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The 3-Month Sleep Experiment (2021)

Part One: September 27, 2021-October 31, 2021

By Megan Baker (Left Vocal in 2023)Published 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 12 min read
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Picture of the journal I'm keeping - it was from Lootcrate.

I began this experiment after a few key things this year: dreams while visiting relatives, beginning a new journal, and family drama driving me to concede that I should (finally) look into therapy. I’ve long had sleep issues, as described in “Night Walker”, and I have used cannabis to aid these sleep issues for about 7 years now, as mentioned in “A Dreamless Sleep”. This “experiment” is still being conducted, but I wanted to share my findings after the first month.

Said “experiment” is seeing me remove, at the least, recreational cannabis from my routine so that I can dream and record the resulting dreams. This is in preparation for the therapy I aim to seek in a few months’ time; I want to see if my dreams are as overwhelmingly exhausting and emotionally involved as they used to be before my usage of cannabis and I figured the therapist I eventually seek might want to know about such things. I also assume that this would be something they would have me do anyway upon finding out about such sleep issues, so why not get it out of the way now?

The first week was absolutely brutal; I tried to quit cannabis use cold and without the use of melatonin/sleep aides and wound up unable to fall and stay asleep. Since then, I have used CBD only, as I can relax enough to sleep with it, but still have and recall dreams. Recreational cannabis is also useful to me for falling and staying asleep, but then I cannot have and recall dreams - just how the difference in cannabinoids work.

Below, I describe the dreams I’ve had - and recalled - during the first month of this hiatus from recreational marijuana. Maybe someone besides my future therapist and I will find it interesting or useful. They are mere skeletons of the dreams, as I had to jot them down quickly before I could forget, and the nights I recalled several were especially difficult, as I was trying to remember to write them down before drifting off again, verses many which I woke after and did not go back to sleep and immediately wrote them down.

By Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

September 30, 2021:

I dream my dad drives me to the house of an older couple he has worked on cars for for years (my dad is a stay-at-home dad/caregiver to my younger brother with special needs and used to work on cars while we were in school for extra cash/a hobby). He points out a truck that is “mine” and he wants to know what I want to do with it. The dream ends before I decide.

October 4, 2021:

I dream I am watching after my brother, but when my dad returns home, I have done nothing right; my brother needs to be fed and has wet through. I feel shame and that I have disappointed my dad and let down my little brother who depends on us.

October 6, 2021:

All I can recall about the dream is several stretchers and green grass. Nothing else was really in focus and I was quickly losing the memory of the dream upon waking.

By Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash

October 10, 2021:

A somewhat recurring theme, though details are often different in each circumstance, but this dream took place in a public restroom. Such dreams always have something odd - half the stall doors are missing, leaving (me) exposed while I do my business or something else equally embarrassing. This one saw me using a crowded public restroom, and the stall I entered had just seen a young girl who did not flush. While not really a huge ordeal in real life, the unflushed urine and toilet paper did elicit a disgust response and the crowded feeling and noise of the restroom made me anxious. It's these types of dreams I wake up tired from.

October 11, 2021:

The dream begins in a nice restaurant. There is the overall sense that I disappoint my parents. My mother buys images/paintings from the restaurant that are displayed. I wander off to avoid the discomfort of that feeling of disappointment, only to find myself in danger. I find myself in a small office which has largely clear glass on all sides and I hide under a desk/table as a raptor (Jurassic Park version) begins to break through the glass to get to me. I see and hear the terrible breaking of the glass opposite me before the creature gets in to kill me. By the time the glass has started to give, terror overtakes the dream, which ends when the raptor reaches me. I woke and was up after that.

