# Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming

1.  The amount of effort is not proportional to the result. One lucid dream (LD) can take hours or even dozens of hours of effort. On average, a practitioner experiences several dozen LDs in their lifetime before quitting. If they don't quit, they dedicate their entire life to it, day and night, trying endless techniques, practicing reality checks, etc.
2.  All techniques are absolutely useless compared to the effectiveness of galantamine. The effectiveness of galantamine is directly proportional to its dosage. Thus, 16 mg will almost certainly send you into a powerful lucid dream or out-of-body experience. Therefore, all techniques like WILD are absolutely meaningless.
3.  Non-lucid dreams are often more interesting than lucid ones. In a lucid dream, I find myself as my usual self, just in some virtual reality, which is only slightly more interesting than a computer game or watching a movie. But in a non-lucid dream, I magically transform into someone else or find myself in a different, impossible, mysterious world.
4.  Lucid dreams are easiest to practice between the ages of 20-30, but during this same period of life, all other possible forms of entertainment are also most accessible. I don't actually know of cases where lucid dreams turned out to be more useful than regular entertainment. It's more like a lottery: you either get a lucid dream or you don't. There are very few cases where people actually practiced something or learned something interesting in them.
5.  There are exceptions: some people, like M, always have lucid dreams. But this indicates that their brain is simply wired differently. The bitter lesson is that some people's brains are just "hardwired" so that they can always be aware of themselves in dreams, most often these are women. Whereas men are usually more interested in LDs.
6.  In a sense, the main dream of lucid dreaming enthusiasts is some kind of erotic adventure. Eroticism in LDs rarely succeeds. But in the end, when the dream ends, all this virtual reality disappears, leaving the same feeling as after watching porn.Good onanism with great fantasy may be a better alternative with guaranteed satisfaction.
7.  Almost all effects of LD may be achieved in active imagination sessions: daydreaming visualizations which are not guided, but in which you allow your subconscious to drive the process..
8.  Illusion of permanence: Even if you've learned to induce lucid dreams regularly, this ability can suddenly disappear for weeks or months without apparent reason, causing disappointment and frustration.
9.  Habituation effect: Over time, even the most exciting lucid dreams can become mundane and lose their appeal, like any other experience you get used to.
10.  Disappointment in possibilities: Despite the seeming limitlessness of possibilities in lucid dreams, in practice it turns out that many desires still cannot be realized due to the limitations of our imagination and subconscious.
11.  Disappointment in "spiritual experience": Many begin to practice lucid dreaming in search of deep spiritual experiences, but often find that most dreams remain superficial and do not bring the expected enlightenment.