I’ve never been a guy who frequently has vivid dreams that he remembers when he wakes up. But that’s changed dramtically in the last couple of months - I’ve gone from waking up with memories of a dream about once or twice a month at most to several times a week at the least.
My question is: what is the reason for this change, and what might this be indicating?
[Note to mods: I put this in GQ in the hope that there’s been some scientific research on this or matters relating to this.]
My gut reaction is that dream frequency depends on too many diverse factors to list. Including just aging.
Some prescription medications can definitely cause epic vivid dreams. The one I specifically remember doing this to me was Inderol. It was like watching and remembering every moment of a 4 part miniseries every night. I tried to stay on it because it was mildly entertaining to see what my mind would come up with, but I was exhausted. Finally asked for an alternative and switched.
Stress will also do it.
Happens to me too.
I’m pretty sure the problem is that maybe you dream about as much, but are less often able to remember the dream when you wake up.
I often wake up, with the knowledge somehow in my head that I did have a dream, but I can’t remember any of it. That has always happened to be occasionally, but much more common in the last 15 years or so.
I find my more vivid dreaming (that I remember) seems to happen closer to waking up, and only if I’ve had at least 7 hours of sleep. Often when I wake up with a fresh dream in my head, I feel more rested and have the thought process that I’ve slept enough. When I have really nutty dreams, it seems to happen more often when I’ve slept more than 8 hours and I wake up shaking my head and thinking I slept too long.
Conversely, I can have memories of dreams when I’ve just had a nap. So for me, I think remembering dreams is a sign I’m either sleeping well and have recall close to waking up after a good night, or they’re from light nap-like sleep. Either way, the ones I remember are from the lighter end of sleep.
Any change in sleep patterns can do that, whether it’s stress, drugs, age, or just about anything else.
Dream sleep is periodic, so if you previously tended to sleep the right amount of time to be awakened from a period of deep sleep, there won’t be any dream there to remember. If the dream-period or the length of your sleep changes so that you now wake up during a dream, there’s a chance to remember it. For that matter, dreams don’t usually make it directly to long-term memory; what you remember later is most likely only whatever you recall of the dream just as you wake up.