DOSE:

repeated

oral

Melatonin

(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

In 2002 I was going through some very rough times personally, and having trouble sleeping. A friend of mine reccommended Melatonin, which he'd been using successfully for some time. I took one pill (I believe they were 3 mg each) at about 10:00 and within half an hour I had begun to feel the effects: A calm, relaxed, and heavy sensation of sleepiness that was so strong I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. This sense of calm definitely relieved a great deal of the personal stress I'd been carrying with me, and I was excited about the prospect of a good night's sleep.
Just before 11, I went to bed, and experienced what was probably the most intense dreaming of my life. The dreams (most of which I cannot remember) were extremely bizarre and twisted; not nightmares, necessarily, but involved such strange visions that I kept waking up, only to realize with dread that the melatonin was making me so tired, I would soon fall asleep again. I spent the greater part of the night in this abbreviated sleep cycle of drifting off, only to be startled awake by the strange dreams, and then unable to prevent myself from drifting again. The one dream I remember from this night involved a small girl with African skin tone and features, but her face and body were a mass of wrinkled skin, so deeply creased that it obscured any facial features-- except for a single large eye in the center of her forehead. Very bizarre.

It should probably be noted that during this time I was using alcohol, cannabis, mushrooms, and various dissociatives fairly heavily, although I hadn't ingested any other chemicals on the day in question.

Needless to say, this experience frightened me off of melatonin for a while, but a few years later I decided to try it again, in an attempt to induce intense dreams like those I'd had before. This time, nothing happened. I started by taking half a pill on the first occasion, then a whole pill on the second, two pills on the third, but none of these doses induced anything more than a mild tiredness and a long, refreshing sleep. Whether this is because my pills had gotten old, or if it just had to do with my improved psychological state, I don't know.

In any case, I thought I'd share this experience.

Exp Year: 2002	ExpID: 40185
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: May 5, 2007	Views: 13,975
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Dreams (85), Melatonin (94) : Alone (16), Retrospective / Summary (11)