…and how was he/she faring by the end?
dont know about the Record but I went 4 days on 4 hours of sleep…I was hallucinating pretty bad in the end and it took a Loooooooong time to get to sleep, it was really weird, kinda like dreaming only not.
Google Randy Gardner of San Diego or read the following from Wikipedia:
Randy Gardner holds the Guinness world record for the longest period of time a human being has gone without sleep. In 1964, as a 17-year-old high school student, Gardner stayed awake for 264 hours (11 days) with the help of friends, TV reporters, and games of pinball. On his final day without sleep, Gardner presided over a press conference where he spoke without slurring or stumbling his words and in general appeared to be in excellent health. “I wanted to prove that bad things didn’t happen if you went without sleep,” said Gardner. “I thought, ‘I can break that (Peter Tripp’s 1959 record) and I don’t think it would be a negative experience.’” Sleep experts now believe that such sleep deprivation stunts are dangerous.
11 days is amazing!
I’m not sure how it would be dangerous, though. If you weren’t driving, playing with guns, etc… what would the effects be?
He also did it on his own, with no apparent stress. I’m guessing toward the end he was looking for a bed, but he wasn’t being interrogated, so his mode was probably pretty good.
My personal “best” is 5 days, give or take a few hours. I am kind of an insomniac anyway, but this was a particularly bad stretch. I **wanted ** to sleep, but couldn’t. I certainly couldn’t drive, but I was alert enough for conversation, eating, etc. Things just slowed down. When I finally did crash, my body/brain just shut down on its own. The REM dreams were VIVID.
The weird thing is that I only slept 12-13 hours, and didn’t have any major exhaustion after that. I didn’t look so hot, but I felt alright.
mood, not mode.
Clearly, I need some sleep. 
Here’s an article about Gardner and sleep-deprivation stuff. Sounds like he never would have gotten close to the record if he hadn’t had friends helping to keep him awake at all times. I think the fact that he was 17 probably helped him a lot, too.
Personally, I can’t go two days without sleep. I’ve only gone a full 24 hours a couple of times.
I had thought the record was 120-odd hours. I read that in a book that was talking about prisoners of war in Vietnam, they wer ekept awake as torture. I know better now.
I’ve never done more than 4 days myself.
However, I am now determined to beat the 11 day record. Seriously. I think I’ll give it a try in a couple of weeks.
Channel 4 in britain actually did a reality tv show acouple years back, putting ten people in a house with a prize of 50g if noone fell asleep. Cue greedy individuals shaking each other to stay awake. I forget if they managed to keep it up for the week, nut towards the end, strange things were happening. People were having conversations with walls, and bumping into things like they werent there.
Longest I’ve gone for is five nights, on a school trip when I was 16. These days I’m getting by on about five hours a night.
Back “in the day of 1984” when I first started my recovery (it took several trys) I was a resident at a co-ed recovery house located in Napa, CA called Our Family. There were approximately 50 people there @ the time, adults and teenagers as well. I don’t think it’s there anymore as it was located actually on the grounds of the Napa State Mental Hospital. Not sure. Was a pretty place actually.
Their processes were interesting, in retrospect. During, t’was hell. Once or twice during the 6 months I lived there, they’d use a tool called The Game. All addicts were roused around 3 in the morning and herded into a large room. There we would be for 48 hours. No sleep, minimal food (pranges, nuts, etc., no real meals) and the thought was that with reduced sleep and food that all defenses would break down. People were called out as liars, sluts, thieves, and their behavior in the “household” would be placed under strict scrutiny. I remember being in the middle of the “game” (you would sit in a chair in the middle of all the other addicts in a circle) and they would just roast you about anything and everything, regardless if said issues were true or not. The thing that finally broke me was when some skanky woman asked if my father had raped me. No, of course not.
But, back on topic, once we were about 36 hours into the game everybody is really wacky and I know I did see hallucinations. For some people who were violating the rules of the house, this served some purpose. One woman broke down and admitted to an affair she was having with staff. BIG no-no. I DID have some secrets, and am proud (?) to say that they didn’t get 'em out of me!
Good god… did the method actually work?
And why was it a big no-no to admit to an affair with the staff? Sounds like a piece of information that needed to get out. And stop the game.
I’ll check when I get home but there was an American soldier in a Japanese POW camp during WW2 who was forced to stand at attention for something like a week.
I think that it was Samuel Moody, who wrote a book called “Reprieve From Hell”, but all I can find are bibliographical references, not any details. I know it’s in my Guinness Book at home.
One week of course being a bit less than 11 days.
I need some sleep too.
Well, yeah. Since the affair did come out and it was a no-no – it was a live-in facility that catered to people in very vulnerable places in their lives. No self-esteem, also quite horny from not having sex in the live-in facility. Having “relationships” in early recovery is generally regarded as bad (thirteen stepping) and especially so with someone in a position of authority.
I guess it depended upon how guilty you felt about whatever rule you broke. I made out with housemates, hid under my bed during some community meetings, really stupid stuff (making out was a serious offense, there were adults and kids as young as 13) and that’s exactly what they were looking for. Confession being good for the soul and all.
Not a peep came outta me! I can hold my sins in until the end of days! bwahahaha!
Somewhere around 94 years, and he was doing just fine.
Oh, BTW, pardon the fundie link. Ignore all the stuff on the bottom.
Folks with familial fatal insomnia generally don’t sleep at all in the final 6 months or so of the disease. A horrible way to die. http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/1999/19990526-sfi.html
OK, obviously this isn’t a record any more but I hate to not followup on something, so here’s the fellow I was thinking of: Everett Reamer, forced to stand at attention for 132 hours straight, no food or water, beaten if he slumped. It’s in the GBoWR under “Motionless”…
Was this facility being run by the Moonies? Seriously, this cult behavior. This is so wrong. They’re not still doing this are they?