Wednesday 3 October 2012

Nicotine Fuelled Nightmares

I don't mean to keep banging on about my giving up smoking, plenty of people have done it before and not gone on about it, but it is day 19 and i have been on the e-cigarette with the strongest nicotine fluid, 24mg, and so far so good but there has been one side-effect that i wasn't aware all nicotine users go through until today.
Apparently, because you are inhaling nicotine, you actually get more from the e-cigarette than you do from smoking a cigarette, mainly because you don't know when you have had a cigarettes worth and you just keep inhaling.
The side-effect is you do get some very vivid, lucid and weird dreams thanks to the extra nicotine in your body, especially if, like me, you have a good blast before you go to bed.
Over the past few weeks i have woken up more than once from a realistic dream and spent the first few waking moments wondering if something had really happened or if i had dreamt it. Friends who have used patches or e-cigarettes reported the same thing happened to them also. 
It was kind of fun but then the other night i had a nightmare about something slithering out of the bedroom wardrobe and it shook me so much that i could actually feel myself tensing for days afterwards whenever i had to open that wardrobe door.
Then last night another nightmare where something was trying to smother me in my sleep and my husband had to wake me up as i was shouting for him in my sleep. I woke up panting and fighting for my breath. So realistic that it was scary and i had to go into the kitchen for a sit down and a hot milk for a while afterwards.
I have never suffered from nightmares, especially not ones that stay with me for days afterwards and i am going to have to drop down the strength of nicotine i use but what a weird, wonderful and terrifying experience. Much more effective than cheese before you go to bed but an insomniac at the best of times, being apprehensive about going to sleep probably isn't a good thing. 

6 comments:

Faye said...

It would probably do you good if you avoid smoking a few hours before going to bed. On the one hand, electronic cigarette stores offer different levels of nicotine. You might want to lower your current dose and see if it's advantageous to your part.

Nog said...

The cool of quitting sounds like a good reason to start smoking.

Lucy said...

Have you heard of this before Faye? It seems that nicotine patches are the worst culprit but the e-cigarette users i have asked have also had some experience of it, usually at the start of using them.
I have ordered some lower strength nicotine though.

When they are not scaring the bejesus out of me the dreams can be quite cool Nog, but when they turn bad they are not pleasant.

Anonymous said...

drink a couple of pots of coffee too! that way you won't sleep good enough to hvae deep dreams...

kidding. don't do that. tweak down the nicotine - like i know anything about it.

q

Cheezy said...

It makes you come back moist again?

Lucy said...

I just hope nobody uses the same computer chair after him.