Somewhere between 36 and 40 hours, pulling an all-nighter in college and going to class all the next day. I think the visual hallucinations started around hour 24.
I learned after that that I do far, far better if I take a little nap and wake up early than if I try to just go without sleep. The closest I’ve come since then was traveling to China (flights from Denver to Portland, Portland to Tokyo, Tokyo to Beijing) when I could no longer keep my eyes open during the Tokyo to Beijing leg and I fell asleep. At that point it was maybe 30 hours.
Probably no more than 24 hours. Well, maybe 26. I’ve pulled a few all-nighters for school, but I usually nap for an hour or so at some point so that doesn’t really count.
It was the first day of my grad school study abroad. I woke up about 9 am central time, flew to London that evening, landing about 7, taking the bus to Oxford, then starting in on the first day’s orientation activities and the usual housekeeping stuff, like buying the toiletries I forgot.
Then dinner (a long, drawn out affair involving suits and ties), and then partying it up in the college’s basement bar until about 2 am.
I was completely wiped out- after about 10 am GMT, I remember the day in freeze-frames and 10 second clips, not a fairly coherent mental movie.
On the other hand, I went to bed, slept a good solid 8 hours, and woke up pretty much adjusted to GMT, which was nice.
Close to 68 hours although I may have caught a few minutes of nap with my eyes open. I do remember that I worked three days straight, around the clock, slept 4.5 hours at the end of it and then showed up again, so let’s call it 72 hours minus that bit of sleep.
I wasn’t hallucinating but I was pretty tired and not thinking terribly straight. It sucked.
I guess I’m a wimp. My record is about 24 hours. We were doing the final decorations on the Rose Parade floats on New Year’s Eve. It was 24 hours of strenuous activity, though! Lots of scaffold-climbing!
My record is only about 40 hours, but I’ve never needed to stay awake all that long. I actually prefer to stay awake for 20-hour periods, after which I finally get sleepy.
Just out of curiosity, and feel free to tell me its none of my business, but what on Gods Green Earth compelled you to drive across the country and back in that short amount of time? The closest I’ve attempted is doing a one ride shot from the middle of Florida to Pennsylvania, but I wizened up and got a hotel outside DC.
I’m pretty sure I’ve pulled some 24-36 hour plus “all nighters” cramming for finals in College, the problem I have is that if I get that sleep deprived I get sick to my stomach, so it’s really hard for me to do.
Probably close to 72 hours. It started in the wee hours of a Friday morning, 1 or 2 am. It was the night we had my grandmother admitted to the hospital for pneumonia. She had end stage lung cancer, so coupled with the pneumonia, we knew things were going to get ugly. We went home after she was admitted, and about 4 hours later, I got the call from the hospital that she had gotten out of bed in the wee hours of the morning, we think to go to the bathroom, and had collapsed on the floor. The nurses weren’t sure how long she’d been there before they found her. Anyways, she was non-responsive, and remained unconcious until she died the following Sunday night. I don’t think any of my family slept for those 3 days.
Right now I’m coming up on 18 hours, with about 13 of them spent at work, and I’m getting a little growly.
A four-day roadtrip when I was younger and able to handle it. Drove about 5000 miles, went through multiple states. I began hallucinating heavily while in the last 200-mile stretch going back home, seeing the road opening up to bottomless pits in front of the car, and having the backs of vans turn into talking faces. I eventually nodded off on the road, waking up in time to avoid slamming into the rear of a horse trailer (complete with serene-looking horse looking out the trailer at my on-coming car), and got off the road immediately to nap for a few hours.
Right now, I work third-shift, go to school in the day, and do student teaching in evenings, so I regularly pull 36-48 hour shifts with little problem. Crabby after 24 hours or so, but I do okay.
You guys kick my insomniac ass…I think my record is 36, 40 hours tops. Years ago, my girlfriend broke up with me, and being much more emotional than I am now, I thought I needed a drive to clear my head.
I started in California, and didn’t stop for anything but gas until I got to Lincoln, Nebraska. I think it was about 24 hours of driving, plus however long I’d already been up, and however long it took me to wind down at the Motel 6 in Lincoln.
My freshman year in college I woke up on Sunday morning, pulled an all-nighter that night, took my calculus final, pulled an all-nighter Monday, took my Physics final, then took a half-hour mini-nap for a total of about 53 hours. Then I woke up, pulled an all-nighter finishing my music theory project which was due Wednesday, then spent the rest of the day Wednesday and all night packing and hanging out with friends. By the time Thursday rolled around I was conditioned to be awake, so I stayed up all day, then all the next night so I could catch my early morning train on Friday. I fell asleep about 6pm on Friday, after I changed trains in Chicago. Number two: about 78 hours. In total, about 130 hours on half an hour of sleep.
No hallucinations, no real problems, and I really wasn’t tired once I had been up for three days. I wouldn’t (couldn’t) do it again, though.
About three and a bit days, probably about 80 hours give or take. At the end I wasn’t seeing full-blown hallucinations so much as weird dark flicks moving about in the edges my periphery vision. Anyone else find that they take sleep deprivation in very distinct ‘bursts’? The first being after you resist the urge to sleep the first time, lasts about 7, 8 hours, then you get urge to sleep followed by the burst of manic energy again, then another more compelling urge to get some shuteye, followed by a shorter burst of energy, and so on.
Not fun, I don’t recommend it, although I regularly go 24 hours-ish without sleep.
I maxed out on a long weekend from 6am Thursday to about 9pm Sunday. So 87 hours was my max. I used to do 60 hours fairly often. Hell I drove for 27 straight hours at one point and when I got home I stayed up another 6 hours doing stuff.
I have trouble doing 38 hours now. I did it very recently and it was painful and was low functioning for the second day of it.