Will I go slowly insane?

September 10, 2007 5:51 PM

Could my birth control be giving me vivid dreams? And could this be a bad thing?

Backstory: I just started BC for the second time yesterday- the first time I was only on it for a month, it was a while ago, and I don't remember if anything weird happened then. Also important to the backstory is that every time I get my period, for maybe a week beforehand I have vivid dreams which I remember after waking up. The difference between these dreams and normal ones is so pronounced that, as soon as I wake up from one, I KNOW that my period is coming soon. This is my only notable premenstrual change.

So, I took my pill yesterday at 4pm (after ending my period a couple of days ago), and I had a series of vivid dreams all night. They were even more realistic and lengthy than the ones I normally get before my period.

I'm assuming that the pill caused this, but does that even make sense? More importantly, if I keep dreaming like this, could it have some kind of adverse affect on my mental health?

posted by showbiz_liz to health (11 comments total)

Sorry- by 'more realistic' I mean that they seemed more real at the time I was having, not that they actually resembled reality.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:55 PM on September 10, 2007

I don't think it's uncommon for meds to cause unusual dreams. Vicodin does that to me. Some anti-malarial meds give people weird dreams. Plus, different birth control pills affect people in different ways. If it really bothers you, ask your doc about switching.

As for your mental health...are they nightmares? Are you bothered by them for a long time after waking up, or are you able to write them off as just dreams?
posted by clh at 6:11 PM on September 10, 2007

They don't bother me at all, I actually kind of like them. I'm more worried about the possible effects of having these kinds of dreams constantly. I'm afraid they might interfere with my ability to get restful sleep. It's too soon to know for sure, I guess.
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:14 PM on September 10, 2007

I'm pretty sure they aren't harmful to your health. There's a lot of drugs, medications, hormones, etc. that can effect dreams the way you describe. Personally, I've had dreams like that all my life, as far as I can remember. (I only know they're unusually vivid by talking and comparing with other people.)

I know I'm not insane. But then again... would I know? :-)
posted by INTPLibrarian at 6:27 PM on September 10, 2007

i wouldn't worry about them. i definitely think hormones affect sleep--before i started taking birth control, i could always tell my period was coming because i simply could not fall asleep the night before...i wasn't even sleepy. it was really odd.

anyway, unless you find you are more tired than usual, or start sleepwalking, and don't adjust after a month or two, i wouldn't worry about it. write them down--you might have some great ideas!
posted by thinkingwoman at 6:42 PM on September 10, 2007

I've been on bcp a long time, and have had vivid dreams (detailed to the extreme) a long time, but I never thought to connect the two.
posted by Riverine at 7:40 PM on September 10, 2007

It would make a certain amount of sense if you get the same dreams as a result of the Pill as you normally get before your period, if it was related to hormones, somehow. Depending on what's in the particular brand of pill, you could probably even figure out exactly what hormone does it. (If you're on biphasic or triphasic pills, it'll be interesting to see whether the dreams change when the level of hormones in the pills do.)

Although the fact that you're asking strangers on the internet for advice about the dreams makes me think you're concerned, I don't see why they would necessarily be a problem. Unless you feel like the dreams are making you wake up less rested, or you're feeling distracted during the day because you're thinking about them.

I've heard some people speculate that we dream constantly while asleep (in some stages of sleep, anyway) but only remember it some of the time. So just because you're remembering your dreams doesn't necessarily imply that you're getting any less restful sleep. I know people who remember all their dreams, every night (or claim to), and they don't seem to be nodding off during the day as a result.

If it causes problems, it causes problems; but if it's not disrupting your sleeping in some other way, and you don't mind ... enjoy it, I guess.

As a sidenote: just to further complicate the dreams-as-drug-sideffects, there are some HIV/AIDS drugs that can cause vivid nightmares as a side effect, and I don't think anyone understands why. The drugs/brain-activity/cognition relationship has a lot of unknowns about it (as in, it's easier to talk about what we know than what we don't).
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:09 PM on September 10, 2007

Hydrocodone makes me have extremely graphic and disturbing nightmares. I won't take the stuff anymore. Friends and relatives have had similar experiences.

I think it could definitely relate to the hormonal influence of the birth control pills. I take HRT, and my dreams change after I take estrogen and again when I use a topical methyltestosterone.
posted by misha at 8:21 PM on September 10, 2007

Here's Steven C. Den Beste's excellent overview of which hormones do what and how birth control relates to it. The hormonal changes that correspond with your premenstrual dreams are the drop in estrogen and the consequent rise in gonadotropin releasing hormone. Now, the pill is not allowing the pituitary to release gonadotropin releasing hormone. But I also can't see a way it would cause a drop in estrogen levels, which would be low for the first half of the period anyway. So I cannot work out any way that these dreams and those dreams could be related, except the power of suggestion. Are you sure you've never had the vivid dreams after your period?

The pill is essentially a quasi-progesterone. Have you ever been pregnant, and, if so, did you have the vivid dreams then? Because that would be the sort of correlation that would make sense.
posted by eritain at 8:59 PM on September 10, 2007

Personally, I've been having extremely vivid (eg, all 5 senses) dreams my entire life, and it doesn't seem to have done much except make sleeping/dreaming one of my favourite leisuretime acitivities. It certainly hasn't driven me crazy. I had real life for that.
posted by ysabet at 1:19 AM on September 11, 2007

With another medication my doctor said the dreams were only a problem if they bothered me, as Kadin2048 implied. In my case, since they were super-realistic dreams about a person who's historically been the major source of stress in my life, they bothered me! Otherwise, they would have been fun.
posted by wintersweet at 9:06 PM on September 11, 2007