So tired of people always associating Dreams with drug use, it's a cultural influence and quite often can damage the brain which further stigmatizes dreaming which is a natural neurological process and important for so many important reasons.

Check this article I wrote on why sleep is important.
Thread: Why healthy sleep is important for learning, memory, cognitive health, and dreams.

I've always frowned on bad advice from people who don't understand dreaming as a developmental skill and often recommend bad dreaming advice like a slap on a nicotine patch, or do some narcotic, or take a medical treatment like galantamine when simply just developing dreaming as a skill to have dreams is what most people outside of these influences do, and it is how any skill develops.

Not only is it costly to buy stimulants, neurotropic, psychotropic medicines, and narcotics, but some can also cause serious long-term problems with sleep and dreams. I cover the surface of these in my fourth course but now I want to get serious about the misconceptions about drug use for dreaming when alternatives like developing it as a skill naturally are equally if not more effective and beneficial, especially for the long-term when all of us face cognitive decline with dreams as we age.

Of course, for medical clinical purposes, these are fine. I'm talking about when they are sought for because they have some bump in dream-effects and people who don't need them take them on the bad advice of the Internet. I'm all for medicinal uses when required, just not for uses if no clinical reason exists to do so. It's a big misconception that we need to take anything other than nutritional food, excessive and maybe natural supplements (even those can be debated) for healthy cognition and dream development. Only if other underlying issues that require clinical intervention should that be sought on the advice of a medical professional, not a non-scientifically minded influencer with a youtube channel bandwagoning every dream-drug trend because dreaming does have an interest for many people.

For a very long time, I've been aware of the risks/benefits of medicines and drugs when it relates to sleep and dreams. It's a question that comes up often when I have talks and discussions, and always my answer is unless clinical, they aren't needed. Always try to work with natural sleep, natural dreaming patterns and focus on the development of functional dreaming. It's just a little hump for most people if they finally figure out its just practice, routine, and training to develop dreaming as a skill.

There are three areas that I'll focus on where drugs can impact our sleep/dream cycle.

Premeditate Sleep

Drug-induced hypnagogic disorders

Sleep

Drug-induced REM disorders
Drug-induced REM behavioral disorders
Substance-induced nightmare disorders

Post Sleep

Drug-induced hypnopompic disorders

I've helped people by providing information on how to overcome nightmares and quite often the link for them is some type of substance use. For most, it's an embedded fear. Others it's latent PTSD that's embedded. I believe these can be alleviated to some degree with knowing how to dream. Self-help can only go so far, as some conditions are clinical but we all cope with anxiety, stress, fear, depression and if we manage this before it becomes clinical then it's good to know what is available.

I'm all for healthy dreaming and sure I wrap it up as a type of art-form and entertainment with my interests of having playful gamified dreams. But that's me, I like making dreaming fun for myself. I've seen even in my own dreams how alcohol can vastly distort and affect dream content. Once I had a codeine pain-killer and that was a mess so I'll never take codeine medicine as a result of the impact on my dreams. Even weed vastly disrupted and distorted the way I dream like Alcohol I've quit those substances 12 years ago even though my use was limited, alcohol/weed was social my friends/family were big drinkers and it taught me the fragile balance of healthy dreaming when exposed to stimulants. Now I just drink coffee, but let the effects wear off before sleep. Coffee as a stimulant can interrupt REM cycles and if you read the above-linked article you might consider why a healthy approach to dream development is probably the right choice for anyone.

Sometimes I wonder if people really know what a fully functional stable dream practice is like when there are no hallucinatory qualities, the dream is stable and even the premeditated sleep is balanced, beautiful, and scenic. Comparing that to a hallucinatory style experience is entirely different.

I don't view the hippocampal replay of a stable memory as a hallucination. Nor a visual idea that is stable as hallucinatory. I know the difference between hallucination and thinking in a coherent focused manner.

Many people like myself who have been in this idea of simply participating in the dreaming process often toss away anything that distorts or impedes the experience. Drug-free healthy dreams, Drug-free healthy life. I'll post it once it's all compiled. So far looks very, very daunting a project but likely invaluable as a resource for the non-clinical people using them for the sake of dreams.