Soon after I wrote this post about my melatonin megadose experiment, I experienced one of those wacky sleep phenomena that seem to happen when you futz with the pineal gland, as SSRIs are famous for and melatonin does as well. I had a short, vivid dream that ended with someone shooting me in the head with a shotgun. Weird, but very common in these situations, as are dreams/experiences of alien abduction, sleep paralysis, and a buzzing or exploding head.
Other effects that continued for months after stopping the melatonin were not as dramatic but a lot more entertaining. Dozing off while reading a book at night, in those 30 or so seconds when I was half asleep, I’d have a dream in which some factor of human existence of which I’d been hitherto ignorant was made suddenly clear to me with the force of revelation. I would then snap back awake.
Usually I could not remember the details. The ones I do remember explained such burning existential questions as why men in Louis XIV’s court at Versailles wore high heels (to protect their feet from sewage in the halls), why five years seems to be the limit for a good TV show (the writer buys a too-expensive new house and anxiety about the mortgage ruins his mental state), and why the Maya disappeared (they got bored and wandered off). As revelations go, it’s not exactly start-your-own-religious-following caliber, but I appreciated the distraction.
Is this a type of lucid dreaming? I’m a bit vague on the definition. (It’s referred to as hypnagogia. Now I know.) Go to erowid.org if you want more info on how to make common OTC supplements work for you in mind-altering ways.
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Illustration: detail from painting of Louix XIV by Hyacinthe Rigaud, 1701. {{PD-art}}