I stopped smoking MJ recently (just for a while) and have been having very vivid dreams, as usually happens during a break. I wrote about my melatonin nightmares in a recent post.

Anyway, I've had an interest in lucid dreaming but the only time I've ever been aware I was dreaming was during a recurring dream I had as a child, which I described in another thread. I've never done any conscious work to try to have lucid dreams, though I have read some of Robert Bruce's Astral Dynamics book. I certainly was not trying to have a lucid dream when I went to sleep last night.

I was at some sort of event, a concert or something, and after it was over I wandered into a nearby room where someone was playing piano. He asked me if I played and when I said no he told me I was in the wrong place, so I left. I wandered around the streets looking for my car, but everything was wrong for the location I thought I was at. I wandered down an alley, and somehow I ended up in a small room with two guys, neither of whom I recognized.

One of them started to tell me that he could tell when he was dreaming because he could do things he could not do when he was awake. "Like this.", he said then walked over and very casually stuck the front half of his face a few inches right into the wall. When he pulled it out and looked at me I didn't even feel surprised at this and I said to him, "Yeah, but I'm not dreaming." Then the other guy came over in front of me and said, "Yes you are." All at once I realized Wow, I am dreaming aren't I? then instantly woke up in bed. I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down the dream before I could forget it.

I remember that Bruce says that when first becoming lucid many people will awake as soon as they realize it, and it takes a while to get used to it enough to hang on.

Very cool, but very strange too. I'm thinking it might be time to start keeping a dream journal.

I've only had one really vivid lucid dream that I can remember (I too am a regular MJ user). It happened after I fell and broke several bones during a psilohuasca trip. This was a few days after the incident. I was taking a break from the MJ and taking a little codeine to get past the pain enough to sleep (I usually only take opiates when I get tattooed).

So I find myself in an apartment in Chicago, filled with people I could vaguely recognize. There was a lot of drama and tension in the space, suffocating... So I left. Outside, the city was oppressive- looking very much like the Blade Runner vision if LA, but even more intensely dark and impersonal. Black clouds filled the sky, roiling and boiling and reaching down to the rooftops with black probing tentacles. I walked through the desolation and found myself walking along between train tracks. There were countless rows of tracks going into the distance in either direction against a backdrop of this dark, desolate urban landscape. Trains rolled by in either direction, continuously, black and apocalyptic, the trains of hell. I could feel the wind of their passing tugging constantly at my clothing as I walked, huddled to keep from being brushed by trains, eyes on the greasy trash-strewn gravel at my feet. It couldn't have been more oppressive.

Then it hit me: Wait a minute- this is a dream! That means... I can fly! And so I took off I to the sky.

The blackness cleared and soon I found myself flying over a colorful idyllic forest scene. I followed a glittering river for a while before settling beneath a tall tree on a grassy hill. The tree hung heavy with dew-covered clusters of purple flowers, rattling gently in the breeze. I took a deep breath of the fragrant air. Aaaahhh.

And then I woke up.

