Sleep paralysis

[EFC18]

It's crazy, crazy shit. I find it most fascinating for the scary element that almost always brings. People describe feeling held down. Not just paralysed but physical pressure on their arms or torso's. Some people experience being fucking raped but some invisible beast, really scary.

this, completely. I am fascinated by the terror of it in my own twisted way. I just recall an intense feeling of danger, but vague and ill-defined; it is like dreams coincide with reality, but you are aware of both... for example, I sleep in a downstairs bedroom at the front of my house. I was convinced that people were right outside the window about to smash it in, but at the same time I knew I was dreaming, and I was trying desperately to move/wake myself up, but I was frozen.
I also remember my breathing becoming very intense and rapid, it's usually the only thing I can control, it's how I've woke my girlfriend up next to me - who then wakes me up, which stops the nightmare, and it's all fine.
It's such a strange experience.

 

[Poodles!]

I'm not gonna read the thread because I got well paranoid I was going to get it for ages after my friend described it to be but I feel for those of you that do sounds so dire...

I found that in the early days it was the most frightful thing that could ever happen to me. I'm amazed at how used to it I am now. I almost feel that in my half conscious state that I'm almost challenging the "presence" in the room to come at me. It's still frightning, yet quite exciting. Like a good horror movie (even better than a horror movie infact)... I've had it when tryiing to sleep on MXE (having had some kind of serotonergic a couple days before), and this really kicks the experience into overdrive... But in a good way,.. Like when I played AVP on the PC for the first time back in 2000 (I was only 11 then ).

 

[PredatorVision]

Started getting these after a period of doing acid pretty heavily, got some really horrific ones, usually felt like there was another person in my dream (physically in my dream) who I had little to no control over and was trying to do me harm, this other entity was usually a friend or family member, with a face morphing between people. Really bad though I'd finally come round in my bed with my teeth clenched, muscles aching, head aching, profuse sweating.

 

[Munroe]

*Moved from RC thread where I was screaming after passing out from GBL and my neighbours heard me. - knock*

I told him I was very drunk, naturally.

Fairly sure I would've gone with night terrors myself.

 

[knock]

I've never heard of night terrors. Or if I have I forgot about them.

 

[mydrugbuddy]

More commonly refered to as nightmares

 

[bob_arctor]

In Oliver Sacks latest book, Hallunications, there is a good description of night terrors and related hallucinatory states connected to sleep (incidentally he also writes quite a bit on his own drug use in the 70's)

Check out this interview with him http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CVGANRgABY

 

[kingme]

More commonly refered to as nightmares

not really... i think they are different entities. related iirc, but different.

Geiger the "Alien" painter/artist is a famous sufferer of these, also a source of inspiration apparently

 

[babylonboy]

Night terrors are when you wake up terrified in the night, usually sitting bolt upright, often screaming. A nightmare is an unpleasant or scary dream. "Nightmare" originally referred to sleep paralysis (I occasionally experience this), which is when one is either waking up or falling asleep and loses motor control and muscle tone (though you don't shit yourself, thank God), often accompanied by a hallucination or sensation of an intruder or presence, which is petrifying was often thought in less enlightened times to be a malevolent supernatural creature, that paralysed people in the night in order to sexually, psychically or physically exploit them. This thing was called, variously, a succubus, or a "mare" or "nightmare". This came in time to refer to the more common and general bad dreams the word refers to today. This phenomenon has happened in other languages too, the word for a bad dream stems from a name for a sleep demon (in Icelandic, I'm pretty sure). FACT OF THE DAY.

 

[ColtDan]

Never had night terrors but had some bad sleep paralysis before, hate it

 

[babylonboy]

I think night terrors are more common in kids, and that sleep paralysis is associated with stimulant use, so that makes sense, but yeah, once you experience it often enough to learn to understand what's happening and not to panic it's OK, but waking up powerless to move or even scream with an evil demon in the room is pretty fucking rubbish.

 

[black53]

Supposedly sleeping on your stomach can make sleep paralysis less likely.

 

[ColtDan]

I think night terrors are more common in kids, and that sleep paralysis is associated with stimulant use, so that makes sense, but yeah, once you experience it often enough to learn to understand what's happening and not to panic it's OK, but waking up powerless to move or even scream with an evil demon in the room is pretty fucking rubbish.

Yeah mate, the worst sleep paralysis i got felt like tingly ghost rape, trippy. and had a lucid dream so vivid i thought i was awake in it, panicked cos i couldnt wake myself up thought id be found like a vegtable unable to ever wake up again

Supposedly sleeping on your stomach can make sleep paralysis less likely.

Really? i usually go to sleep on my stomach, n every time i wake up with sleep paralysis im on my side

Havent had it for ages though ever since slacking off the long sleepless mashups and mdma

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

but waking up powerless to move or even scream with an evil demon in the room is pretty fucking rubbish.

QFT. And lulz.

 

[black53]

Really? i usually go to sleep on my stomach, n every time i wake up with sleep paralysis im on my side

Havent had it for ages though ever since slacking off the long sleepless mashups and mdma

Yeah, read in somewhere online in a sleep paralysis thread. From personal experience - I always sleep on my stomach and never had sleep paralysis.

 

[knock]

that's better.

 

[foolsgold]

its not nice that sleep paralysis I though the aliens had got me last time it happened , I screamed out help 4 times but it was as if nothing was coming out like I was screaming in a dream instead of the real world

 

[ColtDan]

One of the worst times was i woke up but couldnt move, this tingly feeling going down my body, paniced, felt like i was suffocating, then snapped back into sleep and looked at a mirror and it started to morph and go weird, and there was this screaming noise, felt pure terror, forced myself awake and felt my eyeballs rolling and shaking, snapped back into sleep n came out, n i think i had some weird fit or something, heart was banging, something subconciously told me i had just been fitting on my bed, wether i had or not fuck knows. lack of sleep, booze, meph, mdma, gets weird. brain zaps from mdma are some weird shit, if ive got brain zaps i know im gonna get sleep paralysis

 

[BecomingJulie]

Everyone gets some level of paralysis during sleep (except the eye muscles). Usually, the waking sequence is such that your muscles kick in before your brain. Occasionally not. Scary at first, but it really is harmless.

 

[babylonboy]

^Not everyone, some people have a disorder in which they lack that capacity, and act out their dreams. Weird.