Abstract

Is dreaming a nightly psychedelic experience? The comparison between night-time dreaming and psychedelic consciousness has been made widely, but only recently begun to be explored in psychedelic and dream science. A recent review paper (Kraehenmann, 2017) systematically compared the two states, concluding that “psychedelics acutely induce dreamlike subjective experiences” (p.1032). There are two main aims of this chapter. First, we review again the comparison of dreaming and psychedelic consciousness, adding some new insights, especially in light of recent research into the phenomenology of dimethyltrptamine (DMT) and narrative analyses of psychedelic experiences. Second, we consider some theoretical implications of this comparison, especially in terms of the therapeutic potential of dreams and psychedelics, and some wider social/cultural implications of the similarities between the two states.