Herbs\Supplements to supress dreams

[indigo264nm]

Hey all..

One of my friends asked me recently if there was anything that somebody could take to supress dreams without having to smoke pot as him and his gf are trying to get off the smoke atm. His girlfriend (who is an old old friend of mine) is obviously suffering from some type of PTSD - so naturally I told him to get her into counselling but he said he's already tried getting her to do that. I also told him that she should just drink a brew and purge the trauma out of herself but I don't know how well she'll take to that idea.

So since my herbal knowledge only seems to extend to enhancing the vividness of dreams I figured I'd ask here and see if anybody has some suggestions...

[Yeti101]

What kind of dreams are they having? Are their nightmares in REM or are they hypnogogic imagery in slow-wave sleep?

I had heard that the latter kind of nightmare (or night terror) can be caused by too rapid a change between deep slow-wave sleep and more wakeful states, at least that is how it (maybe) works in children having night terrors. So even though I don't know what suppresses dreams of either kind, something that helps you sleep more deeply might help or it might not if it stops you from dreaming altogether!

Personally I'd avoid things to make you sleep and go for anti-anxiety effects: I prefer Salvia Splendens + small amount of Pineapple Sage + a pinch of Mugwort. If they are really agitated you might add something sedating. Mulungu bark might be worth a try also, but I don't have any experience with it personally.

[zekesdream]

i'm no psychologist, but i think she'll be better off sorting these issues out during the waking hours.

the subconscious is a much more skillful opponent.

deprive it of dreaming, and 'REM rebound' will likely compound the problem.

also, keep in mind that a strong tryptamine-induced purge could potentially itself elicit PTSD. it's almost guranteed to break her, but will she be able to put the pieces back together.

help her to feel relatively safe in her world, and to accept the rest as beyond her control.

good luck to her.

[Yeti101]

You are right if course, no herb is better than actual psychological treatment/counselling in the daytime. I don't think any hallucinogen would be a good way to treat any anxiety disorder so I'm definitely with Zeke on avoiding the tryptaminic brew.

PTSD can be very hard to treat - someone very close to me was (and maybe always will be) a sufferer, and all I can recommend is that you encourage them to get help from a good psychologist. Herbs might be good for the symptoms, but they are not a cure by themselves.

[faustus]

two approaches -- suppress REM sleep, which would involve affecting sleep architecture (not recommended in the long term), or take compounds that affects the recall of the dreams. where legal, something like GHB might be perfect, as it doesn't suppress REM, but will knock you out with no dream recall in the morning.

or try some MDMA psychotherapy http://www.maps.org/research/mdmaplan.html

I told him to get her into counselling but he said he's already tried getting her to do that.

implying she's not even attempted to solve her problems with therapy? or tried and failed? ... then try a new therapist!

or if it's really interfering with her life, why not take SSRIs? i can't see it as any worse than smoking cannabis to deal with your problems

[Undergrounder]

Yeah avoid waking up unecessarily during sleep. This won't stop the dreams but it will stop her remembering them in the morning. Best ways to do this are obviously to not oversleep, avoid alcohol, cigarettes etc. before bed, minimise noise, light etc. etc.

But seriously don't mess with PTSD, if you don't treat it it only gets worse. And trying to avoid it or smother it makes it far, far worse in the long run - it becomes a fear of the fear thing and you end up dealing with a severe general anxiety AS WELL as the sporadic panic attacks. A professional will help you through: Confrontation, Cognitive restructuring, Coping mechanisms and Anti-Anxiety meds as a last resort. The meds are just a safety mechanism so she feels that IF she has an attack, she can deal with it. Just knowing they're prepared is what benefits most people.

Tell her to be brave and face it now and leave it behind so she can enjor the rest of her life. Find a good psychologist / psychiatrist / counsellor and do it properly.

[planthelper]

the faster you get help after a trauma the better, but most of us are reluctant to try trauma counceling, as it seems a natural thing for us not to talk about what scares us...

the problem is, that once you have some sort of ptsd, even small "events" can become traumas aswell.

if the nightmares are allways the same, your friend could try to learn how to dream lucid. because i feel, if one learns to manage the re occuring dreams, the trauma improofs aswell. im diagnosed with ptsd, and changed some of my nightmares into pleasurable dreams. it's easy to lucid dream, you just have to say to youreselfe hundreds times of the day, and specialy before bed time, "if i see those pictures, i know i'm dreaming", than when you become aware that you are dreaming, whilst this scary scenario takes place, you change the story line to something wonderfull like,"flying away and landing in your palace where your princess waits for you".

there are different methodes to learn how to lucid dream, a google search would be the way to go...

your friend needs to get help, he/she can try to, walk in at your local mental health clinic, get a referral from your gp for a psychologist under the camp system (which is a slow process), call lifleine, and get face to face counceling.

calling lifeline is probably your best bet atm, as the faster you talk about it the better, than get a proffessional trauma councellor to help. if your friend and the lifeline councellor "dont click", just tell him/her to say thank you, and ring again, to try another councellor.

