Heh. Before I discovered Melatonin, I considered it a good night if I got four. Then Melatonin entered the equation, and I could consistently get 6-8. Now that Fluoxetine is involved, I could go for 10 if the mood suited me.
I rarely sleep more than 6; usually less. I fall asleep fine, but wake up in the middle of the night, every single night. Usually I get up to pee, go back to bed and lie awake for an hour or two. I listen to the radio quietly to try to get me back to sleep. Sometimes I achieve it just before the alarm goes off, which sucks twice as bad. I would love, love, love to be able to sleep a whole night through - something I’ve achieved three times in the last five years: once after I did a 10K run, and twice due to jetlag.
Usually around 5 hours (~12:30-5:30), but every so often it catches up with me and I go to bed really early.
Usually 5 1/2 to 6 hours. I go to sleep around 1 and get up about 6:30.
I put 8 because I try to go from 11:30-7:30, but just as often that goes down to something in the 7 range or less. I have a really hard time getting to sleep before 12:30 or 1 unless I am doing everything super-perfect (no caffeine and not too much sugar in the evening, at least 45 minutes of exercise during the day, eating healthy). For whatever reason my body does everything it can to make me hate mornings as much as possible.
On weekends I usually sleep 10 hours each night/morning to make up for the week. I’m really happiest when I am sleeping from 1am-10am - every time I get an extended vacation and my body gets to slide back to that schedule, I am literally shocked at how awesome I feel all day long by day 3 or 4.
Of course then I want to kill myself after about two days back at work.
4 or 6 is good, nothing other works
Um, varies?
Right now I am being dicked around by my meds. I seem to wake up at 5 am, take my meds and eat breakfast, hang out for about an hour to an hour and a half, then I fall asleep. I sleep anywhere from an hour and a half to 5 hours… wake up, putz around for a bit, fall asleep again, lather rinse repeat 
my life is a sine wave.
I set alarms to get my meds on schedule, otherwise I sleep when I fall asleep, and wake up when I am able.
We are trying to figure out a blend of meds that doesn’t put me to sleep, but right now the only thing that gets both syst and diast down to healthy levels knocks me on my arse :smack:
~6.5 on weekdays, 8-10 on weekends, so I put an average of 7.
7.5, which is good with a 9-month-old! She’s recently started sleeping later, but I’m still used to getting up at 5:30. It’ll be 8 once I can sleep until 6 again.
If I don’t get at least 8 hours I get SUPER sleepy around six to eight in the evening. After extended periods of less than six hours or so a night, I start feeling really ragged-assed and need (really need) to take naps or something, and falling asleep on the metro, and things. (I’ve actually gotten really good at sleeping on the subway, Petula Clark to the contrary, and always wake up immediately before my stop. It’s one of my few talents.)
How about real data? Here’s data from the American Time Use Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They find that men report sleeping 8.56 hours per day and women report sleeping 8.64 hours per day. Not a huge difference. The sample is the adult non-institutionalized population of the U.S.
I was curious about how age might affect this, so I ran some data myself limiting the analysis to just men and women between the ages of 25 and 45. People in that age group sleep slightly less than the overall numbers, and the gap is slightly smaller, but about the same.
So, whatever people’s needs are, they’re sleeping about the same amount as each other, and way more than the population of the Dope.
I did not answer the poll, because I am a chronic insomniac.
Time assigned to “sleep”: about 7-8 hours most school/work nights.
Time asleep: anywhere between 30 mins - 7 hours I’m very lucky. I have no idea what I generally manage to get. Occasionally, I don’t sleep at all. I once went 4 days without sleep (I took time off, because I was well into the “insane” regime by then!), but 3-5 times a year will go 2 days awake.
Insomnia sucks.
I aim for 7 or 7.5 most nights. Occasionally I get 5, 6, or 8.
Has anyone else seen the studies linking hours of sleep per night to mortality? They have all found that people sleeping 7 hours per night have the lowest risk of death. The longer you sleep past 7 hours, the dramatically higher your risk of death. Sleeping less than 7 hours increases your risk more gradually.
http://www.fusionsleep.com/sleep-medicine-bulletin-articles/smb-linktomortality.html
http://www.talkaboutsleep.com/sleep-disorders/archives/insomnia_women_mortality.html
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/researchers_say_lack/
I limit my sleeping mostly because of these studies. No more 10 hour binges on weekends…
Of course, who knows whether that means “if you permit yourself to sleep more than 7 hours, you are increasing your risk of death” or “people who are at higher risk of death (for whatever reason) tend to sleep more”.
6 is perfect.
Any more than that and I feel lethargic all day and any less than that and i get tired mid to late afternoon.