Altered states of consciousness by a slip in the natural loop of dream back to reality

I really love sleeping. I consider myself as a lucky because of my little over the top dreams (which I have like every night), ability to memorize them, my awareness of their functions and last but not least: different states of awareness of ones surroundings (real) while "kind" of dreaming.

I wouldn´t use the word suffer but I have had about every one "special" state of consciousness while sleeping ecsept night terrors and exploding head syndrome. Night terrors are condition where individual while in the most "deepest" state of sleep, where one doesn´t experience dreams, at least not so vivid than in the REM state, might start screaming (and moving)from the top of their lungs and almost never memorize it. H.R. Giger suffers from this condition. Not much known about it due the lack of ability to study this.

The other one which might sound quite funny is the exploding head syndrome. If you feel that your head explodes as sleeping it might usually be because hangover or migraine. This particular disorder is auditorial. You might have experienced a rapid muscle tension all over your body just when you are about to fall a sleep which makes you zap like a spring. Those who has this bizarre condition, at the point which I descriped above, hears a loud sound similiar to high explosion or something similiar loud noise. Man that must suck big time. As you might have figured it out, this is kind or rare disorder.

It is not unusual for me to experience awakening in a dream, not knowing that I´m still dreaming or wake up in reality but believe that I´m still dreaming eventhough my awareness of my surroundings (real) is much higher. Like dreams inside dreams. I have few times figured out that I´m actually dreaming inside the dreamscape, but I dont personally believe that one is even then able to manipulate the dream even though he/she is aware of the state. It might give the illusion, but I rather would like not believe that it is possible. Think about your mind. How huge and complex it is, more complex than human can handle escpesially in a dreamworld where the degree of freedom is usually much higher or dramatically lower. It should also be noted that REM state usually comes as clusters in a perioid of one to two hours and one REM "pulse" last´s just seconds(I have seen this with my own eyes, several few second "pulses" in a perioid medium of 1,5 hours) the longest one ever measured in 2004 was four minutes long. Usually just few seconds, while the experience emitted in consciousness can be vast. Speaking of packed information.

I have also experienced several times sleep walking. Eventhough while it is named as sleep walking in common language, I didn´t actually walk. Just rolled in bed, saw my surroundings (my home), don´t remember did I acquire scotopic vision but still my mind relation to my surroundings where strange, like my dreams where inserted in the real world. Actually not visually but more like just plain belief. I did something funny to my girlfriend at one time. Something like started to insert (dont get me wrong) medical machines in her body and stuff like that. It is impossible to say how long this lasted, my sense of time was really disturbed. Fell back to sleep seconds after awakening from this state. Would have been confusing but fell a sleep almost immediatly.

One thing which was more scarier experience (had these only two to three times few years ago) was something which is called as sleep paralysis. I woke up and saw my chloset which was in front of my eyes, it is white so I was able to see it even though I didn´t acquire scotopic vision even though my eyes were open, I couldn´t move my eyes speaking of the whole body. I also experienced hallucinations but not in my vision more like inside or behind my head and yeas they were visual hallucinations and they had somekind of preadded meaning. It is impossible to descripe how one can see with your eyes without any distraction and also see visuals behind your head. It scared the shit out of me. Every time it was scary as before. I remember also that I rationalized that if I could move my vision a little bit (I was that aware) from the one point which I stared thanks for the paralysis, the change in vision would probably wake me up. For nothing, I couldn´t move no matter how hard I tryied. If my memory serves, it actually hurted to try so hard but not sure was the pain physical. No idea how long it lasted but was too afraid to go back to sleep. It happened apx. 5:AM which is (if you sleep at normal times) REM state.

Oh, and the image above which I probably stole is a represent of the difference of pineal gland which synthetizes hormone which makes us sleep. Control (group) means that before the experiment, scientists has "controlled" this group one way or another. I dont know what that OSA means so I dont have enough information to say which one is the "patient" and which one the "normal". Has they controllable chosen a specific patient with a specific illness or has they controllable chosen a healthy and fairly normal man. Anyway one of them either sleeps all day or is awake all night.