Dude, I just had the mother of all lucid dream sequences last night, and I wasn’t even trying! I used to try for this stuff with Valerian and sometimes Hops, with some success. But last night, it was a combination of coming down off alcohol, exhaustion, overstimulation, and a diet coke and 2 cigarettes. I couldn’t sleep and got up and fooled around at 3 am. Didn’t get back to bed until 4 am. I was feeling very alert from the mild stims but physically exhausted.
I almost immediately fell into a sequence of three or four distinct full on lucid dreams—I could see, think separate thoughts inside my head, speak in two languages, and know that everything was OK because I was in control, and I could change the dream or even enter another one if I wanted. Suffice to say, I hit on a lot of people much more rapidly than I would in real life ;) I was also much more daring in front of the police than I would be in real life, haha.
I’ve heard that waking up in the middle of the night and staying awake and then going back to sleep can trigger lucid dreams, but I had never tried that route. Apparently it does work!