By engin akyurt on Unsplash

October 12, 2021:

In this dream, I confront my parents in their home about their shitty behavior in general and especially as of late. In real life, there was a falling out in August, largely stemming from mom’s stereotypical, anti-immigrant phrasing and anti-vax behavior, and this led to what has (so far) been 9 weeks of no contact and 2 months of non-payment as a punishment tactic of my mother for a “slight” my boyfriend made as she tried to play off rising cases of COVID-19 on “illegals” rather than people like her who refuse to get vaccinated - even for the sake of her disabled son who lives with her. In the dream, I’m told I need to “grow up” about the coronavirus by my father, who refuses to acknowledge his own bullshit in the dream when I try to make my argument. And when I get on my mother about how she is being petty by cutting off my payment, she nonchalantly pulls out a wad of cash. But my boyfriend and I have had enough, and I leave their house angry with them.

What really strikes me about this dream was that my parents were very much themselves in this dream - both acting and talking as they would if this were to really play out in real life. Furthermore, up until this dream, I had been more worried about combating my mother. This dream brought to the forefront that, despite my love and awe of my father, he is likely to side with my mother, and to combat one in real life means I have to combat both - which has always been a daunting task that I have seemingly never won.

October 13, 2021:

My parents, brother, and I are trying to catch this strange car-tram thing (basically, a bunch of cars connected like a train on an elevated track). I am the only one who manages to get in on time, but I am unable to get the tram to wait/stop. It departs through a busy city where Stitch (of Lilo and Stitch) in his animated form, seeks out other lost experiments. Dream then cuts to these missing experiments being found - either unconscious or dead - inside of a wall.

October 21-22, 2021:

The first dream on this night, story-tellers (myself included), are to tell a terrifying tale including a man/canine hybrid. The person just before me uses props - glow-in-the-dark paws and an equally glowing dog mask - that are horrifying, particularly at the end of the bed in the dark!

The second dream that night sees members of Marvel's The Avengers each dressing up as "Ghostface" from Scream. And someone is using the confusion of so many in disguise to rape others. This one was in third person. Can’t say I missed the rapey dreams….

By Autumn on Unsplash

October 22-23, 2021:

I dream I am with Brian Laundrie (Gabby Petito case) in an outdoor area. Feels remote and I feel like I am forced to be there - like I don’t want to risk pissing him off; overall threat. He uses a glass to scoop up water, uses one of those filter straw-things, then hands both to me. While filtered out, the water still tastes terrible. Why, dreams, why??? Why do I need tastes and smells in a dream? I chalk up this dream to all the media I was seeing about the case - and remains - in the days leading up to this. Few too many crime videos, maybe?

October 24-25, 2021:

In this dream, I am back at my parents’ home in my old room, discreetly trying to "get off" before school (I’m 30 and haven’t been in school for 13 years…). Transitions to talking cats and I try PVP (Player vs Player) to try and earn a mount in World of Warcraft, which I would likely not do.

October 25-26, 2021:

My dad and I are catching up on the front porch at my parents’ when my aunt arrives with a little girl and dog that she is to watch. My aunt asks me for advice on how to handle the nervous dog (who can indicate he understands human emotion/speech somehow).

October 28, 2021:

Friends, new coworkers, and family surprise me with a vacation to Hawaii, Vegas, and one other destination (quickly forgot upon waking) for my birthday. However, the wrong fuel is loaded before we can leave, so we don’t leave.

In the second dream that night, a cranky old neighbor tries to bitch out a younger man after his son cuts through the older man’s yard. A snowscape, the dad gives the cranky guy an insane, cartoonish run-around.

October 28-29, 2021:

Dream mom and I get into another huge blowout, but I sadly lost most of this dream upon waking, so context is MIA.

October 30, 2021:

Dream I am annoyed when I have to retrieve and heat up several cans of food and fetch various drinks for family and guests at my parents’. Also greatly annoyed by how I am treated and commanded by my parents as they stand around chatting.

October 30-31, 2021:

Mom, dad, and I fuss over getting the van loaded and packed to go for a trip. Overall feeling of frustration with everyone and the action of loading the van.

By Jake Blucker on Unsplash

I intend to continue this experiment until December 27, 2021; who knows what else I’ll dream about. Obviously, with the ongoing family drama and no contact for months, it makes sense to me that many dreams focus around my parents and contain feelings of anger and disappointment and also contain a lot of conflict and frustration with my parents.

