Ever had melatonin dreams? It's what I've been experiencing over the past several nights. Since wrenching my shoulder a couple of weeks ago, I've been unable to sleep very well, so my girlfriend suggested melatonin, a supplement to help you stay asleep (not to be mistaken with a sleep aid which MAKES you sleep.) And so far it has worked, but with one significant side effect: extremely vivid dreams.
Typically, my dreams are your bog standard absurdities, i.e.: make no sense, filled with fantastic environments and creatures, faceless/nameless people, etc., but these melatonin dreams? They could easily be memories for how grounded in reality they are. I know everyone in them; it's mostly my family and girlfriend, and the situations we're in are very normal. In fact, they've all been in places that I recognize; usually, in my dreams, what I recognize in-dream as "my house" is nothing like my house in real life. And their topical, as well. For instance, my girlfriend just finished her final round of chemotherapy, but lost her hair about a month and a half ago; a recent dream saw me with her, her sister and two nieces shopping for a wig, something we haven't even thought about doing but is easily something we would do. The dream even picked the two of her three nieces mostly likely to want to do something like that with her.
It's really hard to explain. Mostly they're not bad dreams, it's just bizzare and unsettling hanging out with friends and family for an evening only to discover you never actually got out of bed.