Well, it’s 5AM in my corner of the world, and due to situations I won’t go into here, I am still up. I have thing’s still to do tonight, and things to do in the morning, so I’m thinking of just staying up. Actually, I pretty much have to stay up now, just to get them all done.
So, my question is, how long can I go without sleep without becoming a total whacked out nutjob? I did it in early college (ahh, the dorm years), but that was a few years ago now.
How long have you gone without sleep? I want stories here people. I don’t want to suffer alone.
God, I kope there are people out there who are awake and answer this.
My record for going without sleep is 72 hours. Three days, no sleep, while living on coffee (six tablespoons of coffee, eight of sugar, made lukewarm so you can just slam it) and apples. I wasn’t quite hallucinating at the end of it, but my thought processes definitely weren’t normal.
This wasn’t my idea. While I was in radio training school, we did an extended broadcast and some nitwit rostered me on for three six hour shifts end to end in the middle of it, then a six hour break, then another shift. So I just stayed awake.
I’ve modified things now; being an insomniac of sorts, I run on four or five hours sleep during the week and crash out on weekends.
On the other end of the scale, my record for sleeping is thirty hours straight. Took me about two days to wake up properly from that.
Normally I get about 4 hrs of sleep a night and sometimes that seems like too much. I’ve gone 2 days easily without sleeping and on routine sometimes go 36 hours without sleeping about twice a week. I don’t really crash on the weekends or anything. I just don’t need sleep that much.
Did 70 hours on a bet a couple of years ago. Found it hell at around 6 o’clock each morning, when I started feeling really tired, but a fag and some fresh air perked me up no end. Once the sun rose, I was feeling dandy 'til the same time next morning.
My winnings from the bet was one pint of beer. Immediately after the 70 hours, a group of us went to the pub so I could collect the fruits of my labour. After this one pint, I couldn’t hold a decent conversation with anyone and kept nodding off. (For those who are wondering, it normally takes a little more than one pint to get me pissed.)
Thanks guys, at least I know I’m not the only one up. It is now twenty to 8, and I’m feeling quite all right. my roommate just woke up, and thinks I’m insane. She’s cute when she’s sleepy and bewildered.
Basically, I just wanted to know that I wasn’t going to act like a total imbecile today because I skipped the Z’s last night.
I am planning on sawing some logs this afternoon. So we’re looking at about 36 hours awake, I think. I can’t believe you people have stayed up for 72 hours, etc. Gad, you lot are insane!
Um, I assume that we are talking about either natural wakefullness, or legally assisted?
Otherwise, you get some very interesting stories about both length of time awake and various psychoses…
Naturally speaking, about 36 hours would be my ultimate record, and I would have to have coffee. Of course, being a mom who breastfed, I can go for months at a time on sleep in 2 hour increments, maybe 5 -6 total a night. Yes, your REM cycles will adjust!
I stayed up for five days straight once. I was a complete mess by the end of it. I was at this yearly meeting thing my grandparents used to take me too, and I hadn’t seen most of my friends in a year. Most of them slept a little, but this other guy and I stayed up and didn’t sleep at all. I will never do that again. I had the help of a lot of jolt cola and a 7/11 down the street.
My record is 30 hours, which I did working on a job. The problem was falling asleep afterward because my mind was still racing. When I woke up all refreshed, I thought it was 8 p.m. Turned out to be 8 a.m. the next day.
My record for staying awake is about 80 hours straight. I used to party pretty hard when I was 18-19 years old and I had to work every other weekend so on my working weekends I would stay awake from Thursday about 9 a.m. until Sunday about 5 p.m. Then I’d crash until 5 a.m. the next day. I drank a lot of coffee during the day and alcohol at night and I was always around a lot of people and that made it easy to stay awake. There were a few times I did crank to make it through but after the first couple of times I did it I realized how stupid I was being and never touched it again. The longest I can stay awake now is about 20 hours. I just don’t have the stamina for it and I’m getting too damn old.
What felt the longest without sleep (without the aid of controlled substances) was when I drove from Austin, TX to Boulder, CO after an utterly disastrous romantic misadventure.
It was January and I left Austin early in the morning (after having to borrow $20 from the girl at the center of this farce). I was so tired by the time I got into Colorado that I was afraid I (or the car) would freeze to death if I stopped. I’d pull into a rest area, try to sleep, but the demons in my head and the howling bitter cold kept me going. I finally rolled into Boulder around 5:00 the next morning. I went straight from the car to bed. It was awesome. So maybe just 22 hours or so.
I had some sleep pattern problems in college, couldn’t seem to be tired before about 5am, which caused me to miss a week of classes (and sunlight) at one point, so I decided to stay awake until I was actually sleepy at an appropriate time of day to wake up in the morning like a normal person.
85 hours later, I had sweet success. In the process, I became very tired and slightly paranoid. But 10 hours of sleep fixed all of it.
27 hours. I didn’t do it on purpose, though…I was IMing with a friend & we just didn’t run out of stuff to say. This was back in my college days, when such insanity was feasible.
