Forbin
Senior Member
- Messages
- 966
The title of this thread reminded me that, when I first became ill in 1983, my doctor recommended L-tryptophan to help me to get sleep.
The first (and only) night that I took it, I experienced an extraordinarily odd sleep state in which my mind was jumping around from thought to thought, image to image as though I was watching a TV that was switching channels every second or so. It was something like the polar opposite of lucid dreaming because I had no ability to control, slow down or be involved with any of it. It wasn't a nightmare, just an experience of extremely annoying, seemingly endless randomness that I could not wake up from.
Needless to say, I never took L-tryptophan again, although I can't prove that it was responsible for this unique dream state.
I'm curious if anyone else has ever experienced a dream state like this, with or without sleep aids.
[In 1991, L-tryptophan was banned in the US due to a 1989 outbreak of Eosinophilia–myalgia syndrome that killed at least 37 people. The outbreak was thought to have been due to some toxic contaminant resulting from a foreign manufacturing process of L-tryptophan. The exact cause was never determined, however. It appears that, in the US, you can once again obtain domestically produced L-tryptophan as of 2002.]
The first (and only) night that I took it, I experienced an extraordinarily odd sleep state in which my mind was jumping around from thought to thought, image to image as though I was watching a TV that was switching channels every second or so. It was something like the polar opposite of lucid dreaming because I had no ability to control, slow down or be involved with any of it. It wasn't a nightmare, just an experience of extremely annoying, seemingly endless randomness that I could not wake up from.
Needless to say, I never took L-tryptophan again, although I can't prove that it was responsible for this unique dream state.
I'm curious if anyone else has ever experienced a dream state like this, with or without sleep aids.
[In 1991, L-tryptophan was banned in the US due to a 1989 outbreak of Eosinophilia–myalgia syndrome that killed at least 37 people. The outbreak was thought to have been due to some toxic contaminant resulting from a foreign manufacturing process of L-tryptophan. The exact cause was never determined, however. It appears that, in the US, you can once again obtain domestically produced L-tryptophan as of 2002.]
Last edited: