Smoking dreams in the dream series of a non-smoker

Abstract

The analysis of this long dream series (N = 9133 dreams) indicates that smoking plays a role in the dreams (1.43%) of a non-smoker. Most often, other dream characters were smoking which annoyed the dreamer. The medium success rate of doing something about the smoking probably reflects a basic pattern of the dreamer dealing with annoying situations. The present study is a good starting point to look into the relationship to smoking, attitudes towards smoking in waking life and in dreaming since in-depth studies in this area are almost completely missing. Furthermore, smoking might also be interesting to use as stimulus during sleep as research has shown that olfactory stimuli can effect dream content and dream emotions.