[indigo264nm]

This girl is strong willed and stubborn. I'd prefer her to get counselling more than anything but it's fuckn unlikely.

Ah well... just one of those things I guess.

[Vertmorpheus]

Stubborn is just resilient at the wrong time.

Sometimes people at some level don't want to get "better"... letting go strikes them as disrespectful to the initial trauma, those affected by it and it seems to some as if it kinda invalidates their feelings and responses they held onto for so long.

Alcohol is one of the first drugs ppl with sleep disorders or other nocturnal hassles turn to... and it does the trick for a bit too.. until you forget to restock, or start to feel the cumulative toll of not getting a healthy deep sleep.

I have a thing called DSPS which basically means that about middnight, when everyone else is going beddy byes, I feel more as if its midafternoon and can't get into a real sleep state til about 4am... a 2 year old and 3 hours sleep is a hellish combo though so I tend to force myself to sleep shortly after midnight and once or twice a week, indulge my natural cycle... anyway I've tried and ended up mildly dependent on just about every sleep aid other than benzos and the like, these days I find a few tokes of my "mystery salvia" (I think its a splendens x coccinea, or similar) or some lily work wonders... but I have to use the sage well in advance as it tends to produce an initial heat rush in my skin that if I had it later would actually make me LESS likely to enter proper rem sleep (methinks due to lowest point of my core temp coming even later than "normal" due to the impairment of sweating, etc) until later than "normal" (for me that is)... so I'd be in bed until 2pm rather than midday... I know it sounds like BS, but its just how it is... these days I just tend to ride the caffeine train all day to make up for 5 hours sleep on average... not perfect, but it works for now.

I find the nights I go with my natural cycles I dream my arse off, but those where I force myself to sleep at middnight I wake up literally every 20 minutes, shuffle around, grunt and groan, and seem to have multiple rem "blinks" ie quite different dream states right up until the time I wake up, on about half hour cycles, but lacking in that reality that "real" dreams have for me... either way it means I have very non event dreams and so when I DO get a "real nights sleep" (ok, real mornings sleep ) my head just about implodes with the processing it has to do... epic dreams, of massive scope, incredible realism (verging on lucid dreaming) and lingering emotional content.

A few lily tokes in the evening nicely fills for place of the ni nite nuggets from a few reports, but I find it makes my dreams more vivid... admittedly more pleasant and "recreational" in some ways rather than really "digestive" dreams.

Valerian knocks me out stone cold, don't remember a thing from the evening before but bums me right out after a day or two of use.

Kava isn't bad either, certainly an anxiolytic, as are a few salvias (the legal ones) and anytime I have passionflower in any form it increases my sleepiness, decreases my wakeful episodes and provides a slight sparkle to the afternoon without firing up the dream factory upstairs.

The most obvious advantage of SSRI's over ganj is that ganj isn't PBS... 10 bucks a week suits some better than a hundred or more... of course then you're into another debate completely... you also rarely get fucked around, calling back every half an hour, putting up with mould, dodgy people (ok, chemists are a bit dodgy sometimes but they're washed at least) don't come into it with the tablets.

An acquaintance plagued with nocturnal problems swears by an aromatherapy combo of lavender and sage oil... apparently the sage helps out the lavendar but provides an earthiness to keep the feet on the ground... it worked for me a few times anyway, guess it depends on your level of psychospiritualism etc.

Remember that it can seem a bit daft that ppl don't "get help" to "get better" but sometimes, those old ghosts are your best friends... you certainly know each other a lot more intimately than most entities in waking life... and you've both put a lot of energy into shaping each other. Like a plant that has outgrown its pot, roots escaping left right n centre, but you still have a hard time getting it to let go of the pot. Or something like that.

