Drugs And Alcohol's Influence On Dreaming

The concept of dreaming has continued to baffle scientists all over the world. However, many people define dreaming as "all perceptions, thoughts, or emotions experienced during sleep" (Penelope A. Lewis). Because of this definition many people have sought to figure out the brain and why we dream certain things. The things we experience and the thoughts we have are all connected to the neural activity or neural responses. Generally what happens is neurons fire in a particular visual area and create images and neurons firing in another particular area initiate sound. However, all of these activities only create illusions. "If that firing occurs at random, these perceptions can feel like crazy, randomly fragmented hallucinations. It is easy to imagine that the random imagery and sensations created in this way could be woven together to create a complex, multisensory hallucination

Many scientists have found this to be true, however, many still can't find the sole reason as to why we dream. But there have been studies that have found certain things that can disrupt or interfere with dreaming. According to Michael J. Breus, PhD, who many people refer to as the Sleeping Doctor, drugs and alcohol affect dreaming. He states Alcohol has shown to have a dramatic influence on dreaming including: the fragmentation of sleep, the possibility of diminishing time in REM sleep, and the chance having nightmares frequently. Drugs such as marijuana also have a great effect on how you sleep such as: also reducing REM sleep, and odd dreams. Also lack of sleep can not only affect the content of your dreams but also the amount of time you spend dreaming. Sleep deprivation can ultimately cause more nightmarish dreams and in turn create negative emotions and even the fear of going back to sleep. However, scientists have found that people can actually set themselves up for more enjoyable