Vivid dreams about smoking

[rothenbj]

Okay, a bit of background. 43 years smoking, 2-3 packs a day. 1 year since I started vaping which got me to 5 or 6 cigs a day. At about 6 months cig count started increasing and I found snus at seven months. At the same time, I dropped cigarettes totally, not one puff in just short of five months.

Over the last year, I've had a few fairly vivid dreams about smoking. I also took a European survey over the last couple weeks about smoking where they kept asking about current vivid dreams and smoking which I answered that I hadn't had any in the timeframe they were asking about.

Currently I'm snussing about 4 normally pretty heavy portions and vaping randomly, normally very low nic liquid. Last night I had a very vivid dream where I snapped off the atty on my Chuck and had a cig. Then another and I was smoking again. Finally I woke up and realized it was a dream.

It was vivid enough and long enough since my last dream and close enough to the survey that I googled it. Apparently, there was a 1991 study about people who quit smoking and these dreams. They attributed them to smoking/nicotine/tobacco.

Now I'm still getting nicotine and tobacco, but not smoking. Is it just the long term habit that causes the dreams or, as they concluded, something in tobbaco. I have an opinion at this point, but I'm curious about what other smokeless users have experienced.

Has anyone else had these dreams?

 

[hittman]

I have not had any dreams like that but have been having some fairly odd dreams lately. Sometimes a dream will be a continuation of one that I had before. I hadn't really given it much thought until you brought up the subject.

 

[tattooer601]

the dreams....are bad when they are about smoking

 

[four2109]

Wow, this takes me back. I never have but, after my Grandfather quit cold turkey...(we were supposed to quit together, 1979 I guess), He had an occasional dream where he smoked. He would always tell me about the dreams, and how much he enjoyed the cigarette. I think he learned to enjoy the dreams. He died of lung cancer in 1989.

 

[chrisl317]

Well, I know that you get vivid dreams after you stop smoking and start vaping. Never got them though when I was using dip.

 

[AllCoExPat]

Interesting topic. I hadn't made the connection, but I've been having a lot more dreams than I ever had in the past. Technically, I guess I should say that I'm remembering having dreams after I wake up. Up until about three months ago, I couldn't remember having more than a handful of dreams in my entire life. I just always assumped i dreamed at night like everyone else, but didn't remember them. For the last three months, I've had them once every week or two.

 

[rothenbj]

I've had that too Hitt, I used to dream a lot, but not for years until I stopped smoking. However, now there is a lot of dreaming and those recurring and continuation dreams.

A bit more on the smoking dream from last night. I brought it up to my GF who was up way into the night. She made the comment that she was smoking a lot also so I may just have picked up the smell in my subconscious and that kicked off the dream.

So far it looks like there aren't many snusers experiencing them so it might have been just a one off type dream, but we'll see,

 

[YKruss]

I am totally cigarette free from day one after switching to PV almost 15 months ago.

During that time I have just one but very vivid/realistic dream where I smoked the real one.
I was f-ing myself for snapping but keep smoking to the end and then woke up in the middle of the night.

P.S. - that happened somewhere near my 1 year anniversary.

 

[chrisl317]

See? Them chemicals in cigarettes do strange things to your brain. If you do a search in the forum on dreams and vaping you'll get a few threads where we describe to one another our weird dreams after starting vaping. Some funny stuff!

 

[hittman]

I think one of the biggest problems I had was when I vaped right before bed like I used to smoke, I had a hard time falling asleep. I would lay there forever before finally falling asleep. I do have to admit that since I started vaping, snusing, and snuffing that I tend to remember my dreams better. I used to hardly ever remember anything about my dreams.

 

[rothenbj]

I am totally cigarette free from day one after switching to PV almost 15 months ago.

During that time I have just one but very vivid/realistic dream where I smoked the real one.
I was f-ing myself for snapping but keep smoking to the end and then woke up in the middle of the night.

P.S. - that happened somewhere near my 1 year anniversary.

That's precisely why I started this thread. It was so, so freaking realistic that it got me researching. The other dreams I had on smoking were vivid, but I only took a couple puffs. This one was a whole cigarette and then another since my PV was broke (like I don't have 10 more around here).

Funny thing was, I went to town this evening thinking I had poker until I got there and the carnival was going on so poker was cancelled. I decided to stop at the local watering hole, got off my bike and realized I didn't take my Chuck with me.

When I got home, it was nowhere to be found. I started thinking I stuffed it in my back pocket and it fell out during the ride. Then I did a second search and found it inside an empty cereal box I had sitting next to the coffee table I used to eat my breakfast this morning. Apparently one of the dogs must have knocked it off the table and into the box. Was my dream, not a dream at all but a premonition of the disastrous loss of my favorite PV. You have now entered "THE TWILIGHT ZONE".
Snus is so much easier. Lose a can and just go to the freezer and get more, at least for the next year or two.

