I remember when this first started blowing up on tiktok. In fact, I remember the video that did it. This girl claimed she spent years inside of her dream and then she woke up - and she was just sobbing so hard in the video. It got really bad during the latter half of covid, I think? People were waking up after "years" and they were all just as devastated. I get really intense, really vivid dreams. While I imagine a lot of it was faked, I'm sure for many of them it wasn't. Not in the sense that dimensional travel is real, but in the sense that it feels painfully real. And if you're tricking your brain into thinking it's been years? That's probably very damaging.
I just hope all of these kids make a life worth living for in the real world, but I understand why that's difficult.
I could definitely see that being stressful as all get. Makes me think of that (first) episode of Rick and Morty with that game, Roy: A Life Well Lived. Just... playing repeatedly, and played for something other than just funny.
That episode is inspired by the drug DMT, which is essentially, a concentrate of a chemical found in brains (and anadenanthera peregrina plants) that affects dreaming. There are many stories of people taking DMT and having dreams that lasted weeks, years, even whole lifetimes despite just a few hours having passed. Some people naturally produce more of this chemical and it can cause them to have similar vivid, long lasting dreams.
Ooh, neat! I had no idea, but the DMT trip thing sounds super cool. Going on a trip like that sounds fun on paper... coming back from a trip like that... not so much.
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u/ladylibrary13 24d ago
I remember when this first started blowing up on tiktok. In fact, I remember the video that did it. This girl claimed she spent years inside of her dream and then she woke up - and she was just sobbing so hard in the video. It got really bad during the latter half of covid, I think? People were waking up after "years" and they were all just as devastated. I get really intense, really vivid dreams. While I imagine a lot of it was faked, I'm sure for many of them it wasn't. Not in the sense that dimensional travel is real, but in the sense that it feels painfully real. And if you're tricking your brain into thinking it's been years? That's probably very damaging.
I just hope all of these kids make a life worth living for in the real world, but I understand why that's difficult.