How can I stay awake for 36+ hours?

[Kriss]

Hi,

I need help staying awake. I read some other articles and all it told me were the effects of not sleeping for days. I want to know how I can stay up. I tried it so many times but I failed. I fall asleep after like 20 hours and 22 hours maximum. Oh yeah and I dont drink coffee so I go without caffein. I want to get to the hallucination stage and then fall asleep or something. I just want to experience it once. Any suggestions or tips? Thanks

[Badtz Maru]

36 hours is pretty easy for most people, I think. I used to stay up 36 hours or so every week, starting Thursday - I'd get up at noon on Thursday to feed the kid, stay up and go to work at 10 PM that night, get off work at 7 AM Friday morning, stay up all day and go to bed Friday night, sometimes as late as midnight or so. I stayed up Friday so I could get back on the 'sleep at night' schedule for the weekend since I didn't get to sleep with my wife during the week. I don't have to do that anymore since my wife quit her job, though. Funny thing is I feel more tired now that I am getting semi-normal amounts of sleep than when I was getting no more than 4 hours or so a day during the week and staying up for well over 30 hours ever Thursday.

I have stayed up longer, I don't start getting the weirder effects until I have been up around 60 hours or so, though things start seeming a bit surreal after 48.

[Badtz Maru]

Oh, BTW some drugs that keep you up will also cancel out the effects of sleep deprivation. If I stay up for 48 hours unassisted things start seeming weird to me, and I'll start having mild visual and auditory hallucinations, but if I stay up 70 on amphetamines I don't feel much other than tired towards the end.

[Badtz Maru]

Sorry for the multiple posts, more things kept occurring to me.

I'm not sure what to recomend to stay up without drugs, but I know what to avoid. Reading will put you out quick, as will watching TV or movies. Driving makes me very sleepy too, even when I'm not really sleep deprived (i.e. only up for 18 hours or so) and it's a good idea to avoid it even if it doesn't make you sleepy because your reaction time is going to be shot and those mild visual hallucinations can cause you to misinterpret critical information.

If you play video games, that would be a good time-killer. I used to stay up long periods of time without realizing it playing games that take a long time, i.e. Civilization 2, MMORPGS. Being around other people tends to keep me up too.

[Mikahw]

You could always spend 36+ hours on the computer looking at Message boards. Hey, works for me. (psst, hour 37. Maybe I should actually start playing Final Fantasy VII. The moon is really made up of green cheese)

[Guy Propski]

Try keeping active. I don't mean a lot of physical activity, but something that will keep your mind active. If you feel yourself falling asleep, get up and walk around. Drink a soda. Splash cold water on your face (or even take a cold shower). Go outside and get some fresh air.

36 hours is not too hard. I've done it before, back in college when I was organizing a dance marathon. I don't remember hallucinating, but I do remember being so tired that I couldn't sleep.

[Barbarian]

As a man who's been an insomniac for a quarter of a century, I'm tempted to flip you the bird big time.

However, if you *want* to avoid falling asleep, I suggest you do something that requires you staying vertical- ie go for a very, very long walk. Bring lots of food.

Or you could always call your local university's psychology department and see if they have any plans to do sleep deprivation testing.

Just so you know, staying up very long doesn't necessarily mean you will hallucinate. I never have.

[Typo Negative]

Get a job working graveyard shift. Your up all night working, then it's daylight when you're trying to sleep.

I'm up longer than 36 hours a couple of times a week.

[1kBR Kid]

The key there is to keep busy, and not with something like reading or watching TV.

As a soldier, I stayed awake for 60+ hours several times. We were in the field and just too busy for sleep. Make yourself a schedule of tasks to complete. Try to convince a friend to stay awake with you; you'll have someone to talk to and the two of you may get into into an "I can't be the one who gives up" situation. Staying awake this long is not natural. You need lots of different ways to stay motivated.



FWIW- I'm a civilian now and there's no way in hell I would EVER stay awake that long again.

[Slacker]

You must really enjoy sleep if you can only make it 20 hours awake at a time...

[Satchmo]

I've done this a number of times, when I was much younger. The above advice about staying busy is good, the best thing I found, especially when 'resting', was to carry around a 5 pound metal weight. That way, if you started to drift off, the weight would slip from your hand and land on your foot or at least make a lot of noise and wake you up. A shot of adreneline either way! Don't count too much on hallucinations, though. The only thing I noticed was thinking I saw something out of the corner of my eye, then when I turned my head, of course, nothing was there. I suppose I was a little twitchy there for a while. Your body will put you to sleep eventually, but you should be able to stay up 40 to 60 hours if you do put your mind to it. Just remember your perceptions will be screwed up and your judgement as well, don't drive or operate any heavy machinery.

[Kriss]

I cant do it! I tried the video game thing but it didnt work. I just get bored and start falling asleep. The 5 pound metal thing I cant do cause I have 5 other people living in my house and I dont want my foor to get broken heh. There were some good suggestions but most of them I already tried. The worst of all was the walk. I took a long walk and couldnt get back cause I was so tired and had to call my mom. Do you think being 15 is too young to try and stay up for 60+ hours? I really want to hullciante and see what it feels like and stuff but I cant even stay awake for 20+ hours! Its so hard and I give up too easily.

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

Well, I did 56 straight hours when I was a medical resident. Be the only person on duty in a hospital delivery suite, and get real busy delivering 15 or 16 babies, do a few elaborate 3rd and 4th degree perineal tears on the women who delivered too fast or in the elevator on the way to the suite. Also get called to the intensive care unit to help another resident with an unstable patient, run to a few cardiac arrests on the floor, be too busy to get to the cafeteria and subsist on vending machines and stale doughnuts, and have the nurses shake you and say they need you every time you start dozing off a little.