Lifeline do good work, as can finding a helpful type online for a bit of the ol cyberconfessional... remember int he latter case though that they have their reasons for wanting your psychic baggage, one way or another.. but now n then you find genuinely helpful people. Guided meditations with someone that knows their stuff (and is willing to take the time to learn your stuff too) can be VERY helpful, and it sounds a bit loopy to some but I scored a lovely dreamcatcher as a gift, doeskin and all that made by a genuine native American somethingorother years ago, now n then it gets put up and it takes me a week to remember why I keep taking it down... damned thing seems to actually work, and unless it's in a box somewhere I don't seem to dream at all... weird stuff.

best of luck with it all.. for something we spend a third of our lives doing (ideally, haha) we really don't know that much about sleep, and even less about dreams.

best of luck with it all

VM

Edited March 6, 2008 by Vertmorpheus

[apothecary]

In my experience there isn't anything out there that can suppress the dreams caused by withdrawal from daily cannabis smoking.

GABA seems to do the trick for normal people, but if they are coming off the pot there will simply be a much larger amount of serotonin/melatonin/dopamine/etc etc in the brain that it hasn't experienced since their last break from smoking. AFAIK it's the elevated dopamine levels which cause the intensely vivid dreaming so GABAergic compounds (kava, alcohol, benzos, etc) will help smooth that out over the night, but probably not enough to stop the dreaming.

He basically has to ride it out for acouple of weeks. I've found boosting with Niacin, L-tryptophan (melatonin works here where legal) and Withania lactones at night to 'speed up' the process. i.e. the dreams will be even more vivid but you half or quarter the number of nights you have to endure them for.

Stay off anything that will drop serotonin levels back down, no more ciggies or coffee after midday, etc etc.

I honestly recommend a cup of kava every night before bed for the PTSD (if she refuses counselling).

[chilli]

So, has she tried lucid dreaming?

[chilli]

I've been having these dreams again recently, and often wake up feeling pretty stressed out from them. I've found a little bit of codeine (panadeine) before bed helps take the edge off.

[Undergrounder]

yeah but codeine can also keep you awake, and make you dream heaps.

[Conan Troutman]

In my experience there isn't anything out there that can suppress the dreams caused by withdrawal from daily cannabis smoking.

GABA seems to do the trick for normal people, but if they are coming off the pot there will simply be a much larger amount of serotonin/melatonin/dopamine/etc etc in the brain that it hasn't experienced since their last break from smoking. AFAIK it's the elevated dopamine levels which cause the intensely vivid dreaming so GABAergic compounds (kava, alcohol, benzos, etc) will help smooth that out over the night, but probably not enough to stop the dreaming.

He basically has to ride it out for acouple of weeks. I've found boosting with Niacin, L-tryptophan (melatonin works here where legal) and Withania lactones at night to 'speed up' the process. i.e. the dreams will be even more vivid but you half or quarter the number of nights you have to endure them for.

Stay off anything that will drop serotonin levels back down, no more ciggies or coffee after midday, etc etc.

I honestly recommend a cup of kava every night before bed for the PTSD (if she refuses counselling).

Althought I certainly wouldnt recommend it a hypnotic benzo may not completely suppress the lucid dreaming but you probably won'y remember it..

[Undergrounder]

oh yeah i used to take one of those occasionally to get to sleep, doesn't knock you out which is good, wake up and not groggy which is good, but they had one real problem for me, i would wake up 3 hours late and not remember turning the alarm clock off... happened to me so many damn times.

[Vertmorpheus]

I find completely intentional creative visualisations of nothing much... eg random object... car keys... just imagine your car keys, feel smell tinkle shine knick knacks... move to something else... don't over do it. Seems the brain has a quote of "imaginings" to get done around sleepy times and if you give it a good walk, it relaxesbetter later on. But if you leave it to its own devices to keep itself amused... watch out. Me, anyway.

Christ, codeine, benzos, I reckon a 2 kilo splat mallet to the brain would do the trick as well but yeah... a lifetime benzo addiction sounds like more of a nightmare than anything I've dreamt, so far.

Codeine is a weird lil thing... I find it ups my twilight state but knocks arse out of my dream state... not recall, theres just not as much goiing on to remember... and normally theres a LOT to remember. But a few nights of that and youll get backed up, and rising levels of bodily inflammation thanks to big lumps of shite hanging around is probably not the best thing for a good nights sleep.

Valerian knocks my dream states to shreds but makes me depressed after a few days on it... pity, as it's pretty effective for the price if you track down raw material rather than some dodgy teabag gear.

VM