i had read about lucid dreaming in my teens, into my twenties. i was very into even just the idea of it. i tried and tried and, of course, the more i tried the further away i got. i noticed certain chemicals and medications made my dreams more vivid and memorable; but lucidity evaded me. while quitting cigs i had very vivid dreams while wearing my nic patches to bed. i was (mistakenly) mixed up with the high priests of psychiatry at the time, bad scene man...for me leastwise. i will admit, however, that, retrospectively, i learned a lot in my experiences with the men in white coats. i certainly was prescribed 'medications', and chemicals i would, otherwise, not be exposed to. anyhoo, i was first prescribed the tricyclic antidepressant Amitriptyline in 2002, or so. not long after i started realizing that not only did i remember my dreams, knew i was dreaming and could do what i wanted, (more or less); but ALSO my dreams took place in the same 'city-scape' every night. after a few years (on and off with Amitriptyline)my dreams each night picked up where i had left off the night before.
i am currently on a low dose of the Amitriptyline, not so much as an antidepressant, but for nerve damage in my back. -the medication is also used for neuropathy, any sort of pain, as a fill-in for the huge doses of opiates/oids i would need just to walk. my goal is no meds, of course, but it's complicated.- SO, now i know where i'm going each night, and who i'll see...but not what will happen (so far!:lol i noticed, fairly recently, that if my dog is whining to go out; the phone is ringing; kids crying, etc. i hear those 'outside' noises while 'inside' my dream. i am fully aware that it is a sound (or touch, or smell, or whatever) from my 'waking life'. i know i must get up, and act upon it. i occasionally have to do something nutty to wake up. the other night i could not wake up, i heard the dogs barking in awake world...it's like the sound is coming from the sky; but i know, in my sleep world, that the sound is from my awake world. i act upon the outside stimuli. in this instance i was forced to climb onto a dream table, in a dream restaurant, and basically dream face-plant into the dream concrete. i sat up straight in bed...breathing fast and hard. i don't usually have to do something so severe to wake up, but i was sleepin' HARD.
i'm fersure not saying anyone should try using tryciclics in order to lucid dream. i am not sure that's what started it. i have read a bit on the effects of that particular chemical on sleep pattern, on REM sleep, etc. there does seem to be at least a small connection. what that connection is, i couldn't currently say. WOW, i'm long-winded...sorry. when it started it was small pieces of dreams...scattered, fragmented, and forgettable; much like you described the guys putting there heads into the wall. a lot like that, actually. it's good that you wrote it down. i strongly believe that if i had been keeping a dream journal from 'go', it would have progressed faster. as it is now, as i start to lay myself down to sleep, as i slip into that twilight, i am aware (before i'm asleep) of what's coming. what, and who, i will encounter; just as when you awake in the morning you become aware of the things you're supposed to do that day, in awake world (i.e. going to work/school/meetings/friends you'll see, etc). all i know, really, is once i had those first glimpses of lucidity, it was not long before it grew and blossomed into it's own. i now feel as though my dream world is as important to my being, as my wakefulness(?)
my friends and family are aware of this happening. as 'crazy' as it might sound, the more the dreams and my awake life mingle, or overlap, the more content i become; awake and asleep.
P.S.-i am also a heavy MJ user, and it only occurred to me now, after reading your posts, that it does get more vivid during breaks. i'm also able to recall the dreams better, and they stick with me longer after i awake. good call...i hadn't made the connection. cheers!

There are several types of lucid dreams..
The most common is the [DILD].. dream initiated lucid dream..
There is also the method called a [WILD] wake initiated lucid dream]..
The WILD is about the highest quality lucid dream you can have and is.. VERY rewarding..!
There is the [SILd] method [sense initiated lucid dream.]..
Out of Body experiances.. have been acomplished from a [WILD] dream state...
There are even more methods ..including using supliments like [GALANTAMINE] ..caffeine...and other supliments plus nutropics to boost mental performance...

No time to explane all of them ..but you may want to try this method ..
Normally one must practice ..[dream recall].. for a few weeks by waking after a dream and recording or writing down the dream a way to get aquanted with your dream content better..

First go to bed a normal time and sleep at least 4 or 5 hours and wake at [WBTB] wake back to bed...

Depending when you get to sleep...WBTB may put you up at say..2:30am...

[this is the best time because the last half of your sleep period [later in morning]..is durring.. [high REM sleep].. when most dreaming goes on!

While you are up..sit up for atleast 30 45 minutes [keep your room dark!.. and
[repeate your intent] that you will be aware in your later morning dreams..

Repeat this intent a bunch of times ...[and really mean it!]

Then return to sleep but also try to maintain an awareness for a while...try to focus on sounds or dream images as they flash past your closed eyes..

Try to concintrate on your own breathing for as long as posible doing so helps you maintain a lighter level of sleep...

Sleeping Too deeply is NOT good for lucid dreaming ,,
Lucid dreaming is a [light sleep game]...

If you can stay relaxed and alert while your body falls asleep and get past sleep paraylisis and into the dream realm you have a chance to become lucid in your dream..

Even if you dont become lucid on first try .you may find that you just had a super vivid dream! and recall much of it!
Ther are more methods this takes time but can be rewarding..
Taking brain supliments helps a lot.. but is always better to do it naturally if posible...
good luck...