Raptors are not really new to me; I watch the original Jurassic Park trilogy - my "comfort movies" - so frequently, raptors and tyrannosaurs are expected. Still, they are terrifying - as was the glass breaking! Not so sure why Stitch was involved in one, though - I haven’t seen that movie in some time. And at least there was only one dream that hinted at rape and only one where I died; I do fear how many rape/murder dreams I will have before this experiment ends, as they’ve always been somewhat common before I began using cannabis.

As stated previously, waking up and staying up immediately after a dream is common for me. Part of the experiment also sees me wearing my pedometer/heart-rate monitor that I wear on my wrist while I sleep now - previously, I found it to be a little too bulky to be comfortable, but I have made myself wear it to bed as well every night. So far, I have averaged 5-7 hours of sleep, though there were nights I got as little as 3-4 hours. Part of this is that I tend to do more nocturnal walking in the autumn/winter dark, so I wake after a little sleep to pace in the dim mornings. Part of it, I assume, is that I am not using recreational marijuana. I’ll have to pay more attention when I start using it again and keep my monitor on at night, but it seemed to me that I slept a bit longer when using recreational cannabis - possibly because I wasn't having dreams like these.

By Artur Łuczka on Unsplash

I will say, so far, these dreams are as exhausting as I remember. There’s always the sense of urgency - running out of time, or danger is nearing. I am anxious - or any emotion really just dominates the whole damn thing. It’s not enough that my waking hours are non-stop highways of fears and self-loathing shit-talk? I miss that sweet oblivion of “unplugging” with recreational weed - I will be most grateful when I conclude this 3-month experiment.

I kind of knew that, from my trips to South Dakota and other relative’s houses this year, my dreams were still like this and the only reason those weren’t worse earlier this year was because I used melatonin to fall and stay asleep. But to actually start writing them down and keeping track again….

I do wonder what I would have dreamed of had there not been family drama this year. So many of these feature my parents - it’s really unusual. But it’s been agonizing not to talk to them for all these weeks - I would usually call at least once a week and visit every few outside of watching my brother. My mother withholds to get back at me for my boyfriend’s words, my dad is probably waiting for me to call when I’m calm, and I…

...I don’t want to talk to anyone. I am so damn tired. I don’t want to - can’t - deal with my family at this point. My half-sister recently lost her dad to COVID-19; I don’t know who in the family needs to die before the rest of my family starts taking shit seriously, but I guess his death wasn’t it. So help me, if anything happens to my brother…

...I will never speak to a damn one of them again. It is their job to protect my brother in any way they can, yet they choose not to do something that could make all the difference. They laugh. At the virus. At me. At my partner. I don’t know how I reconcile all this. I don’t even know if I should. I would never abandon my brother, but I need distance from my family. I wrote weeks ago - in "Catalyst" - that I was partially numb mentally - it hasn’t gotten better. We hit overload - overheated. Things need to cool before that part of me can run again. And I feel so weirdly “offline” in my own life. Too much; I've checked out. I don’t know how I come back from this - I don’t recall having to handle something quite like this before.

By Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

I also changed my mind about how I handle the month of November; I had intended to try October 27-November 27 without any cannabis at all. But now, I think I’ll run out the rest of the CBD I have now first, and then deal with December - where holiday tension should be really telling - as sober as I can. I don’t know if I still won’t be talking with my family then, though the way the last few months have gone, I would not be surprised.

I don’t think these were the last dreams I’ll have during this experiment containing my parents.

Part two. Don't know why this was in Psyche and part two in journal...

Back of the journal. This was from a Lootcrate box years ago - would recommend, though we stopped using the service when we last moved.

coping
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About the Creator

Megan Baker (Left Vocal in 2023)

A fun spin on her last name, Baker enjoyed creating "Baker's Dozen" lists for various topics! She also wrote candidly about her mental health & a LOT of fiction. Discontinued writing on Vocal in 2023 as Vocal is a fruitless venture.

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