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I've been sick with a pretty nasty flu for the last few days, most of it being pretty textbook for a bad case of the flu. Headaches, extreme sensitivity to cold/chills, aches, cold symptoms, etc. Probably the worst case I've had in 3+ years.
The stand out part of this instance was that yesterday when trying to sleep my mind kept racing, I felt like I was in a constant state of concentration about nothing in particular. Then this overwhelming sense of frustration, again about nothing. This was driving me insane over the course of a few hours, going in and out of consciousness.
Then the scary part.
Trying to sleep through the above frustration I had this weird sensation that everything I did was being actively counter acted by another entity with shared control of my body. Not just one either, lots of them. I felt like my body was a machine, or a work space, and I was just one of many users trying to get it to do something. Just a note, I had taken no medication before I went to sleep, I don't drink, and I've never done drugs in my life.
At first it seemed perfectly normal, I was working hard to get my body to accomplish some task while others were trying to get their own often mutually exclusive tasks done too. I was getting frustrated though as I felt "I'm really sick, I'm in a crisis situation, I should have priority" and no one else seemed to care. They just kept going about their business.
My brain was showing me some very fuzzy imagery to represent all of this. The closest analogy I can give to it is minecraft. Never even played the game oddly enough.
Then I started thinking about the situation. What task was I trying to accomplish? Who are these other people? I haven't seen anyone else, I don't know anything about them. I started to go in and out of being awake at this point and every time I woke up I had to open my eyes and tell myself it's just me. There are no others. Even doing that though I couldn't shake my brain to believe it once I closed my eyes, like some part of my brain was still running at a million miles an hour doing it's own thing. In the dream world and the dozing half asleep world, these entities were making things happen, I could "see" and "feel" things happening but I never once saw anyone else. Like imagine you wanted to move a pile of objects from one end of a room to another but every time you looked away one of the objects was not where you left it. Frustrating at first, creepy and eventually very scary once you start to think about it.
Not sure how long I suffered through this "What's real? Am I hallucinating? WTF is going on?" type of scenario. I was actually worried I was going to start hallucinating some scary shit, like stuff coming out of the walls any second. Eventually I sat up, took off a few layers (I was wearing a tshirt, sweater, and a hoody as well as 2 layers of socks, and some pj pants). It felt particularly hot and all those layers were restricting in movement, adding to the overall sense of frustration. As the temperature came down my cold symptoms worsened but the rest of the mental chaos felt like it started subsiding. Then I passed out and here I am.
This turned out way longer than I expected. Awesome if you read this far, I hope this was entertaining or interesting. Wasn't for me, maybe it will be in a few days looking back.
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On March 03 2011 08:29 Phyre wrote:
Trying to sleep through the above frustration I had this weird sensation that everything I did was being actively counter acted by another entity with shared control of my body. Not just one either, lots of them. I felt like my body was a machine, or a work space, and I was just one of many users trying to get it to do something. Just a note, I had taken no medication before I went to sleep, I don't drink, and I've never done drugs in my life.
At first it seemed perfectly normal, I was working hard to get my body to accomplish some task while others were trying to get their own often mutually exclusive tasks done too. I was getting frustrated though as I felt "I'm really sick, I'm in a crisis situation, I should have priority" and no one else seemed to care. They just kept going about their business.
Those "other entities" would be the viruses. And what you are describing is literally occuring inside your body, as the viruses take over your cells and use them for their own purposes (replication).
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I don't remember having flu dreams, but "real" flu is one of the most trippy fucking experiences I've ever had. crazy dream yo
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I've had weird flu dreams.. I watched the Phantom menace for the first time under the effects of flu.. the next 2 evenings i had one long Star wars influenced dream that no matter if i opened my eyes or when i closed them again, i went straight back to where I left off.. 2 nights running. Leading me to wonder if I slept at all and actually just had some odd hallucinogenic sleep.
Happened again about a year ago when I was suffering flu.. can't remember what it was about as it wasn't so vivid, but it did have the same odd thing of stopping and starting when i opened/closed my eyes and carrying on..
I did suffer pneumonia as a child and had a hospital stay after some apparently pretty intense hallucinating that had my parents really worried.. i don't remember any of it, apart from being told I had to go to hospital, which at the time was odd cos I don't remember feeling ill. Not sure if connected..
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I've had flu/fever dreams before, they're pretty trippy.
My most memorable was I was sick on Christmas day, and had gotten Call of Duty 2 and played it for part of the day. That night I dreamed of a battle similar to Stalingrad that lasted like two years. My dreams are normally very obscure and hazy, but this was pretty vivid, and the time frame felt real. Needless to say, that was one of the longest nights of my life, taking part in the two year long battle for some random, gigantic, city of my imagination.
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On March 03 2011 08:37 Gingerninja wrote:
I've had weird flu dreams.. I watched the Phantom menace for the first time under the effects of flu.. the next 2 evenings i had one long Star wars influenced dream that no matter if i opened my eyes or when i closed them again, i went straight back to where I left off.. 2 nights running. Leading me to wonder if I slept at all and actually just had some odd hallucinogenic sleep.
Happened again about a year ago when I was suffering flu.. can't remember what it was about as it wasn't so vivid, but it did have the same odd thing of stopping and starting when i opened/closed my eyes and carrying on..
I did suffer pneumonia as a child and had a hospital stay after some apparently pretty intense hallucinating that had my parents really worried.. i don't remember any of it, apart from being told I had to go to hospital, which at the time was odd cos I don't remember feeling ill. Not sure if connected..
Yeah, I was getting the same sensation regarding my eyes being open or closed and the dream seemingly continuing. Scary stuff.
