In college I woke up fine at about 8am on a Thursday morning, pulled an all-nighter Thu night for a mid-term Friday, had fraternity initiation Friday night (no sleep again. No sheep either, you pervs!), had a party Sat night that went to the wee hours climbing on the dome at Baldwin Auditorium, caught about two hours nap at sunrise, the drove from Durham, NC to Richmond, VA to have lunch with a girl I was kinda sorta seeing, then began to drive back to NC about 4pm. Everything was going along fine, wasn’t really tired, then all I saw was blue. Just blue. And it was bumpy all of a sudden. Turns out I had fallen asleep and the blue was the roof liner of the car as my head had fallen back against the headrest and I was staring straight up. The bumpiness was because the car, still on cruise control at 70 mph, was in the median of I-95 South in VA, still at 70 mph. After swerving wildly back onto the road, all the other drivers avoided me for a while, and I pulled off and doused my gizzards with high test coffee and limped home. That was about 80 hours with two hours’ sleep. Not recommended. Body quits kinda sudden-like.
My record is about 36 hours, which I did about 5 times this year (university assignments). After around 20 hours I start getting cold and after 30 hours I start bumping into things.
About 60 hours. No stimulant usage, apart from cigarettes. It was all a bet/competition, too long to go into here.
I think you have to train up to it, getting your body used to it. If I miss two hours sleep at the moment, I’m a wreck in the morning.
I think it varies for everyone.
I went without sleep for about 50 hours when I was in labor. I had a few intermittent periods of being a babbling idiot, following by lucidity, at the end.
Going without sleep is not a record anyone should want to try to set. It’ll mess you up but good. Your body needs sleep for so many things.
I went 66 hours but I think I dozed off for no more than an hour and a half somewhere around hour 48.
Because of my work schedule (working nights) I quite frequently stay up over 36 hours, in fact it used to be a weekly thing. I would wake up around noon on Thursday, go to work at 10 PM that night, get off work at 7 AM, stay up all day Friday and then go to bed after midnight Friday night.
I was awake four straight days. Had to go overseas just before finals in college. I was to arrive back just in time for finals.
Did my rough drafts of two papers on the way over, did the final drafts on the plane back (a 26 hour flight), then took tests, studied and typed papers for the next three days.
Never again, man.
wow that is NUTS!! how did you manage?
did you do ok in those classes?
About five minu- Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…
About 5 and a half days during Desert Storm. Mainly because when we went into Iraq, we ended up moving prisoners to the holding pens that had been setup and the idiot in charge of us got us lost for 2 days.
When I was working shift work a few years ago I regulary when for 36hrs without sleep.
The most I’ve gone would be 70-80 hours. I was a basket case.
I did okay, thanks for asking, chief!
My lowest grade was a B - . Of course, it helped that I had actually attended classes and studied throughout the semester. I probably could have passed even without the cramming. The two papers I had to do were the real killers as each accounted for a significant chunk of grading.
Although I have never been too interested in seeing just how much punishment my body can take before finally just giving up on me, I must admit that I, too have suffered sleep deprivation.
While on a long range recconaisance patrol in Central America, I stayed up for about four and a half days non-stop. It was at this point, that my body refused to comply with my futile attempts to stay awake any longer. The Lt. also noticed, and I was finally given a few hours of rest before we started off again.
On a different note, it was on this same mission that I went about 5 days without pooping, too!!!
ohh! ohh! i just did a whole bunch of research on all this over in GD!
it’s too late for me to go searching for my cites and links again just yet, but here’s some of the stuff i got.
the guy who holds the sleep deprivation world record is named randy gardner. google for “randy gardner sleep deprivation” and you get some stories of him.
here’s a quick timeline of what happened to randy, with only a few of the important parts noted;
all through the process he got steadily crankier and menatally slower as time wore on.
on day three, his speech began to slur.
on day four, he first began to expereience hallucinations. he saw a lamppost as a person and tried to converse with it.
by day five, he had apperently lost most all fine muscle control.
on days six and seven, he had a series of delusional episodes. one of the most notable is one where he believed that he was a retired black football player.
on days nine and ten, he began to superfocus on table soccer. apperently, even at that point he could summon his normal faculties at will, for limited periods of time. in fact, he would easily beat all opponents who faced him, even the well rested sleep researchers.
a little after the start point of day eleven, he finally went to sleep.
one thing i found in my research is that it is assumed that the chain reaction that causes sleep deprived animals to die takes effect at about day fourteen in humans. since humans don’t start to develop lesions and syptoms of disease from sleep deprivation, the exact principle of the process is unclear.
assuming that sleep has a “defrag” like effect on the mind, it is suspected that the brain gets more and more clogged and slows down. eventually, the person would probably either (a) lapse into a coma, or (b) suffer some sort of chained effect that would cause his brain stem to be effected and stop his breathing, causing him to die.
either way, you’d probably have a psychotic episode before you reach the breakoff point. randy gardner never had a psychotic episode, but it seemed that he was getting right up onto there.
i’ll repost my table of links and cites tomorrow. it’s too late to go digging in GQ right now.
ok, here…
oops… none of my links carried over. sorry. here…
this search for Randy Gardner, the guinness record holder for sleep deprival