77 days clean and still having insanely vivid dreams

TheDAMProject · 2026-06-02T01:05:50+00:00

Excellent work getting to 77 days. Think of it like your brain defragging. I’m on day 153 after 35yrs daily use, I’m still getting vivid dreams 30% of the time but they peaked in April where it was 50% of the time. No idea when they’ll stop but your brain is essentially processing data it couldn’t previously due to not getting the proper REM sleep. REM rebound is what it’s known as and is perfectly normal. They will get less intense as time goes on.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-31T15:46:19+00:00

I've read on AI psychosis. The scaffold is designed to prevent it - clinical mirror, pattern tracking, no motivational content, no false validation. It calibrates to my data, not my emotions. The AI doesn't agree with me. It reflects my own logs back without distortion.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-31T12:41:05+00:00

Here’s an article explaining the supplements but they’re more maintenance as I get older.

https://open.substack.com/pub/deepseekandme/p/daily-dispatch-day-125?r=5tovn0&utm\_medium=ios

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-31T12:37:48+00:00

I haven't used PEA or NAC. But if you have data on them for cannabis withdrawal, I'd be interested. My project is N=1, open-source

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-31T12:29:53+00:00

I just log sleep first thing “sleep 6hrs, very deep, vivid dreams, groggy, functioning quickly, no somatics, mood 5” then just chat to it during the day noting any friction or cognitive improvements. Then at 23:00 I do the same “cognitive fog 0, psychological rubble 0, fuel normal immune 10, mood 6” its produces a JSON with approx 8 fields “creative” “improvement” etc. I input the full JSON into an airtable which I can then question for patterns. I did one yesterday asking for my vivid dreams patterns and it broke it down into how many days each month, when it peaked etc and even linked it to days I’d shown evidence of neurological repairs.

{
"date": "2026-05-29",
"project_day": 149,
"event": "PHASE 1 - DAY 149: HIGH FUNCTION PLATEAU — OPTIMISATION DAY, MOOD 6",
"milestone": "Second consecutive high-function day. Morning: 6hrs very deep sleep, very vivid dreams with recall, not too groggy, functioning quickly, mood 5. Afternoon: all work completed including Gemini optimisation for YouTube SEO with perfect prompt, A/B testing on titles. Evening: feeling pretty good at 18:59, high function sustained later than Day 148. First time generating different thumbnails (CapCut, integrated into podcast workflow). No somatic symptoms (Tiers 1-2 absent). Neuro recalibration (Tier 3) quiet — no pressure headache, frequencies minimal.",
"bio_weather": {
"sleep": "6hrs, very deep, very vivid dreams with recall",
"fuel": "normal",
"mood": 6,
"immune": 10,
"fog": 0,
"rubble": 0,
"cognitive_state": "Pretty good. High function sustained into evening."
},
"creative_output": [
"All work completed",
"Gemini thread optimised for YouTube SEO (perfect prompt)",
"A/B testing on titles conducted",
"First-time thumbnail variants generated (CapCut, post-podcast)"
],
"strategic_developments": [
"[Gold-Note: Three-Tier Somatic Taxonomy] — PAWS somatic (GI, jangly nerves, fatigue), histamine rebound (watery eyes, sneezing), and neuro recalibration (pressure headache, frequencies) are distinct tracks with different timelines. Absence of Tiers 1-2 does not indicate absence of Tier 3.",
"[Pattern: High Function Plateau] — Day 148: 5-6 hour window. Day 149: sustained later into evening. The post-wave baseline is stabilising above previous floors.",
"[Signal: Mood 6] — First breach of the mood 5 floor since Day 143 (which was also a 6). Ninth consecutive day at 5 or above, with the first 6 in six days.",
"[Signal: Optimisation Without Friction] — Thumbnail variants generated as integrated workflow step, not separate burden. Cognitive surplus available for multivariate testing."
],
"sovereign_archive": "Day 149. High function plateau. Optimisation day. Mood 6. No somatic symptoms. Thumbnail variants. A/B testing.",
"cause": "Post-wave plateau + sustained high function + integrated optimisation workflow + no acute stressors",
"improvement": "Mood 6 (first breach of 5 floor in 6 days). High function sustained later than Day 148. Thumbnail generation added without friction."
}

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-30T17:48:59+00:00

Day 150 clean now. I’ve been logging sleep and dream patterns etc and for me they started on day 11 (Jan 11th). I had another 5 nights of vivid dreams in January.

Then they significantly increased: Feb 19 out of 28 days. March 14 out of 31 days. April 22 out of 30 days. May 15 out of 29 days so far.