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Doesn't a fever come with the flu? I've never heard of flu dreams, but I know that once you get a high enough fever your dreams can get seriously messed up
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On March 03 2011 08:48 0mgVitaminE wrote:
Doesn't a fever come with the flu? I've never heard of flu dreams, but I know that once you get a high enough fever your dreams can get seriously messed up
That would make sense considering the craziness subsided once I brought my temperature down. Good to know.
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United States24673 Posts
Yeah whenever i have a fever (fortunately pretty rarely) I find myself hallucinating and or having messed up dreams when trying to sleep in my bed. I'm pretty sure that's common. I should keep a journal and write that crap down as best I can to see how ridiculous it seems later on xD
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Wow, these things happen to me too, and they're terrifying.
The "goal" thing that I remember when I was younger one flu night was to touch the bars of the bunk bed. I didn't know why I was doing it, but every so often I would reach as far as I could and touch the furthest bar (I was on the bottom bunk). It seemed like I was being controlled.
Another time I had a dream that I inherited a will that gave me ownership of the NY Yankees, a hotel, and a treasure buried under the hotel. I got so stressed, and the task of finding the treasure was enormous. I'd wake up every once in a while and open my eyes, and my room seemed HUGE. It was so odd.
One other time I got sick while I was reading a John Grisham book (can't remember which one, the one with the kid who talks to the lawyer about the mob's evil doings..). This one was terrifying. I thought that the mob was out to assassinate me before I told my lawyer their secrets. At one point in the night, I ran from my room to another, jumped over the couch or something like that, and hid behind it. I kept thinking I was being shot at, and literally started bawling. My lawyer couldn't do anything to help me, and I thought I was going to die.
Another thing about these dreams, they're always in black and white and there are always torches at some point. It's always odd, it doesn't matter whether your eyes are open or closed, your dreams feel so real they don't stop. Terrible, terrible nights.
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Haha, flu dreams fucked me up. I thought the windows were trying to kill me with bad mathematics. I ran downstairs to my mum and shouted 'WHAT DOES 2+2 =?? IT's 4 RIGHT??? RIGHT??? THE WINDOWS SAY IT'S 5 AND THEY'RE GONA KILL ME'
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Being sick fuckn sucks in general..
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On March 03 2011 09:16 sc4k wrote:
Haha, flu dreams fucked me up. I thought the windows were trying to kill me with bad mathematics. I ran downstairs to my mum and shouted 'WHAT DOES 2+2 =?? IT's 4 RIGHT??? RIGHT??? THE WINDOWS SAY IT'S 5 AND THEY'RE GONA KILL ME'
sorry I had to just laugh at that.
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On March 03 2011 11:21 sluggaslamoo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2011 09:16 sc4k wrote:
Haha, flu dreams fucked me up. I thought the windows were trying to kill me with bad mathematics. I ran downstairs to my mum and shouted 'WHAT DOES 2+2 =?? IT's 4 RIGHT??? RIGHT??? THE WINDOWS SAY IT'S 5 AND THEY'RE GONA KILL ME' sorry I had to just laugh at that.
obv troll is obv
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Your flu experience sounded like my last flu. Actually come to think of it, my only flu (besides when I was a kid).
I literally felt like I was going insane. In just a few short hours too. I threw up violently in a very short period, and because of all this was happening, I had an anxiety attack. I really felt like my life was going to end.
The way I was thinking was so irrational, especially for me. I never panic, I didn't even know what a panic attack was. The flu can really kick the shit out of you and make you turn into someone else. I just freaked! The whole experience was pretty frightening, and I just kinda gave up fighting it. That helped a lot. If you just turn your brain off, you will relax a lot. How? I don't know - I just hit a tipping point, and within a day and a half I was at 100% again.
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I actually have a high fever aswell, and I cant sleep properly since i cough and sneeze too much, so I end up being incredibly tired AND feverish, i watched a commercial on TV for Spiderman 3 and for just an instant I thought I could probably climb outside my window (4th floor) and climb on the brick wall outside, I even got up and took a step towards the window before I realized how stupid that would be. AND THIS WAS YESTERDAY, im a bit scared.
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That sounds crazy  . I've never had a legit flu, but damn, now I'm kind of scared lol. It kind of reminds me of my dreams on Sunday nights after partying hard on the previous Saturday night at school. No matter what, I would have these CRAZY, indescribable dreams that seemed so real.
I'm usually really good at controlling dreams and not letting them psyche me out, but this was always a pattern, and it definitely was linked to my body's exhaustion paired with the lingering effects of the alcohol from the night before.
Just interesting to see your mind's reaction to certain things that are foreign to your body, heh.
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Are you sure it's not just NyQuill? I've heard people get craaaazy dreams with that.
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lol weird i always had some sort of crazy sex fantasies whenever I had a fever D:
unfortunately i'm kinda immune to cold
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Thank you for writing this. I know this is years later, but yesterday I had a flu shot and last night I had the most vivid bizarre dream (if you want to call it that) that I ever had in my life and I was so freaked out about it I decided to do research to see if other people have had any similar experiences. I found one other person besides you and me through google.
I also was very cold with a serious case of the chills and flu like body aches. I was so tired I fell asleep before brushing my hair or turning off the lamp. I fell asleep without eating dinner. I was out cold. I had not taken any medication or drugs besides the flu shot. I do not drink or take drugs. Then the "Dream" started. It was so real, it was as if it really happened and afterwards I was like "What the hell was that?" "Did that really happen?" "No, I was asleep." I felt like Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby when she is trying to figure out if her "nightmare" was a dream or real.
I had to research it to make sure it was flu shot related and not some weird supernatural experience. In my dream there was Lucifer and demons. It is a relief to know I am not the only person who has had this sort of weird experience associated with flu.
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EPT
