Vivid Dreaming/ Hypnagogia

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I've always had sleep paralysis and issues with hypnagogia. To explain what that is - it is just "before sleep hallucinations". I guess you can only understand it if you have it and I believe it's more common that a lot of people think.
Anyway recently (over the past year) I've been experiencing extremely vivid dreams and hypnagogia. Like I've been having full on conversations with either people I know or people I don't know on a regular basis when I'm half asleep. I worried for a while that I may be cracking up until I heard about hypnagogia etc. I think it's probably a good sign that these hallucinations have never happened when I'm not trying to get to sleep but I still find the experience extremely disturbing. I think that fact I am on anti-depressant medication doesn't help.
But does anybody else experience stuff like this and have they found out any tricks to prevent it from happening?

I had seep paralysis while half-awake once. When I woke up I was convinced I had seen a ghost, even though it was a friend whom I knew were alive. I read somewhere months ago that everyone experience this atleast once in their lives, it's normal. But if it's normal as frequent as you are experiencing it now, I really cant say.

I get it every second night or so. The hallucinations can be pretty intense, it fascinates me but scares me too sometimes. Sometimes I don't go into sleep paralysis but for some reason I'm still aware of the whole process of falling asleep so I'll start dreaming. The majority of the time if I'm aware of the whole process of falling asleep, its because I go into sleep paralysis though. Drugs definitely influence it to a great extent. When I fall asleep codeine or morphine I get real bad sleep paralysis. When I'm on benzos like valium or xanax, I'm completely immune to sleep paralysis. When I fall asleep on GHB, I'm immune to sleep paralysis but if I'm on a combo of GHB and an opiate, I go into sleep paralysis but there are no hallucinations.

Hearing people talking is a pretty common hallucination I get in sleep paralysis. The other night I heard what sounded like an anchorman broadcasting the news lol. When the voices talk to me, it freaks me out though. I heard this voice whispering in my ear a while ago and I could feel the wind (from the breath) on my ear, it was a bit disturbing. Sleep paralysis is actually a blessing in disguise. If you get it every night, then you get to have lucid dreams every night. As for tricks for preventing it from happening, the one trick I know of is taking benzodiazepines. While opiates give me mad sleep paralysis, other people claim that they cure their sleep paralysis so thats worth a try too. Benzos are much easier to obtain though, if you tell your doc you're having anxiety, they'll prescribe you a benzo so you can test it out.

I get these sometimes, but its normally after I wake up, particularly if its still dark. Theres no paralysis though, and a few times they have continued for a few minutes even after I get out of bed and start walking around. That hasnt happened in a few years though.

I have found examples of this in the literature under a few different topics. The classic/paranormal/folklore reference is called the Night Hag/Night Mare. Refers to feeling like someone is sitting on top of you. Its even been brought up as a possible explanation for (some) alen abduction cases. Not sure I would want to experience this! Along with sleep Apnea its one of the few sleep difficulties I have never had.

Sincerely,
Matthew

You could try a study of lucid dreaming.

When I encounter bad things in life the first thing I generally do is try and use them to my advantage.

That sounds to me like a particularly useful tool in accessing the realm of lucid dreams.

There is an excellent book, I believe it is by a Phd named Stephen Laberge. It is appropriately titled 'Lucid Dreaming'.

I have a lot of these hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations, while drifting into sleep or waking up. For example I often hear my name called or something shortly said while drifting into sleep. While waking up I often hear music or sense distinctive smells. In this waking up -state I can see also visual hallucinations. It is always a person in the room. Few examples: Once a man in a 1700 century soldier outfit stood beside my bed, once a bearded man in an 1880-1900 outfit smiled to me, once a boy sat in the tree outside my window. They disappear usually quickly, when you fully wake up. Mostly they have not been frightening experiences and intrigue me for a long time after. Once the experience frightened me though. I had just woken up and saw a little child in my room standing beside the chair watching a painting I had laying in the chair. Then the kid turned and looked straight into me. Light started to come out of his/her eyes and he/she turned fully into light and disappeared. After that I was afraid to go to sleep for a while.

