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10.08.2022

How to use galantamine for lucid dreaming

Galantamine, an Alzheimer's drug that is also marketed as a gray supplement, causes lucid dreaming. These are dreams in which you are aware that you are dreaming and you can decide for yourself what you dream.

Study
Stephen LaBerge is an American psychophysiologist who has devoted much of his academic career to studying lucid dreaming. He is the founder of the Lucidity Institute, [lucidity.com] an organization that generates, collects and disseminates knowledge about lucid dreaming.

In 2018, LaBerge published an open trial in which he experimented with 121 participants in a Lucidity Institute dream course. The participants were already aware of what lucid dreaming was and wanted to master techniques to induce lucid dreaming.

A number of those techniques have been developed by LaBerge. One involves being woken up after 4-5 hours of sleep, staying awake for half an hour and then going back to sleep. This technique works even better if you take a light dose of galantamine during the wake interval period.

Another technique is that you agree with yourself that you will know when you are dreaming by recognizing a 'dream sign'. Everyone has a few dream signs that keep coming back in dreams.

Galantamine
In his study, LaBerge used those techniques, including the administration of galantamine. Galantamine is a naturally occurring substance in snowdrops that inhibits the enzyme cholinesterase in the brain. As a result, the concentration of acetylcholine increases and learning processes can run more smoothly.

A synthetic version of galantamine is officially on the market as a drug for early forms of Alzheimer's, but the bulk of the galantamine produced is intended for the gray market where galantamine is in use as a nootropic and a dream drug.

Above you can see how LaBerge used galantamine. He repeated his experiment three nights in a row, one time giving his subjects a placebo without galantamine [G0], the other time a placebo with 4 milligrams of galantamine [G4] and another time a placebo with 8 milligrams of galantamine [G8].

The study participants had told how often they had had lucid dreams in the past 6 months [BASE].

Results
Galantamine induced lucid dreaming. The higher the dose, the more effective the drug.

Conclusion
"Altogether the current results show that galantamine substantially increases the frequency of lucid dreams with a minimal side effect profile, suggesting it is well-placed as a method for inducing lucid dreams, and has the potential to make lucid dreaming available to a wider population", writes LaBerge.

"While more studies documenting the safety profile of this substance are needed, the potential of making lucid dreaming widely accessible also has implications for scientific research."

"As one of the challenges for conducting scientific research on lucid dreaming is its relative infrequency, making the state more accessible would increase the efficiency of the collection of larger datasets, which would greatly facilitate research in this field."

Caveat
Galantamine is a drug with a whole range of side effects and contraindications. For example, a frequently reported side effect is that some people have trouble falling asleep when taking galantamine.

It might be a good idea to do some research before experimenting with galantamine.

Source:
PLoS One 13(8): e0201246.

More:
Food for dreams 19.07.2022
Vitamin B6, the dream vitamin 11.02.2016
Dream what you want with DMAE 16.04.2014

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