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

Sorry, that should read perineal tear repairs. I didn't give them tears, I just got to fix them.

Ok, the one tore 'cuz I was in the room across the hall delivering another kid, and the nurse had to catch that kid.

[Kriss]

sorry Qadgop the Mercotan but that didnt help me in any way. Thanks

[BingoBurringo]

Awwwwwww, that poor kid who can't hallucinate naturally.

I feel for you.

Trembling, twitching, and extreme paranoia usually come before the hallucinations, anyway. And even then it's only seeing tiny things darting around in the corner of your eye.

Do you don't use caffeine, but you want a hallucinate?
What are you, a Mormon?

[Kriss]

Originally posted by BingoBurringo
Awwwwwww, that poor kid who can't hallucinate naturally.

I feel for you.

Trembling, twitching, and extreme paranoia usually come before the hallucinations, anyway. And even then it's only seeing tiny things darting around in the corner of your eye.

Do you don't use caffeine, but you want a hallucinate?
What are you, a Mormon?

No i mean i dont use caffeine to stay up and stuff. If its only stuff u see at the corner or ur eye then it sucks. I thought u would start seeing stuff like a big purple spider or something.

[kgriffey79]

Everquest! The only way to go for lost sleep!

[Viscera]

Well, if I have to stay up (for mid shifts) I drink plenty of caffeine (Mountain Dew). After about a week, I get used to the time change, and I can stay up all shift. :p

On my last day, I also try to stay up all day, so my wife and I are able to do stuff the next day or two. I usually play EverQuest too on those days, however, even then I occasionally drift off, especially if it is a boring event/raid. However, the drifting off only lasts about 15 minutes or so. The good thing (for me) is that even though I've been up for 24 hrs, once the time of day comes that I'm normally up again, I'm not that tired anymore I'm thinking that if you can do 24-28ish hours, the next 12 or so should be fairly easy. Just my opinion on that though.

Vis

[Mort Furd]

It is not hard at all. Just find an unemployed girlfriend who likes to go out dancing every night. You work all day, change clothes and go and party all night. You then drive back home, change clothes, and got to work again. Doing this will guarantee you your sleep deprivation, for what it is worth. I never hallucinated. After a couple of weeks (with occasional naps) things got to the point where I fell asleep standing up at work while noting box and shelf numbers in the stock room. Free standing in the middle of an isle, and I fell asleep. The card I had been taking notes on was covered in tiny, very clear handwriting (actually much neater than my normal handwriting) when I woke up. At that point I decided it was time to get some real sleep, and started making sure to get at least a few hours of shut eye every night. I probably wouldn't have run around like that for so long, but the girl (woman, actually) was pretty hot and was real good at leading me on.

Sleep deprivation!=Fun

[Typo Negative]

Quoth the Descendents... "Thanks to modern chemistry, sleep is now optional".

[pulykamell]

Kriss- I have a feeling that you'll be disappointed if you're expecting some wild sleep-deprived hallucinations. But, hey, everybody is different. For me, I only get the things darting in and out of the corner of my eye, and this sets in at only about 24 hours for me. I've been up for 50 or so hours without even a 10-minute nap when I was 13, so it's certainly possible for you to stay up. What I experienced is just a weird pulsing sensation, as if the room was "breathing," and slowly expanding and contracting. I wasn't purposely trying to stay up this long and, believe me, I wouldn't take the trouble of trying it.

One cool effect I do get from time to time, and it has as much to do with sleep deprivation as it does mental exhaustion (eg. studying for university finals) is intense auditory hallucinations. It sets in as early as 20 hours without sleep, but I really gotta be mentally wiped. When this happens, I swear I hear full orchestral scores of original melodies. In fact, if I'm working on a song I could just start off the phrase in my head and it instantly composes itself and I hear it, as I would hear a radio or any other sound in the room. However, I cannot control this and I cannot predict when it will happen, so I don't go out of my way to attempt this. I happen to like sleep.

Besides, there's plenty of sleep deprivation ahead for you in college.

[BlinkingDuck]

15 year olds need more sleep than older folks.

cite: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/sleep.html

[Kriss]

Well I just thought I would try it cause it summer vacation. Some of my friends are on vacation and we hang out and stuff but it gets boring after a while. Anyways I thought it would be cool to hallucinate without some drugs or something. Maybe I should take some caffeine to try and stay up. Thanks for the cool suggestions. Later

[Balance]

Originally posted by pulykamell
When this happens, I swear I hear full orchestral scores of original melodies.

You require sleep deprivation for this? I hear music--some original, some not--in my head all the time, although full orchestral arrangements are fairly unusual. It's too bad that I really suck at writing it down.

Kriss, listen to wise old Balance, who has nearly twice your tender years in experience. Don't do it. Even if you do manage to get some genuinely impressive hallucinations, as opposed to a few fuzzy auras and gneechees (little creatures so fast that you can only see where they've been--great fun to go with the paranoia :rolleyes: ), I promise that you will feel too crappy to enjoy them. I've gone 72 hours on nothing but willpower and a too-busy schedule, and it sucked--I hurt everywhere and it felt like I was scraping the marrow out of my bones. You've probably read the description in the other thead--however cool it may have sounded, it wasn't.

If you do it anyway, at least remember that you will be functioning at reduced capacity--please don't do anything that relies on your concentration or reflexes (like driving). Deep breathing will help a little.

[socpro69]

Sign up for Pimpwar. It's ruined my life.

[FarmerOak]

Get a job you hate, max out your credit cards, and get your wife and your girlfriend pregnant in the same week. You'll have more than your share of sleepless nights.