Lucid dreaming is when you are aware that you are dreaming. It has also happened to me a couple of times. Sleep paralysis I have never had. I am able to move during these hypnopompic visuals. I have also one out of body experience in a similar state. I tried to get back to my body, but couldn’t. I realized I don’t have legs and hands to move me while up there. Then I suddenly was in the bed and “woke up”.

I am not crazy (I don't know why, but I felt like I needed to emphasize that after writing all this) and I do not have any medication. But, oh man, these things are interesting to have!

I have the feeling that I'm falling and sometimes I think I hear someone calling me. I could swear I heard a child laughing from deep inside my pillow one time.

Maybe that's what happened when I was really little and I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a tiny glowing man run behind my bedside table lamp. That memory always puzzled me. I was afraid of the dark until I was 9 years old, possibly because of that.

This hypnogogic state is something I have sought after as a lucid dreamer. I find that when I awaken or am awoken from a dream in that sleepy state of 10 seconds or so of remembering the dream it is vivid enough to continue in my mind while awake. Because I am awake and aware I am able to hold on to that awareness as I fall back into sleep and be able to control what happens in my dreams ie, flying, visiting my control room, finding interesting people and things, etc...

For the uninitiated I will tease you with the concept of practicing your favorite musical instrument while you are sleeping. Many musicians have reported breakthroughs or getting over blocks by practicing in their dreams.

This is quack science of course.

I've always had the hallucinations upon waking... almost like a dream continues into the room. I believe it is hypnopompia.
A small girl going through my closet, posters on my wall that I do not remember then sliding and evaporating, a small man dancing on the blanket, music playing, stationary objects rolling or sliding, men dressed in white robes surrounding my bed, etc.
Strange.
It will always mess with me a little bit. I believe them at first to be reality but there is a definite "switch" feeling in my brain and all hallucinations go away and the fog clears.
I like that "switch" feeling. It's like "back to reality now."

Aha, hopefully this sort of thing describes similar experiences I have a lot. Often I wake up being so sure that I have seen a spider in my room, and I physically jump out of bed, switch on the light, only to realise there is nothing there, but I am so convinced that I saw a spider that I pull the bed covers back and peer all around, expecting to see one, but there is no spiders anywhere in my room (hopefully), and so I switch off the light again and jump back into bed, still shaking with fright and laying there on edge, then after a few minutes I suddenly become wise and know that it was all in my head, and I fall asleep again. This doesn't happen every night, but if it does happen it only usually happens once in the night, sometimes twice, but usually once. I usually get this on rainy nights in the summer and autumn, because those are the seasons the big, ugly spiders come out more, and they usually come in more when it's raining. So I get it in my head that one is on my bed, which makes me wake up in horror.
Also, occasionally I wake up thinking something's going to fall off my wardrobe and will wake everyone up, so I quickly leap out of bed and run upto my wardrobe, holding out my arms to try and catch whatever it is that I think was going to fall, and then I try to feel where this object is, and by doing that I actually do knock something down (what wasn't supposed to fall), and the sound makes me jump and makes me realise what the f**k am I doing, and I get back into bed feeling all confused and wondering why on earth I do this and is it normal. But it's more so the spider thing that happens to me.

I really don't know why I do this so frequently. Nobody else I know does this (who I've asked), but I do know that there are people who this happens to. I really want to look more into this, but I can't find any information about it on Google, and I have wrote up about it on another internet forum a few weeks ago but nobody replied for some reason, which was annoying because I really want to know more about this.

Yes, it happens to me. It happens so much that I forget how I used to feel when I was about to fall asleep. Auditory hallucinations are common and images flashing into my mind. But upon waking I have nightmarish scenarios where I'm either being choked or drowning or something pleasant like that and the next moment I wake up and I'm in my bedroom, freaked out of my mind.

I think it has to do with stress, atmospheric changes (my epilepsy flares up around that time too) and if I go to bed later than usual.