Lucid dreams and Narcolepsy

For years I thought I was just a bit weird, although I suppose I suspected that part of it might be my Narcolepsy.  My dreams were just different than they are supposed to be.  I normally could remember them, for one thing.  They were almost always lucid dreams (i.e. I knew that I was dreaming when I was asleep), and I could do unusual things in my dreams, such as materialize objects, do magic, even rewind my dream to change it.  I could also create my own dreams if I wanted, although it takes a lot of work to maintain control of a dream.  For me, I try not to control my dreams too much these days because I think it affects the quality of my dreams.  Lately, it seems like there are nights that I just dream non-stop and it is so exhausting.

Now, I don’t think that the average Narcoleptic has this experience, although Narcoleptics do tend to go into different stages of sleep at different times than non-Narcoleptics do.  It is well known, for example, that one of the strange things about Narcoleptics is that they can take a nap during the day and go into REM and dreaming in just a few minutes.  For me, I also find that my dreams are different during the day than at night; during the day they are often times more vivid.

However, I have heard from some other Narcoleptics on Talk About Sleep regarding lucid dreaming, and there were some other people who related that they too had lucid dreams at least some of the time and a few people said they have “dream powers.”  Perhaps my strange dream experiences and that of some other Narcoleptics come from the fact that most of us don’t sleep that deeply at night.  I do know that when I was on Xyrem, my dreams were unbelievably intense, I could not wake myself up from them easily, and I generally did not remember them much.  It was actually kind of refreshing.  This made me even more convinced that my strange dreaming experiences are firmly linked with my Narcolepsy, given that I went back to normal dreaming  when given a medicine that supposedly gives Narcoleptics more normal sleep.

For some reason, my abilities regarding dreaming have grown and changed over time.  I do remember when I was a child that I could not rewind my dreams, although I did have the ability to make lightsabers appear out of thin air (lol, I was a big Star Wars fan).  Maybe I need to do some reading on the subject of dreaming, as these days my dreams have been making it hard for me to sleep at night.

Does anyone else have lucid dreams and/or strange dream abilities?  Do you think that this is because of your Narcolepsy or is just something you can do?  I know that some people buy books on lucid dreaming because they want to learn to do it, but I am a bit envious that most people don’t remember their dreams.  Because as anyone who does remember them can tell you, some of them are so weird it would be better not to remember I think.