To Sleep, Perchance to Not Dream

I have a lot of very vivid dreams, and occasionally I'll have an aggressive dream like you describe. They are physically draining. I wake up and my head hurts, my face hurts, my mouth hurts (likely from clenching my teeth), sometimes I'm sweating, my heart is thumping, my body just aches all over--it messes me up. Sometimes it'll fuck me up for the rest of the day. During these dreams, I think I sleep pretty soundly, and am just completely out of it. From the outside I'm sure it looks like I'm getting good, solid sleep, but inside I'm like a hamster running feverishly around in his wheel. It doesn't happen often, thankfully, and that it seems to happen to your husband frequently is really, really unfortunate. I don't know what to tell you, but for me, the effects are very real and physical. What helps for me is to make sure the room is cool enough, that I've got plenty of blankets but am not trapped, that I have enough room to really spread out and move around in bed, and that I'm able to clear my head before sleeping. (I often listen to soothing youtube videos before falling asleep. I don't get the head tingle effect, but ASMR videos are generally good, andhttp://www.youtube.com/user/SOUNDsculptures is just great.) Good luck.

THC (the psychoactive chemical in marijuana) is known to repress and/or shorten REM sleep and with it vivid dreams. If you are located in a place where medical marijuana is available, that could be an option for Mr. Adams. I am so not a doctor or anything like it, and this is not medical advice. Luckily, if this is a viable option for you, you don't have to worry about your husband lighting up a joint before bed, or having baggies of pot laying around the house. Oral ingestion would work just fine.

Sorry, that was glib - what I mean is, maybe what's going on is that the apnea is making him tired, but the dream is also vivid in his mind, so he's taking out his frustration at being tired on the dream itself and how it was a stupid dream anyway, I mean why was I looking for a damn hockey stick of all things and now I'm all tired, stupid dream...You know?

I favorited the Empress' answer, but wanted to elaborate - even if he uses the CPAP religiously, the settings might not be high enough to keep him from obstructing. I'd follow up with the doc who ordered the sleep study as a first step. Snoring loudly while "sleeping" and waking up tired is classic for sleep apnea.

His he too warm while sleeping? That's when I get crazy dreams. I always thought that poor quality sleep meant you remembered your dreams more since you're only really supposed to remember just when close to wakefulness . Maybe that http://www.sleepcycle.com/ app I've never tried would help determine how deeply he's sleeping.

Taking melatonin has given me dreams like this in the past.

It might be time to recheck the Prozac dosage or switch to a different type of med. It could be that his anxiety has been slowly ratcheting up. It can be easy to forget how much anxiety is normal. My understanding is that part of the function of dreams is to process some of that unmet anxiety. For most people, that will mean these sorts of dreams wipe the slate clean and are refreshing. For folks with anxiety issues, beginning that process of ruminative worry starts a cycle of stress that your body can't easily turn off.

I have dreams every once in a while like what your husband describes. It feels exactly like that: as if my brain doesn't switch off properly and is very intensively frustrated on a problem. It truly feels like I don't sleep at all when that happens, even though I know that I do (have others confirm that I was sleeping). I do not have sleep apnea nor diabetes. However, it seems like this happens when I'm experiencing extra stress in real life. Does your husband tend to silently dwell on worries? Does he have problems going on that don't seem to have a solution but provide constant back-of-the-mind stress for him? I'd address that first. For me, I don't even realize I'm especially stressed until I have one of those dreams and don't sleep well: then once I address the real-life issue, I sleep and dream normally again.

I take a very long time to wake up, if I have gone deeply to sleep. I do not have any sleep disorder, except that the transition between awake and asleep is hell. For some reason, in modern society, it is entirely okay to be cranky and out of sorts for a couple of hours if you are sleepy and hoping to go to sleep soon, it is not okay to be cranky and out of sorts if you are still waking up. By coninky dink, I had some intense dreams last night, woke up at 6, and the images are not entirely out of my head yet. I was off my game for at least two hours because, and I am totally serious, I wasn't entirely awake yet. Try this - stay up two hours past your bedtime. See how you feel. Given that your husband has been diagnosed with a sleep disorder and is on meds, however, you should probably look at this more closely. Maybe it's just who he is. But it may be something that needs fixing.