# I like Nightmares! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 21, 2008, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-like-nightmares/464502 "2008-09-21T00:34:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-like-nightmares/464502/21 "2008-09-22T16:51:39Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > I would give everything I own - including my cars and my house and still pay on them - to never have another nightmare. They range from just mundanely bad and stressful divorce / caught masturbating at work and getting fired / in a fight and no power behind my punches to zombie apocalypses, skeletal taxi drivers who lock me in and head for hell, evil wizards dragging me in chains through dark caves, horrible bloody fights with people I really like in real life, being forced to kill my dog, etc. The worst I ever had was an **extremely** realistic dream that a guy in an ankle-length trenchcoat was standing in my bedroom doorway and began to walk toward me and I couldn’t move or speak or scream. Do you have any idea how stressful that is? The worst dream I had recently was being dead, buried and still aware. Nothing overtly terrifying, but uttlerly bleak, and horrifying. I hate nightmares, but they’re mostly the dreams I have. I’m glad I only remember one dream a month or so. ---
**Author:** ![behr\_strat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@behr\_strat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/behr_strat)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-like-nightmares/464502/22 "2008-09-22T20:06:30Z")
> [@Lobsang](#): > > I’ve said it before in the SDMB and I am saying it again for the benefit of the people who didn’t get it the first time… > When I wake up from a night mare I wake up feeling more alive than I do at most other times. > > First and foremost is the relief of knowing it was just a nightmare. > > Also is the quality of the nightmare. knowing what my brain can come up with is quite satisfying. > > There is the fact that in my opinion a perfect dream is best, but a nightmare is to nothing as sex is to…welll… no sex. amen. nightmares rule. ---
**Author:** ![kitemaker\_chuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a88e4f/32.png) [@kitemaker\_chuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitemaker_chuck)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-like-nightmares/464502/23 "2008-09-23T02:42:57Z")
If you like your nightmares, are they really nightmares??? ---
**Author:** ![DevilDan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e495f1/32.png) [@DevilDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DevilDan)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-like-nightmares/464502/24 "2008-09-23T03:41:01Z")
I can never have nightmares. Shootouts, falling, driving off cliffs, stalked by monsters… they’re all too entertaining. And if things go awry, I stop the dream and replay it until I’ve figured out a way to get the right outcome. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-like-nightmares/464502/25 "2008-09-23T03:53:13Z")
> [@Lobsang](#): > > I’ve said it before in the SDMB and I am saying it again for the benefit of the people who didn’t get it the first time… > When I wake up from a night mare I wake up feeling more alive than I do at most other times. Do you like adrenaline at other times? Cocaine? Speed? Caffeine? I’m formulating the theory that some people are adrenaline junkies, and some of us are oxytocin junkies. I’m the later - nightmares for me are nightmarish. The worst aren’t gruesome at all, but involve my husband dying, or suddenly deciding he doesn’t love me any more. (And, fittingly, I am much more affected by realistic quiet death in movies than gorey death.) I wake up from those crying, and the feelings of despair and loneliness take hours to subside sometimes. Oddly, and thankfully, I’ve never dreamt of my children dying. Don’t think I could handle that. ---
**Author:** ![amelioration](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e9c0ed/32.png) [@amelioration](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amelioration)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-like-nightmares/464502/26 "2008-09-23T04:50:37Z")
I absolutely hate my nightmares, and unfortunately that’s what the majority of my dreams are nowadays. The content is usually extremely disturbing–not often in the sense of gore and violence, but usually of intense psychological trauma. My nightmares usually involve me realizing that I’ve somehow gone insane: I’m hallucinating and can’t make the visions stop, I have an uncontrollable alternate personality, etc. I usually wake up from them feeling distressed and beaten down, emotionally worn-out and near crying. I would much rather not remember any dreams at all, instead of constantly experiencing those. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-like-nightmares/464502/27 "2008-09-23T07:07:50Z")
I don’t hate all my nightmares, but the ones I’ve had over the past week have been too unsettling to like. In one I accidentally killed some rats I was trying to catch to release, and in another trees fell all over the house. I kind of like rats, and I’ve already lived through having a tree impale the roof, so both of those left me upset. I much prefer nightmares that are less plausable. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-like-nightmares/464502/28 "2008-09-23T11:58:39Z")
I had nightmares all last night - not abandonment ones this time, but test-failing ones. They were even lucid; I knew as I was dreaming that I was dreaming, and that one can’t actually factor those expressions, but it didn’t help the terror go away. Then it segued into a dream where all my fingernails fell out. Blech! Yeah, I’ve got a test this morning. (But not in my Algebra class, in my Anatomy and Phys. class.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-like-nightmares/464502.md?page=1)