That does sound confusing, Blue! The sleep state is such a strange thing. I find that half awake state to be such an odd one, and I have sometimes questioned "did I really hear that or was I just sleeping?" I don't actually hallucinate when awake, but I experience that kind of thing when falling asleep sometimes.

Fern/Wild Coyote that's really interesting and what you wrote reminds me of how a family member of mine used to experience waking up and still being mentally in a dream. Like they didn't hallucinate I don't think, but they still thought the circumstances of the dream were real and would panic they didn't do something for work and try to go to work in the middle of the night for example. Eventually they woke up after maybe 10 minutes of talking and us arguing they were still asleep.

I experienced that same thing one time when I was a child. I had a fever so I think that affected my dreams and then I woke up in a daze and panicked I was supposed to wake up my parents and had overslept. Apparently not waking them up could cause the actual end of the world or something and I was beyond devastated to the point that I wondered if I even wanted to live. Fortunately after about 15 minutes and crying to my mom I woke up fully. I never experienced that again. However with the mixed episode and worsening OCD I had I actually felt like I was in a nightmare. I recall thinking, wait, I have felt this terrible feeling before and was brought back to that mental state I experienced as a child during that dream. That's how I actually describe how I have been feeling a lot when my brain feels off: like I am in some nightmare state.