The best time to induce an out of body experience is when you are fast asleep. Right in the middle of REM that’s Rapid Eye Movement. The trick is to wake up while you are dreaming and attempt to wrestle your spiritual body out of the physical body and then do what you like. What you would actually do while out of your body I wasn’t so sure but I was considering floating to Kent to scare the hell out of my older sister. I set my alarm clock to 03:00 hours every day as this was the time considered best to experience deep sleep when dreams occur.

Initially I would just wake up at three in the morning and write down the odd dream. They were mostly about me being chased by monsters dressed as my Father, or being chased by my Mother with a rolling pin, and a bacon sandwich, and some naked nuns. The naked Nuns were there to provide mild relief along a spiritual journey in case it lapsed into piousness.

My attempts to induce an out of body experiences were proving fruitless and my parents were concerned about the dark circles under my eyes. They thought I was back on the pills again and silence at the dinner table became the norm but what could I say, ‘I’ve decide to transcend consciousness and access the area known as the mind of God’, or put up with some mild suspicion. It wasn’t too long before I had my first success. I had decided to try and induce a deep-sleep with a hyper dreamy mind and had worked out that a day at the gym, followed by a Lamb Madras at dinner, and a brie cheese sandwich before I want to bed, would have the right combination to induce the kind of state of mind that was lucid enough for me to wake up in. And I was right.

At about 03:00 hours in the morning without the aid of my alarm clock I awoke within my dream. I found myself standing in my old flat in Streatham. I wasn’t too sure if I was still dreaming. Dreams were supposed to take you away from reality and yet here I was in my shitty bedsit with its tiny kitchen alcove. The two ring electric cooker was only an arm’s length across the corridor from the toilet, and there was the other me in the toilet, grinning in the bathroom mirror. I could see the pack of razors on the kitchen sink and me with my black Top Hat on believing myself to be cool. My eyes were wider than Mars and I had started to pick up one of the razors. I didn’t want to see anymore of these lucid dreams. I was expecting angels or heavenly realms but not this nightmare. I tried to escape from the dream and ran out the front door.

All around me there was a bright white light and I couldn’t see. I fell over the balcony and into the brightness. I then appeared to be in a hospital but I was lost. I was near a cubicle and could hear one of my sisters talking. I opened the curtains and she was sat beside me. My wrists were in a bandage but I recoiled in shock at the sight of me. Again I turned away from the scene and ran outside and fell into the bright light and this time I woke up in my bedroom. I jumped up out of my bed to catch my bearings.

I went over to the window and pressed my hands against them to ensure I was awake. I had been looking for clues to another world but all I got was a past that I wanted to escape from. I decided to head downstairs and as I opened the door my Mother was outside. She jumped in shock. ‘What the feck are you doing up at this time?’ ‘Couldn’t sleep.’ We both went downstairs and I put the kettle on. I would often find my Mother awake at night unable to sleep. She would be sat in the kitchen staring out of the window. We both sat there staring out of the window. Both of us forgetting the past. Click through to more Memoir Madness!!!