Kava + nightmares

[kavagirl37]

I am relatively new to drinking Kava and I must say I absolutely love it. It has helped me significantly cut down on my drinking, I am less anxious and moody and am so happy I found it. However I am waking up with nightmares pretty much every evening I drink Kava. Sometimes so disturbing it takes me a couple hours to fall back asleep. I am starting to think Kava is like a plant teacher similar to ayahuasca, but more mild. But really wish these nightmares would stop. Anyone else have this experience and does it go away eventually?

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[Edward]

I am relatively new to drinking Kava and I must say I absolutely love it. It has helped me significantly cut down on my drinking, I am less anxious and moody and am so happy I found it. However I am waking up with nightmares pretty much every evening I drink Kava. Sometimes so disturbing it takes me a couple hours to fall back asleep. I am starting to think Kava is like a plant teacher similar to ayahuasca, but more mild. But really wish these nightmares would stop. Anyone else have this experience and does it go away eventually?

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I have found that if I drink regularly without days off the lucid dreams/nightmares stop. Last night I slept 9 hours and don't remember a thing from going to sleep to waking up. If I take a week off when I'm on holiday say when I start drinking kava again I will get the dreams back for a while.

 

[Groggy]

I have lucid dreams when I drink kava, even if I am skipping days, I find it that I can avoid nightmares by doing 2 things. The first is I don't watch/read disturbing movies, clips etc before bed. For some reason I always end up incorporating it into my dreams somehow and it disturbs my sleep. The second thing, for me is a biggie and that is stress. I've been on a personal mission of sorts to eliminate any (usually self induced) stress in my life on a daily basis and that is beginning to translate into better and longer periods of sleep.

It could be said everyone is different but for me it's how it's been playing out.

 

[SelfBiasResistor]

I've always had very vivid (not lucid) dreams since I starting using kava. The vast majority of the time I enjoy these dreams. Sometimes, though, I have nightmares or feel mentally exhausted in the morning from all of the dream activity. Most nights I look forward to what my dreams have in store.

 

[Krunkie McKrunkface]

I find kava drastically reduces my lucid dreams, lucid dreams being where you have a dual consciousness, both awake and fully aware and being in rem sleep, dreaming, at the same time, usually triggered through a trained practice, finding a sign or some lettering in a dream, look away, look back, and if the lettering has changed, the reality-checking triggers you into the lucid dreaming state (text has no object permanence in dreams). It is possible, but very unlikely that anyone would have lucid dreams without specifically training for it, for months. And that involves constant reality checking while awake, so you do it in your sleep out of habit, and keeping extensive daily sleep journals. It is not easy, and takes work.

Now the vivid kava dreams are so good that I no longer have the need and desire for lucid dreams. I have had lucid kava dreams, but those are very rare and a dragon not worth chasing, IMO. But if it happens, cool.

 

[Travis]

I have pretty vivid dreams also. Usually its weird health things. Frequently I have dreams of me spitting my teeth out into my hand. Recently I had a dream some bugs were chewing into the bottom my feet and leaving these black holes. They feel fairly real upon waking up

 

[kavagirl37]

Yeah crazy dreams and I have never experienced such dream recall. But I wish I would have happier dreams! I am not particularly stressed but I do work with people with PTSD so I hear a lot of traumatic stories. Pretty much all of my dreams after kava are scary/disturbing, whereas before I might have had a nightmare maybe once a year. Or maybe it was just that I wasn't remembering my dreams...

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[Krunkie McKrunkface]

Yeah crazy dreams and I have never experienced such dream recall. But I wish I would have happier dreams! I am not particularly stressed but I do work with people with PTSD so I hear a lot of traumatic stories. Pretty much all of my dreams after kava are scary/disturbing, whereas before I might have had a nightmare maybe once a year. Or maybe it was just that I wasn't remembering my dreams...

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FWIW I had nightmares way back when I also drank alcohol. After I stopped drinking alcohol I have not had another nightmare since, and that was well over a year ago.

 

[kavagirl37]

Interesting. Well hopefully it will improve for me. I have been mostly drnking kava but have had some alcohol days while camping the past few weekends.

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[Intrepidus_dux]

I’ve noticed it depends on what else is in my system when I drink the kava that can give me weird/upsetting dreams. I have PTSD that’s actually gotten significantly better on kava. When I do have darker dreams, they’re not as disturbing as they used to be.

Also I’ve noticed that knowing why I feel strangely in the morning (from a weird dream) often helps me assimilate it into my day better rather than not remembering the dream. I had a period of time where I was sorting out a lot of internal issues on kava when I first started drinking it. 4-6 months. It was as if my body was saying “ok it’s safe for you to figure these things out now with the kava.” I’m sure glad I did! Moved past it and now just address issues as they pop up.