When I’ve had alot of caffeine, when I finally do get to sleep, I have the craziest dreams. I mean weird ass stuff I wouldn’t normally dream. Normally my sleep is either dreamless or full of boring visions of every day life. But if I had a few doses of coffee or Mt. Dew during the day and POW! I wake up the next day saying “why the heck would I dream something like that?” Does this happen to anyone else? Why would caffeine affect my dreams, especially after it’s stimulating effects had worn off hours before bed time?
I consume a lot of caffeine. And I have a lot of really freaky dreams. I never noticed a direct correlation before, but now that you’ve mentioned it, I’ll have to be on the lookout. I, too, am now interested in the answer to this inquiry.
People say that we dream a lot more than what we remember. We only remember the dream if we wake up in the middle of it. So I maybe the caffeine makes you more likely to wake up in the middle of a dream?
Well, I think I remember reading that dreams occur in the middle stages of sleep, i.e., when you’re really fast asleep, you’re not dreaming. Also, you fluxuate in and out of these stages continually through the night. Now, caffeine makes your heart go faster and gives you hypertension, so I’d imagine if you chugged a sixpack of Dew before you went to bed, you wouldn’t get very much deep sleep, thus spending more time dreaming, thus more likely to remember dreams, especially the weird ones.
Here endeth the WAG.