What's the longest you've gone without sleep?

[zanne]

I'm in my 50th hour awake. This morning, I put Cheerios in the coffee maker. I'm starting to hallucinate a little. I took a sleeping pill but it didn't help. (Is this how Michael Jackson felt)?

[Iggo]

1. I think I was on my 5th day.

But after the 2nd day, they were not real quality days...know'm say'n?

[JonLP24]

2. 3 days a few times

I never been awake 4 days straight

[LeftyFingerPop]

3. zanne....Get to a doctor and do it now.

I've been there, and it fucked me up...permanently.

You don't get a badge of honor if you go without sleep.

Your brain chemicals can be altered in a bad way...permanently.

GO TO THE DOCTOR OR THE ER...NOW.

[theNotoriousP.I.G.]

5. Listen to Lefty!

Zanne, get your ass to a doctor ASAP.

[Tobin S.]

4. About 48 hours and I was hopped up on a heavy dose of ephedrine

There's no way I can do it now, even if ephedrine was still legal. I have a mental illness and if I don't get enough sleep I start to become symptomatic no matter how much medicine I take.

[MissDeeds]

6. Jan. 20, 2001 to Jan. 20, 2009

It was hell.

[Forkboy]

7. Being bipolar, manic episodes used to be epic.

5-6 days at a time, often, starting in my teens and going on until about 7 years ago. The first few days were ok, but the end days were miserable. My brain was just white noise at that point. Now I still go 30-40 hours at a time on a pretty regular basis (I've only slept about 3 and 1/2 hours since Thursday morning). Occasionally I still go up to 50 or 60, but that's fairly rare. My sleeping habits vary wildly. Some weeks I sleep 10/12 hours a night and other weeks 2 hours a night, if that. It shows in my posting patterns here, to anyone looking for such things.

[LeftyFingerPop]

8. Hi Forkboy...

"My brain was just white noise at that point".

Excellent description...you nailed it.

I've gone close to 60 while working the ENTIRE time, several times within about a 6 month period.

These episodes provided the trigger for my major depression.

They have actually done studies on military personnel placed under stressful situations for long periods of time with no sleep.

It was found that this type of activity can (and I emphasize the word CAN) cause really severe hormonal and other biological changes that are irreversible.

[JonLP24]

9. Same here

I don't think I'm bipolar but my sleep patterns vary wildly as well. It takes incredible effort from me to maintain an up during the day/sleep at night schedule on a regular basis. I can sometimes last a week then I have day where I'm up into the next morning(In those situations I can't sleep even with pills). So then like right now I woke up 14 hours ago and I should be able to sleep tonight, 10-12 hours from now.

I will point out deployment messed me up that much. Working on trucks and other pointless work on FOBs all day then to turn around and drive all night just wasn't healthy for me.

[zanne]

24. I have episodes of depression...

Maybe that has something to do with it. I saw my doctor about it and he told me there's nothing that can be done until I find out why I'm not sleeping. He said I should "talk to somebody". But that could take years!

[JonLP24]

26. It's frustrating finding the necessary help

I went through maybe 4 or 5 doctors with my sleep issues(I have also been diagnosed w/ depression but it's been untreated for over a year) and it's really a complex problem. One gave me a smug answer "try Ambien". That shit doesn't work for me but anyways one did give me a short supply of Seroquel and that put me right to sleep with no sleep disturbances but then when I went to the last doctor he refused to give me anything because I described to him that I'm always sleepy during the daytime no matter how much sleep I get and if I get no sleep all day I'm suddenly wide awake when the sun goes down and he felt the pills would make me more tired. Anyways I'm rambling and I'm on my 22nd hour of being awake(common occurence). I may try to stay up another 14 hours so I can fall asleep tonight.

[zanne]

28. Don't you hate knowing that you have a long night ahead of you?

The rest of the world is asleep and there you are, pacing the floor and wondering what's wrong with your internal clock.

[sarge43]

10. 74 hours

You're about 6 hours from throwing up all that coffee. At Hour 60 your hallucinations start falling asleep.

zanne, if you can't get to sleep, see a doctor, like right now.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. Yes, for heaven's sake, go to a doctor!!!!!

