I am a 45 year old male with a history of GAD, Depression, a few phobias here and there and the occasional panic attack. I smoked/drank but then quit a year or more ago and I am currently taking a very low-dose Ativan tablet a few times a day for my anxiety and to help me get to sleep and stay asleep. I also take Prevacid for my Gerd and have suffered from Tourette's Syndrome most of my life (including head-jerks and swearing). I also have ADHD and was on Ritalin as a child.
Anyway, so that's a bit of history on me.
Recently, I had a particularly bad bout of Tourette's tics in which I would jerk my head back and forth somewhat violently to the point where I would get this yucky, headachey feeling and pretty much feel zoned out for the rest of the day. After about a week, the tics became less and less violent and I guess my brain started to recover a little bit from all the shaking and jarring around. During this period, I also had (and am still having) extremely lucid and vivid dreams that are very intense and "life-like" and leave me completely exhausted the next morning. Often I'll have a long series of dreams (maybe 5-6 in a row) and they will be very disturbing dreams about extreme violence, sexually deviant behavior, people being severely injured and dying and all kinds of other horrible stuff. When I wake up, it feels like I have just dreamed an entire encyclopedia sometimes and I now have gotten to the point where I even dread going to bed anymore because I know what's coming. Anyway, this has left me very traumatized in the mornings and often unable to enjoy my day or function well.
I've even thought that perhaps these dreams were caused by various underlying stresses and issues I had and so I made it a point to get rid of everything in my life that was causing me any stress and presenting a problem for me and STILL these dreams came to me every night so I'm thinking now that maybe the Tourette's tics somehow damaged my brain and all these dreams are just my brain's way of healing or "defragmenting" itself. I don't think it's the Ativan because I've been on it for years and I've never had so many violent dreams in my entire life!.
Can anyone here shed some light on this please?. I am really interested in getting this under control if at all possible so I can sleep in peace again.
Thanks very much, Steve
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I can understand some of what you are going through. I have horrible dreams that are so real sometimes it takes me days to get over them. I take some medications for a back injury and think it has something to do with the nightmares. Sometimes it helps me not to take it right before I fall asleep. I try to wait a while after taking medications to go to bed. It seems the more exhausted or in pain I am, the more likely I am to have a bad nightmare. I don't want you to feel like you are alone. I'm sure there are a lot of people with the same issues. I hope this helps, or at least makes you feel better. I wish I could do more.
Anxiety, Depression & Constant, Lucid Dreams 
