I strongly agree with Sigrid on this one. My "bad dream" drug of choice is Ambien. When I first started taking it, it worked wonders for my sleep habits, but then the nightmares started, once in a while at first, then almost every night. I had read that one of the main side effects of Ambien was nightmares, and sure enough, as soon as I stopped taking it, I was back to normal dreams.
The worst part about the Ambien nightmares is that they were what are called "waking dreams;" I've also heard them called "night terrors." In these nasty little items, the entire dream feels very, very real, and you become convinced that you are awake. Because they are were so real, they never featured far-out monsters or other bizarre elements. Instead, they usually found me asleep in my bed, where I am suddenly woken up by a noise coming from either in the house or outside my window. It is usually dawn in my dream, or rather, the sky outside is a kind of sickly, pale light that just doesn't look right. As I "wake up" in the dream, there is a growing sense of dread, as I'm sure there is someone right outside my door or window and they are about to break in. Loud thumping noises usually started then, and my bed would even start to shake the noises were so loud. By this time, I was always completely terrified and I would try to scream--well, of course no sound comes out. At this point I am cowering in bed, sweating, and I start to tell myself (still in the dream, mind you) that this is only a dream and that it will go away if I can just wake up. So, with superhuman effort, I force myself to wake up, and it works...kind of. There is a moment of calm and peace as I realize I am awake, but then I look around and the fear rises in my throat...the noises start pounding again, and I experience a huge shock as I realize that I am STILL asleep and right back in the same situation--in my bed experiencing a nightmare.
This cycle repeats itself over and over. Sometimes I am lucky and I manage to REALLY wake up after just one or two trips into the dream. Most often, however, absolute terror would set in as I would "wake up" six or seven times, only to have the horror repeat. Each time this happens, it ends the exact same way--after repeated attempts to wake all the way up out of the dream, I am finally able to scream while in the dream, and as soon as I do, I feel my wife shaking me and calling my name, waking me up. That was it--I was finally awake for real, but usually I really WAS screaming, or at least moaning, as I woke up (this is what prompted her to start shaking me and calling my name, because she could finally tell I was having a nightmare that was bad enough to wake her up!). When she finally wakes me, it always takes a couple minutes to get my bearings, a couple minutes in which I am still incredibly scared, although I am starting to come down. Sometimes I would even be sobbing as I awoke, because in the dream I was pretty convinced I was about to die.
I can't even begin to explain how REAL these dreams were (I'm switching to past tense now, because I haven't had one in ages, knock wood). Each one was in my real bedroom, and as I awoke out of each "layer," I would briefly be convinced that I was really awake finally, only to be jolted back into the terror when I realized I wasn't. Each time that happened, it would trigger more attempts to yell in the next layer, more thrashing around, more fear. By the final layer, I swear I thought my heart was going to bust out of my chest, I would be drenched in sweat, my mouth would be like paste (always fun screaming like that), and, as I said, often I would be in tears. I have never experienced a sense of relief like I did when I woke up out of these horrible, horrible dreams.
I have since heard these dreams called night terrors or waking dreams, and I think there was one other name I heard too that I can't recall right now. When I told my dad about these, he said he used to experience these all the time too, even though he never used Ambien (he did use some other pain or sleep drugs though). He agreed with me wholeheartedly that they are the most terrifying thing he has ever experienced, either awake or asleep.
Anyone else get these "real" dreams that just scare the bejesus out of you? I'll take a good old "vampire or werewolf chasing me" dream ANYTIME over one of these nasty things.
Brad