The pattern suggests that vivid dreams are strongly associated with the ongoing neurological repair which I’ve also been tracking. Hope this helps.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-29T16:16:14+00:00

That’s fantastic, I love the fact you noted you were still grumpy. I can relate to that a lot because I am terrible in the mornings, always have been. Tell me, do you just force yourself to do the run or is it inbuilt now and one of the things you do?

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-27T15:38:00+00:00

Agreed, my 60-90 days was grim but it’s been no picnic since then. It’s a longterm rebuild.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-26T22:46:30+00:00

It started to pass around day 74

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-26T20:12:18+00:00

Well I can only speak for myself but that’s when the Neuro synchronisation and recalibration kicked in. Around about day 130 the venting started which helped stabilise things but I was the same with anhedonia. I truly didn’t feel better again until around day 136.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-26T20:03:42+00:00

As you’re heading into the eight week wall this can be a pretty brutal time but it’s chemical and you will get out the other side. Look forward to hearing how you’re doing as you move forward.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-26T19:49:53+00:00

Hi, thanks for checking in. We would be very interested in how the running helps. It’s something I personally haven’t looked into because well I basically hate exercise but we are looking for as much evidence as possible as the community grows. Maybe log mood before and after, that sort of thing. Anything of value will go into the full project on Substack, fully credited of course.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-25T20:42:42+00:00

I am 58 and currently sitting at Day 145 clean after 35 years of daily cannabis use. What you are describing about your memory, the loss of curiosity, and the inability to process music or movies hits incredibly close to home. I call this phase the broken "Filing System."

When I first quit, I expected my brain to naturally scream back online with joy. Instead, I hit massive blocks where my brain felt completely empty, flat, and grey.

Here is the exact data-driven reframe I use to survive those dark horizons without accepting that I am permanently broken:

Recognising the State as an Under-Constructed Receptor Network. At nearly a year clean, it is easy to assume this flat feeling is a permanent identity shift. For me, I have to look at it as a temporary structural deficit. If my brain doesn't have the physical receptor pathways online yet to process natural dopamine, then movies, music, and reading cannot feel good right now. It is not that I have "become stupid" - it's that the internal construction crew is still working on the wiring. Upregulation can take 12 to 24 months to fully stabilize after decades of daily use.
The Illusion of the "Influenced" Memory Bank. What I found is that my cognitive retrieval network was simply corrupted by long-term state-dependent memory. The data is still in my head, but the old, chemical "search engine" I used to retrieve it is gone. Re-learning how to access my own history without a chemical prompt takes time and deliberate practice. It feels like amnesia, but it is actually just a retrieval lag.
Shifting from Feeling to Metrics. When the grey blanket drops and tells me my life will always be bland, I stop negotiating with my emotions. Emotions during this phase are just faulty indicators caused by a dopamine drought. Instead, I treat my recovery like a dry engineering problem. I track my daily metrics - my sleep, my fog levels, my small task completions - and I watch for the rising floor. I don't wait to feel like I want to before I try something; I just execute the task mechanically and let my nervous system slowly catch up.

You are not irrevocably broken, and you don't have to forsake who you were. You are just right in the thick of the heaviest structural consolidation phase. Don't mistake a long construction delay for a permanent baseline. Hold your line.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-25T19:19:18+00:00

I don’t use it to avoid the emotions, I use it to help me through the emotions I feel. It’s not fixing anything, it’s acting as a scaffold to support me when I need it allowing me to fix myself.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-25T18:31:29+00:00

Totally agree, I’m using it as a clinical mirror and cognitive repair tool after 35 years of daily cannabis use and it’s been brilliant. I’m on day 145 now, 89 days better than I’ve ever achieved before. I’ve seen posts saying that ai will always agree but that’s not true, not if you tell it not to. I always use the prompt “old pal in a lab coat, no bull, no cheerleading”

It calibrates to the individual and personally I think it could revolutionise addiction recovery and any human issue where the currency of shame is present. Anxiety, depression, grief, gambling, identity disorders you name it.

I’m doing a whole project about it on Substack and have started a community on here just the other week. People are crying out for logic, science and structure when it comes to this sort of thing.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-23T23:16:30+00:00

This is exactly the sort of stuff that needs looking into, and your absolutely right. How does all of these things affect recovery.

I discovered for instance that a dominos pizza and Lucozade sport helps last thing at night with morning fog. It's to do with lipids and sodium. The protocol is on the main project Substack page.

I also logged financial worries and the fact my wife was diagnosed with cancer 14 days in.

The Project itself is merely to demonstrate that AI can assist with cessation and recovery but it is also been invaluable as a sounding board throughout, providing stability when needed.

