Highly skeptical is not what I'd call you. Overly skeptical is what I'd call you. I've been LD'ing for 4+ years now. I feel more refreshed and less groggy after a fun lucid dream. Every time. I know several other veteran dreamers and they say the same thing. None of us do the WBTB, we just go lucid in the middle of the dream. Sleep is a finely tuned process but you dream every night whether you remember it or not so lucid dreaming is not disrupting anything. It just gives you an awesome amount of control over
I swear, reading through these posts is super frustrating. It's like everyone who can't/hasn't lucid dreamt before is actively discouraging others from trying it because they're jealous/scared or something.
"Some cases I know about from personal observation involve disturbing sleep cycles so much in pursuit of lucid dreams that the young people failed in work environments or crashed and burned in their university studies."
That is laughable ignorance my friend. The Wake Back To Bed method might mess your sleep schedule up a little, but you're only supposed to be up for about 30 minutes or so then you go back to sleep. That's not even the most common way of lucid dreaming. To say people have ruined their lives trying to lucid dream is, frankly, completely ridiculous and I'm embarrassed for the HN community for upvoting this post.
One of the few times I'm actually qualified to comment on an article. Top comment by tokenadult has it all wrong. Sure you can do Wake Back to Bed ones or mess up your sleep cycle to do it but you certainly don't have to. I never did I lucid dream several times a week. It's much easier to just keep a dream journal and do realit checks while you're awake.
Second, there's no need for piles of studies on lucid dreaming. I never feel tired or anything like that after I have big lucid dreams. The opposite in fact. After a particularly emotional or powerful dream I feel alive! I feel exuberant and it's easier for me to get out of bed. It's a fantastic way to practice skills as well. I'm an MMA fighter and I have many many fighting dreams that feel perfectly fluid and natural. The pathways in my brain for fighting are being stimulated for hours at a time while I sleep. Sure it's not 1:1 with real life practice but the opponents in my dreams often do novel moves I have never been exposed to before and I have to come up with novel counter techniques. It's clear to me that lucid dreaming practice is helpful to real world skills.
Not to mention the entertainment value. My favorite most recent one was telekinetic powers. I made forks and knives fly across the room then when I wanted to test out more power I looked out the window and made a nice car sized chunk of earth come rippping out of the ground. It was fucking awesome.
This is my fucking dream. I don't mean to sound unprofessional since I will apply for this but in this case it is necessary to use the strongest word available. This is what I want so badly it almost brings tears to my eye.
I swear, reading through these posts is super frustrating. It's like everyone who can't/hasn't lucid dreamt before is actively discouraging others from trying it because they're jealous/scared or something.