 

[Stubby]

YouTube - The Opening Theme for The Twilight Zone

 

[chrisl317]

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/quitting/92516-strange-vivid-dreams.html

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...ion/89495-do-you-ever-dream-youre-vaping.html

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...hen-will-dreams-wakings-insomnia-go-away.html

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/new-members-forum/84921-lucid-dreams.html

Have fun reading! You all aren't alone!

 

[rothenbj]

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/quitting/92516-strange-vivid-dreams.html

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...ion/89495-do-you-ever-dream-youre-vaping.html

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...hen-will-dreams-wakings-insomnia-go-away.html

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/new-members-forum/84921-lucid-dreams.html

Have fun reading! You all aren't alone!

Thanks for the links. I just started reading through the threads today after spending the later part of this week dealing with my 91 year old mother who managed to take a header into her bathroom sink in the middle of the night. She called my sister in the middle of the night to tell her about it, but made it sound like it wasn't bad. The emergency room doc spent over an hour sewing her up. Oh well...

Anyway I found the following abstract-

Abnorm Psychol. 1991 Nov;100(4):487-91.
Dream of absent-minded transgression: an empirical study of a cognitive withdrawal symptom.

Hajek P, Belcher M.
Imperial Cancer Research Fund Health Behaviour Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, London, United Kingdom.
Abstract

Among 293 smokers abstinent for between 1 and 4 weeks, 33% reported having at least 1 dream about smoking. In most dreams, subjects caught themselves smoking and felt strong negative emotions, such as panic and guilt. Dreams about smoking were the result of tobacco withdrawal, as 97% of subjects did not have them while smoking, and their occurrence was significantly related to the duration of abstinence. They were rated as more vivid than the usual dreams and were as common as most major tobacco withdrawal symptoms. In subjects abstinent for 1 year, 63% recalled having dreams about smoking. They had on average 5 of them, and about a quarter occurred after the 6th month of abstinence. Having dreams about smoking was prospectively positively related to maintenance of abstinence. An explanation of this finding based on the association of smoking in dreams with aversive emotions is offered.

Emphasis added.


I'm still trying to find the explanation of the findings, but this points out why I was questioning this here. The first thing that strikes me funny is how, even almost 20 years ago, they were equating tobacco and smoking as synonymous. However, more important in my mind is that it doesn't appear that these dreams are related to tobacco at all, at least not in terms of people that are regular smokeless users such as myself.


I'm getting plenty of nicotine between snusing and vaping. For those that have quit smoking and are only using a PV, these dreams would possibly have a correlation to tobacco. However, having these same dreams would appear to eliminate tobacco and nicotine, unless something added to smoking tobacco, as the reason for having the dreams after quitting cigarettes. There certainly are enough additives in cigarettes to potentially explain these vivid dreams or it might just be the subconscious adjusting to the habit alteration.


I was dreaming up a storm last night, but non about smoking itself. Back to the other links.

 

[chrisl317]

I never had a lucid dream where I was smoking, as a matter of fact, in my dreams, cigarettes were never present. Mine were all along the lines of alternate realities, but, very happy ones. I don't even remember vaping having occurred in any of them. Also, one particular dream involved a house that had popped up in my dreams over the years prior to vaping as a re-occurring fixture in these dreams. I would only remember select dreams as usually I either didn't dream or at least didn't remember them at all. If I was lucky I might remember one out of a year or two. That first month or two of vaping though, wow! Sleeping and dreaming became fun!

 

[rothenbj]

I never had a lucid dream where I was smoking, as a matter of fact, in my dreams, cigarettes were never present. Mine were all along the lines of alternate realities, but, very happy ones. I don't even remember vaping having occurred in any of them. Also, one particular dream involved a house that had popped up in my dreams over the years prior to vaping as a re-occurring fixture in these dreams. I would only remember select dreams as usually I either didn't dream or at least didn't remember them at all. If I was lucky I might remember one out of a year or two. That first month or two of vaping though, wow! Sleeping and dreaming became fun!

The only real issues that they've created for me (not the smoking ones, the other, fun ones) is that I've wasted a few days going back to sleep to continue the dreams. I never slept into the afternoon, but recently that has occurred.

 

[Jaka]

I haven't smoked in my dreams, that I can remember, since the first time I dreamed I was smoking (when I was a non-smoker) -- until a few weeks ago, when I dreamed that I had absentmindedly picked up my pack and pulled out a cigarette. Halfway through lighting it, I realized what I was doing, put it out, and went to look for my PV instead.

More than anything else so far, this lets me know how completely the new habit has replaced the old.