It had been a sudden thing, the outbreak of delusions and paranoia in so many previously normal, sane people. All over the place people were turning up to their doctors, all reporting the same thing: extremely lucid dreams, so long and so vivid and so often (people were also falling asleep more often, almost like narcoleptics) that it was making them have trouble distinguishing dreams from normality. It wasn’t a massive amount of people, but it was enough, and all in such a short time span, that the medical professionals began to wonder, and then worry, what might be the cause.
I had a bad habit of paying hardly any attention to the news, so I don’t really know why they decided the cause was organic, caused by genetics, and reasonably rare; and they went looking for clues in our food and water. I can only tell you what I’ve since worked out from thinking back, and talking to other people in here. Please forgive me if this seems a little muddled.
I don’t know how they narrowed it down to being the water. I seem to recall that it didn’t take long. At first everyone was saying terrorists were responsible, like the anthrax scares after 9/11. Bottled water sales skyrocketed and people boiled everything and suspected everyone and there was a spike in electric and gas usage as a result. For a couple of weeks things were pretty chaotic.
Then experts started saying it wasn’t likely to happen to most people, that it was genetic in nature. And the authorities came up with a free plan, a solution, offering safe housing and treatment for anyone who was suffering from the symptoms. They said they had medication that they believed could stall and cure the delusions and lucid dreams, and that anyone who volunteered to stay in the facilities would also have access to specialised filtered water, cleaned with a system advanced and expensive enough that it wasn’t, at that time, practical to apply it to the general water supply.
The number of people suffering from the delusional breaks was small enough that this all seemed feasible, made sense. At first some people gladly booked themselves in, like you might for a day spa treatment or a health farm holiday. Others went reluctantly or on the advice of loved ones after their behaviour became to erratic and messed up to lead their normal lives anymore. People stopped worrying about water being tainted when weeks passed and it became clear most of those who were going to be affected had been by that point, so those who remained ok relaxed, and things went back to normal.
Or at least that was how it seemed on the surface. Really, all that happened was the media directed its gaze elsewhere. People were, in actual fact, still having paranoid breaks, still ending up in the government free facilities.

And worst of all, no one who went in was coming back out again. By and large, the general populus turned and yawned, bored after all the endless conspiracies of Guantanamo Bay and Darfur and the Dallas riots and war after war, and they just stoped caring.