and it has nothing to do with taking any other drugs to stop it from happening. I had episodes with this before I ever used oxy/heroin while I have not had too many episodes when using they typically occur when I'm sober which has been very limited use for the past year. Anyway when it started happening I researched online what was going on cause it scared the hell out of me and I don't have a link but it said the closest thing its related to is narcolepsy. While you can see a sleep doctor if your having episodes frequently. But the best thing that worked for me was I would go through the inital episode and use all my will power in my body to jerk myself out of it and I know this can be hard to to but you have to force yourself to get up and stare into a bright light/lamp/lightbulb whatever and it does the trick for me every time. I can pass right back out without any further episodes the rest of the night. I know it sounds crazy but that's what I got from google and it worked. I hope it helps anyone who is tired of dealing with this problem.
 
Also I forgot to add don't sit there for like an hour staring lol that would suck just like 10 seconds or so good luck
 
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