As a part of the non drug using population, I admit to never having a hallucination or hangover of any sort. Despite this, though, I've had several times where I've mistaken a dream for reality, and likewise for a moment in time. The times that it happened, it was caused by either major sleep deprivition, vivid dreams, or a strange combination of both.

The most recent time that I thought a dream had really happened was when I slept in last Saturday morning. I actually set my alarm and woke up at about 8, but after eating some breakfast, I decided that my warm bed looked quite inviting. For some reason, if I wake up and then go back to sleep, I have very clear, very realistic dreams. It's probably due to the fact that my mind is already geared up for the day, and then I try to put it back into sleep. It feels the need to keep churning out something of some sort. Anyway, it was last Saturday that I had the dream that spurred my 'whatever' for 09.26.97. It probably explains why I felt such a strong need to write about it, even though it never really happened. When I woke up, I still had some of the feelings going through my head and had to expound on them a bit.

On the other side of things, the last time that I really mistook reality for a dream was a couple years ago when I was still in college. One night I started hanging out with someone that I was interested in. We walked around a lot and basically ended up talking almost the whole night. At about 2:30 in the morning, we sat down on the steps in front of one of the buildings on campus and kept on talking. As we talked, we started getting a bit closer and ended up snuggling on the steps until the sun came up the next morning. Our conversation meandered in and out and both of drifted off to sleep several times. Although there was physical contact, nothing sexual except for a slight kiss on the neck happened the entire night. We walked back to our dorms in the morning and went to get some real sleep. When I woke up the next day at about noon, there was that moment where I couldn't remember if I had kissed them or whether I had dreamt it. It was strange and yet, very interesting at the same time.

I'll admit that I've always been very into dreams and what they mean. I've never taken any official classes on it, but I have read some books on the subject and I can usually trace everything in a dream back to something that I had been thinking recently. It's the vivid dreams that sometimes cross the line that really fascinate me, though. Don't take me the wrong way when I say that I get reality and dreaming mixed up. It's not like I walk around confused all the time, but it's those few seconds every once in awhile that really send the mind into overdrive. In the short amount of time that you're trying to figure everything out, your mind is taking all the people and places you know, as well as all the people and places that were just in your dream. It then has to file them away in the brain folders labeled "dream" and "reality." It may not seem like a big deal, but there are some fairly complex brain functions going on.

One of the most interesting things I've come across in reading about this subject is the person (someone fill me in on who it is) who brought up the 'what if' question of, "what if the time we are asleep is our real reality, while our time spent awake is our real subconscious?" While it's a very interesting notion to think about, it just isn't very scientifically viable. It's already been proven that the two are the other way around, plus it would mean that in reality I'd be hugely popular with the opposite sex. That definitely makes it null and void.

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