Posted by Don_Bristol on January 11, 2005, at 9:48:06
In reply to Re: How to stop vivid dearming / nightmares?, posted by King Vultan on January 10, 2005, at 23:10:21
> > My girlfriend has very vivid dreams. And sometimes these vivid
> > dreams are equally vivid nightmares.
> >
> > She can wake up after 9 or 10 hours sleep feeling very exhausted
> > and not rested.
> >
> > She currently takes 20 mg Lexapro and has done so for about two
> > years. However she has always had the dreaming/nightmares
> > even when she was not taking any meds.
> >
> > Is there anything she can take to reduce the dreaming? Or at
> > least to reduce how much of them is remembered?
> >
> > (By contrast I am the other extreme and I almost never know what
> > I have dreamed and I would say I have not dreamed anything.)
> >
> > Thank you.
Todd writes:
>
> FWIW, Nardil had the greatest tendency to suppress REM sleep of
> any of the 10+ drugs I've been on--I really do not recall dreaming
> at all while on it. I paid a price when withdrawing from it, however,
> as I suffered REM rebound syndrome, a fairly nasty and unpleasant
> side effect.
>
> Parnate, OTOH, has not greatly decreased my ability to dream, even
> at 60 mg/day. The small dose of Risperdal I have recently added to
> it has increased my dreaming somewhat more also. In general,
> however, MAOIs seem to suppress REM sleep.
Todd, I recall reading somewhere that taking SSRIs can cause very vivid dreaming (or nightmares).It was this which made me think that vivid deaming can have a clear biochemical origin. And then I figured that it may not be so outlandish to think that if the biochemistry caused by the SSRIs were reversed then it might result in reduced vividness.
In my friend's case her extremely vivid dreaming pre-dates her SSRI, Lexapro, by a very long time so I don't think there is any cause & effect there. I believe it is just a co-incidence.
But I am left with the question, how can she reduce the extreme vividness of her dreaming by using meds?
poster:Don_Bristol
thread:440197
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050108/msgs/440592.html