I got into lucid dreaming back in highschool, roughly ~12 months before I started smoking pot.
I was VERY religious on my dream journal, from the first night onwards I was recording 2 - 3 dreams, sometimes 5+ per night.
After ~3 - 4 weeks and literally 100's of A4 pages with descript dreams and excellent dream recall, I started randomly going lucid, my most preferred method was the clock technique and sometimes the book technique.
For ~6 months I would get multiple dreams a night where I turned lucid but would drop out within 20 - 30 seconds once turning lucid. My method was the classic "close your eyes and spin really fast in a circle" to remain in the dream and teleport myself to a new location to revive being lucid.
Another 6 months I would get minimum 2 - 3 lucid dreams per night, sometimes up to 5. IMO VERY long lucid dreams, up to "30 minutes" per dream of real-time interaction.
I had excellent dream recall, they were vivid like movies, I did not have the best dream control though. You would surprised, you can be 100% aware you're dreaming but still not have complete dream control.
Then I started smoking and have been an everyday smoker since and don't dream at all. I have at times had 1 - 2 month breaks where I would go back to lucid dreaming, takes me ~1 week of a dream journal before I'm lucid again.
I got a knack for it.
Dream journal is 100% the key.
For anyone interested, clock technique IMO is the best way to go lucid: Go find a clock, look at the time quite clearly, then either look away or close your eyes (in the dream) for 3 - 5 seconds, then look back. The large majority of the time, the clock will show a completely different (often HOURS apart, AM/PM or something really random) number therefor you can go "this does no make sense" and instant... BAM, lucid.
