Have you ever been so tired that you went to sleep in your dream?
I have never slept through a full night in my life.
What does that mean specifically if you’ve never done it before?
You don’t know anything else, so you assume that everyone else does not sleep, too.

Even as a child, I was awake at night.
There was always something to do. Charging batteries for an RC car, for example.
Sometimes I just didn’t get to sleep (and didn’t do it).
Yes, I was very very tired as a child.
Now and then I thought on the way to school that no one would notice if I just lay down on a meadow somewhere and slept a little.
But you are a child. “The others manage that too.”
I have never questioned it.

In all these years I became a professional in “dreaming like you are awake”.
Many people know the moment when you take control of your dream.
For me, this was always the normal state.
Since I can remember anything, it is just like that.

One problem with this is that every now and then there are overlaps.
And worse.

But first, fast forward to the point when I was deemed “not normal.”
By then, I had already been in this world for 20 years.
My girlfriend, with whom I was already living, felt that my nocturnal behavior was well worth discussing.
I was completely surprised.
All you people out there usually sleep through the night?
What the hell?

So that made me the only one with something “different” for now.
So not normal.
Maybe sick?
I had to do something.

And that’s when it all started.
How do I learn this?

Or better yet: what am I doing wrong?

Things / methods i tested:
Valerian, tea, Straight-X living (no coffee, no alcohol, no sugar, no fun-at-all)
Endurance sports
Absolute exhaustion
Shifting sleep times hourly
Increase/decrease the amount of sleep

Then we went to the sleep lab — they couldn’t find anything wrong.
My brain remains awake or only briefly goes into deep sleep.

OK, there are medications.

I don’t want to list them all now, but from doxylamine to benzos everything was there.
Result: all these drugs degrade very slowly in the body.
Many have a half-life of over 10 hours.
Go to work with it. I work in advertising/sign making/designing and was not even able to read.
Reading words. Not even that. You can get through a few days with it.
But nothing i woul recommend.
That also applies to CBD. It may be that many find it totally great.
But you have to take a lot until it has accumulated enough for it to work.
And then it takes a long time until you can concentrate on a topic again.
THC is no better. Especially because you can still feel the effects a few days later.

The bottom line is that I have acquired a lot of knowledge about various drugs.
While sleeping :) (or at least trying to sleep)

Now you have to know that I rather solve problems in my head than by trying.
I can mentally send myself to “nirvana” for hours and assemble things there.
Others around me have called it daydreaming.

So that’s where I am. At night I control my dreams (now and then) and during the day I “daydream”.
So what inevitably happens at some point?

Overlaps.

Imagine you are dreaming about nothing more than normal everyday life.
You wake up in the dream and go through your normal everyday life.
Getting up, bathroom, breakfast, going to work, working….
It feels damn real.
Every now and then you doubt whether you are awake or dreaming.
So I had to come up with an exit strategy for when things get dangerous.
My method is “the light switch”. I have trained myself not to turn on a light in a dream. Turning a light on means to wake up.
Of course, my brain likes to trick me and simulate something like a power outage in the dream.
My brain can be an asshole sometimes.
But an exit strategy is very important. Many “dreamers” report sleep paralysis in nightmares.
There it is helpful to be able to wake up. That’s exactly what the light switch does. Click and wake up. Took about three month to get it working.

The worst so far was a near-accident on vacation.
That happened in reality and was not a dream.
I almost got hit by a car with my bike and child-trailer with my 2 year old son and wife.
My panicked brain immediately played out many possible scenarios and I did not get out of that state.
For about three weeks, I kept checking my reality to see if I might not be in a coma and my child and wife are dead because of me.
That was a tough time, but today I am sure I am awake.
With a happy child and wife.

Have I found a solution?
Hell yeah: YES!
The solution is: I don’t have a problem. I have an ability.
I can control my damn dreams,
pick up problems in my head even weeks later like in a workshop in my head,
I can react to problems at any time of the night,
need little sleep
and can put parts of my brain to sleep during the day.
Pretty cool if you can handle it, isn’t it?

Don’t let anyone tell you you have a problem because you are the only one.