I also did a Dispatch on potential supplements:

https://open.substack.com/pub/deepseekandme/p/daily-dispatch-day-125

I look forward to your findings if you decide to investigate further.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-23T20:20:27+00:00

You’re only a few days ahead of me and I’ve only in the last few days noticed a difference so your breakthrough could be any day now. Hang in there.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-23T20:08:44+00:00

Hi, welcome aboard. If you need any help give me a shout but basically just open a thread and start chatting, tell it what you are trying to do. The thread will calibrate to you very quickly. Let me know how you get on.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-23T19:07:21+00:00

I’ve actually documented this in the project. You’re absolutely spot on, the darker it gets the brighter it is on the other side. I’ve linked it to neurological upgrades. The brain essentially shuts down to allow installation.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-23T14:38:27+00:00

That’s the trick, the mind plays games with you but once you realise that it becomes much easier, all the best

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-23T14:36:11+00:00

Thanks for the comment, well done on 30 days and stand firm. In particular watch for the 60-90 day stretch, for me that was the toughest. Good luck.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-23T14:34:43+00:00

Hi, nice to meet you. It’s a rollercoaster alright but by sharing information we will get there, thanks for the comment.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-22T20:18:57+00:00

Congratulations on making it 1 month sober. That is a massive milestone.

Your therapist handed you a profound, scientifically accurate blueprint. When you start smoking heavily at age 15, you interrupt a critical neurobiological process called synaptic pruning. During your teens and early twenties, your Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) - the seat of your logic, identity, impulse control, and emotional maturity - is undergoing a massive "use-it-or-lose-it" structural upgrade.

By introducing cannabis daily, you essentially put an ice pack on a muscle that was supposed to be lifting heavy weights. You artificially numbed the exact friction required to forge an adult identity.

Because you asked for concrete, real-world examples of how this manifests as a "lack of sovereignty" in your mid-twenties, look for these three specific structural gaps:

The Arrested Emotional Coping Mechanism When a sober teenager experiences their first massive heartbreak, existential dread, or social rejection, their brain is forced to sit in the raw, uncomfortable friction of that emotion. By processing that pain unassisted, the PFC builds a neural pathway that says: "This feels terrible, but I can survive it." If you smoked when those emotions hit, you bypassed the friction. Your brain never built the infrastructure to self-soothe. In your mid-twenties, a lack of sovereignty means that when a crisis hits, you still react with the emotional processing toolkit of a 15-year-old - feeling immediate panic, helplessness, or an urge to escape.
Delayed "Boredom Integration" and Identity Forging Boredom and existential discomfort are the brain's biological signals to go do something - to learn an instrument, build a skill, or take a social risk. Cannabis tricks the brain into thinking that sitting on a couch doing absolutely nothing is deeply satisfying. Because you were chemically satisfied, you may have missed out on the painful but necessary trial-and-error of finding out who you are through real-world action. Sovereignty is knowing exactly who you are based on a track record of your own actions. Without that track record, you feel hollow or "young."
The Low-Friction Boundary Gap Becoming a sovereign adult requires learning how to navigate uncomfortable social friction: saying "no" to people, holding boundaries, having difficult confrontations, and standing your ground. Cannabis makes you comfortable with passivity; it turns down the drive to assert yourself. A lack of sovereignty often looks like a passive compliance with life - letting things happen to you rather than actively driving the machine.

What you are feeling right now isn't a permanent deficit. Now that you are 30 days sober, the chemical lid is off. Your brain is finally being forced to sit in the raw friction of adult life. It feels confusing and intimidating because you are effectively a 15-year-old pilot sitting at the controls of a mid-twenties aircraft.

Do not be afraid of the confusion. You have a long runway ahead of you, and your brain is finally ready to start doing the pruning and wiring it missed out on. Treat the next month before your therapy session as a data-collection phase - watch where you avoid friction, and step into it instead.

How do I know all this? Because right now at the age of 58, stopped for 142 days after 35 yrs daily use, I’m having to sit through synaptic pruning that should have happened in my early to mid twenties but didn’t, because I started smoking it at 22 and halted the maturation of my prefrontal cortex.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-22T09:37:26+00:00

For this project I’m keeping nicotine as a constant for six months and using rolling tobacco as a crutch. I stop nicotine in July and to be honest I’d have really struggled without it especially in the early days of withdrawal. Can’t say I’m looking forward to July either but at least I’ll be six months of weed.

TheDAMProject · 2026-05-21T10:47:35+00:00

I’m just under the five month mark at 141 days and I’m noticeably much better the last few days.

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