I remember seeing a documentary about sleep deprivation, where they told of a radio DJ about 50 years ago who stayed up for about a week, broadcasting from a booth in the middle of an intersection in NYC. After this stunt, he went home to bed and slept, but his wife insisted that he was never the same afterward, that he had been damaged in some way she couldn't quite explain.

During my senior year in college, I averaged three to four hours of sleep for about a month while carrying a full course load and editing the literary magazine. It was a huge job, because in those pre-computer days, everything had to be typed and justified by hand. That is, we had to type it once in columns, keeping as close to the lines as possible, and then counting spaces, marking each line with a plus or minus, and retyping the whole thing so that the column was perfectly straight. This was absolutely crazy-making, because there couldn't be any typos, either. Then we had to lay it out by hand, including the illustrations.

Anyway when we finally took the thing to the printer, I came back to the dorm and was ready to go out and celebrate. However, I must have been really flying, because all my dorm-mates were saying, "No, you shouldn't go out to celebrate. You should get some sleep." I'm told that I was giggly and incoherent. Well, it was about 4PM, and I crashed and slept till the next morning.

[bookworm65t]

12. about 5 months

I'm a BP too, so after the 5th month, I was desperate. Can't sleep without Seroquel.

[Inchworm]

13. 7-8 days I start seeing things

cool and all, but I'm glad that stopped.

:)

[LostInAnomie]

14. Straight: around 48 hours.

When I was working and going to school full time I would make it Monday through Friday with about 5 hours total sleep then I would sleep all day on Sat. I did that for about a year.

[applegrove]

15. I once went about 36 hours at least. Was too worried I would not wake up for work early the next

morning so I stayed up all night.

[Redstone]

16. Driving nonstop from Philadelphia to Denver. Twice. In the winter, with snow.

Not sure how long each trip was, but I seem to remember a night + a day + a night + half a day or so.

There were amphetamines and beer involved both times.

Redstone

[NMDemDist2]

17. with or without drugs?

without, probably 30 or so hours....

[zanne]

23. Without. I'm the nervous type and could never take speed. nt

[donheld]

18. 3 days

:crazy:

[Jkid]

19. Almost 45 hours, at a anime convention.

I tried to stay up as long as possible during Katsucon 14 using the one of the rooms I reserved in the Woodley Park Guest House as a dressing room, a dumping area of such for my stuff I bought from the con, and to wash my body in the morning. I did managed to stay up all night without incident until late Saturday night around 8pm. I ended up dozing off in two panels, once in the video game room, once in a video room, and once in the hallway. I realize that I needed sleep, and fast.

After I went into the guest house after walking 2 minutes from the Omni Shoreham Hotel in the cold, at night, I just went into the bed in my room and I had the most comfortable sleep unlike any other. I managed to get around 6 hours of sleep.

One thing you'll experience after any pop-culture convention or at least a anime convention is something call a "con hangover". The instant you'll see a bed after you attended an anime convention for an entire weekend, you'll want to be in it. And if you're in a anime convention, get at least three hours of sleep.

[bamacrat]

20. 36 hrs maybe.

But I would go weeks were I would only sleep about 3 hrs a night and that sucked.

[proteus_lives]

21. 3 days.

Had a bad case of the flu and couldn't sleep. I was freaking out by the end of it.

[AlienGirl]

22. Four thousand miles in four days with five hours of sleep...or the 28-hr shift at work...

I used to be able to go a lot longer between sleeps, and to get by comfortably on four hours a night; but age is catching up with me, and now I seem to need at least six hours on a regular basis, and a sleepless stint of a couple nights will be followed by a day where I wake up in mid-afternoon or worse.

Tucker

[PRETZEL]

25. Penn State Dance Marathon,

48 hours. Add an hour or so on back end so it was more like 50 hours.

Never will do that again although it was fun.

[bermudat]

27. Drove nonstop from Denver to San Diego.

Saw dinosaurs crossing the freeway, I was so tired I started hallucinating.