I took Chloroquine as a prophylactic anti-malarial before and during a trip to Central America. You can get the crazy dreams whether or not you’re infected. Mine were, fortunately, quite vivid (and sometimes lucid) but not disturbing. The scenarios were pretty wild though. Other friends of mine had less pleasant experiences. For example, one had a recurring dream that his abdomen got ripped open, a load of pebbles fell out (instead of viscera), and a flock of ravens came and eat the pebbles while he watched in agony. Every night, over and over, for about two months.

During your waking hours, nothing feels amiss at all. Keep in mind too that the dosing is once a week. It took a week or two for the effects to start for me, and they persisted for almost a month after I was home. Unlike reports from the various psychedelics you listed, I felt absolutely no euphoria or “spiritual awakening” from any of it; I just woke up every morning and thought “wow, that was fucked up!”

I wonder how much of the "crazy dreams" comes down to people usually taking such a drug when travelling and having new experiences/seeing new places/expanding their mental schemas (which is known to increase BDNF / promote neuronal plasticity, and therefore likely to cause intense dreaming under the "memory reconsolidation" hypothesis of dreaming.)

It'd be interesting to compare to the dreams of people who take the drug without travelling, e.g. medical staff native to malarial regions, who take it as a prophylactic when interacting with malaria-infected patients.

Yeah that would be curious to investigate for sure!

I can only speak to my own experiences, but while I have observed the phenomenon you describe in preparation for travel/while travelling, Chloroquine dreams were waaaaay more dramatic than anything I've experienced with other travel. I forget what the exact timeline was, but I think I started taking them about a month before departing, and the dreams started about two weeks before departing, and stayed pretty much constant until a few weeks after I'd been home and stopped taking the pills.

I have been prescribed it a number of times. You are supposed to take it for a while after being in a maleria area, or at least I was told to do so. The dreams persisted back home.

The area I was visiting was not so different from other places I had visited or worked, just with a greater chance of maleria and lower chance of getting quick treatment.

In my experience (since I was living there, not really "traveling" at the time) it's not really tied to the travel. For instance, I mostly was stuck in laser rock shows, but like flying through them at high speed. Not particularly an East-African experience.

I get incredibly weird and vivid dreams from Prednisone and I know a friend who was prescribed Benzo (not sure what kind) and also got very vivid dreams. I don't know if is the same type he describes but it is like a normal dream; just stronger and odder for me (with a completely different medication).

It is nothing like a psychedelic trip for me.

If you want to try and see if you get weird/strong dreams there are a lot of anecdotes around the supplement ZMA. It is just anecdotes but I've seen threads started on many different training forums from newbies asking about it.

https://examine.com/nutrition/does-zma-cause-weird-dreams/

If you want answer to these kinds of questions, I suggest you go to Erowid. Here is the page for Mefloquine https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Pharms_Mefloquin...

As you see, not too much data but it is still something. From the reports, it doesn't look like there is recreative potential. It doesn't hurt to look but the general idea is that if a strong psychoactive is not heavily controlled/illegal, the effects are usually nothing but unpleasant.

The prophylaxis medication is typically a broad spectrum antibiotic like doxycycline. There are other more expensive options which you take for a shorter period afterwards vs doxy which you have to take every day plus a month after.

However.. Some of the alternative drugs have very serious warnings that if you have any history of mental illness you probably shouldn't take them. Mefloquine is particularly prone to this I think and the symptoms sound like what the OP described (insomnia, vivid dreams, etc). You shouldn't have that with doxycycline, but it can make you photosensitive which isn't ideal in Africa.

See my other post here about my friend getting paranoid on mefloquine, leading to my discovering that mefloqine is suspected in playing a role in several instances of peacekeepers attacking unarmed civilians. Search [mefloqine "freaky Friday"].

I haven't taken them myself, but my coworkers quit taking even though the company was buying them. So I assume it isn't the type of high people do willingly. Other coworkers took them with no problems though, so it seems somewhat person specific what the reaction is.

See my long post elsewhere in this thread about my friend getting paranoid on mefloqine, leading to my discovering that some suspect mefloqine has played a role in multiple instances of peacekeepers attacking unarmed civilians.