Calea Zacatechichi - Dream Herb

For the past 5 years I’ve been on a quest for the ever-elusive lucid dreaming experience. I keep a dream journal and attempt to program my dreams with the aim of becoming lucid (or in other words realizing that I am dreaming within a dream). Since I started consciously working with my dreams, I have only had a handful of lucid dreams but they have been amazing.

Calea Zacatechichi on erowid.org

When I first got into lucid dreaming, I stumbled across an herb used by the Chontal Indians of Mexico called Calea Zacatechichi. It’s leaves are used before sleep to relax, increase clarity and recall of dreams and promote lucid dreaming. It’s effects are not well documented but you can find many people experimenting with it and posting their experience reports in lucid dream forums. There is only one Scientific study that I know of but there are a lot of experience reports from individuals being posted online.

I used this herb for a short period of time, shortly after I quit smoking cannabis. Cannabis is well know for clouding a person’s dreams and reducing the ability to recall them later. I can’t really be sure if Calea helped me start dreaming again, but after I started to use it, my dreams came back in full force. Over a couple of weeks, my dreams also became more clear and easier to recall. I stopped using it after a couple of months but I plan on embarking on another series of experiments to see if it’s effects are noticeable enough to warrant further use.