Longest you've gone without sleep

[addo]

So you slept only 6 hours in 2.5 weeks?

lol. Forgive my skepticism.

Post link for study please

I think he meant the study lasted 2.5 weeks, but he only went through with it for 1 week.

Who could last the whole length of the study? Unless they are mainlining speed, and caffeine for good measure.

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[familyaerospace]

I didn't say it was easy and I was, in all likelihood, taking microsleeps that I didn't notice and I know I was taking tons of stimulants. I am so glad I wasn't under a neurologist's guidance at the time because when I finally had one and he caught wind of what I did, he was not pleased to say the least. I did 2-3 week thing twice, although once was not a part of the study and was the result of a real medical condition.

PM me and I will be more than happy to tell you the name of the PI in charge and what happened to the results.

 

[familyaerospace]

Addo, no I meant I lasted 2.5 weeks. The few other people that tried didn't last more than two or three days. The goal was 7 to 10 days, but I said I was going to try my best to last as long as I could. I had a lot of experience in human performance in extreme environments, so it was a personal challenge and people were more than willing to watch me do this. I wrote up a list of things to watch out for (for myself and my spouse) since I knew how sleep deprivation could affect someone. When more than one of those things occurred I terminated my part.

I remember very clearly when I said "no more." I was in a bath sitting in the hottest water I could stand and then had a tactile hallucination and a few minutes later had an auditory hallucination (sounded like someone asking about a radio) and I was so freaked out that I quickly sent an email at 4 something in the morning saying that I was giving up and that my sanity wasn't worth it. I crashed so hard, slept for something like 12 hours, then woke up and a few hours later went back to bed for another 8 or so.

I drank so much caffeine and ate so much sugar, you have no idea. I can no longer drink tea because of this. I wish blood pressure had been taken throughout the study. I cannot imagine what my numbers would have looked like.

 

[addo]

Thats extremely intense. I started having visual hallucinations after only 4 days. They were very brief, and I sort of knew what was going on, but I wasnt part of any experiment, so I knew it was time to sleep.

 

[chiz2kul]

madness

 

[sideways]

You guys are a bunch of tweekers.

<--16 hrs here.

 

[getright]

You people are freaking crazy! I've pulled a couple of all-nighters because of my need to wait until the very end to finish writing important papers. I don't think I've ever felt so sick before.

 

[MeowMeowCAT]

I always found sleep to be an inconvenience. I rather waste time studying than waste it on unproductive sleep. Can't get that A by sleeping.

 

[torshi]

16 hours when i was driving

Hah, well it was fun staying up, it was when i was offroading then i got stuck in the middle of the night and had to wait for some dune buggies to come pull me out.
Thank God people were there also, but it took awhile

 

[familyaerospace]

I purposefully labeled "hallucinations" as being one of the things that would indicate I needed to get some rest. Also going homicidal or suicidal were also on the list. I can't remember what the rest were, but I must have had 7-10 things on it. I wrote it up when I was well-rested and made sure everyone around me knew that if I am severely compromised I might claim to be ok, but really am not. I'm actually very lucky that I was in a good enough frame of mind that I was able to state when enough was enough and didn't have to be "forced" to get some sleep. I gave orders to sneak promethazine in my food if I was really bad, knowing full well that an hour after ingesting it I would be asleep.

I think one of the only ways I was able to do it as long as I could is because my family (especially my daughter) generally takes someone being asleep as a time to party. I swear, no one in my family believes in sleep.

 

[TTigers70]

Oddly, and not to jinx it, my longest streak without a nap or anything was in high school. Thinking back, I don't know what I had to stay up to finish... think it was back to back semester projects but it doesn't really matter. At any rate, I was up into the mid 50s. After back to back all-nighters I was ready to pass out when my friend called and told me he had like 3rd row up mid-court Nets seats. I figured I had already been up for so long, what harm could an extra 2-3 hours do if I wasn't driving. Well about 6 minutes into the first quarter I started dozing in between foul shots micro-sleep to the max! It was weird because I felt like I was narcoleptic because I could fall asleep mid conversation at the game. To this day, I don't remember getting home from the game. It was like blacking out -- just without killing all the brain cells... hopefully.

 

[vandyam]

The longest some of you have stayed up is 16 hours?? What? Wow - I am definitely not that healthy I guess. Hell, right now I'm going around 40 hours. I got up yesterday morning at 5am sharp b/c I had a paper to do before I took my cat to the vet and studied for a final. Then I started work at 645 last night. I get off here at 715 this morning and then go to school until 515 tonight. Then I have a 45 min drive home, where I have to make dinner and pretend to be a real person before crashing that night and doing it all over again.

So 5aWed-5a Thurs = 24 hrs
5a Thurs-5p Thurs = 12 hours
5p-10p = 5 hours
so around 41 hours.

Same thing next week too. I don't think it's really all that bad. I just assume it will be the same come residency. Lots of coffee a must of course - the occassional eye twitching occurs I find it really easy to do when it's daylight out. It just seems natural to be up then.

Longest ever was prob about 60-70 hours...though I'm pretty sure I was talking to myself a little at the end.

 

[MichaelBergen]

~70 hours, thanks to my thesis and other papers I was working on. I wasn't even cramming yet, it's just that sometimes when I start working on something or when an idea pops up in my mind I can't stop working on it

 

[monkeyMD]

Have never done an all nighter for school. Don't understand how people can function like that.

Just curious, but are you guys all aware of the dangers of sleep deprivation? It's linked to abnormal glucose metabolism aka inc risk for T2DM, deficiency in mood regulation, cancer promoting cytokine release, smaller/shrinking amygdala, and so on...(of course in addition to decreased cognitive function and increase in the frequency of stupid mistakes)??

 

[45408]

Get used to 30 hrs straight about once a week.

Believe it or not, residents do sleep on call.


Anyways, my record is just a little over 30 hours. I never did an all-nighter, because that nearly ensured poor performance on a test.

 

[45408]

I was part of a study many many years ago where the goal was to see how people functioned on little to no sleep. I was allowed 20 minutes of sleep per night. And yes, I had to go about my normal routine as best I could (luckily I did not drive at the time.)

I lasted about 2.5 weeks. Mild performance degradation and personality changes started to occur at day 3. Multiple complex seizures also started. By a week later, I was almost unbearable to be around (so I hear). I called it quits when I started to hallucinate.

I will never do that again. Since then, the most I've gone without has been 36 or so hours. It was just too scary to repeat. If anyone ever asks you to do this type of thing for science take my advice and just say no.

I'd like to hear how this got through an IRB.

 

[mjjdm1985]

The longest I ever made it was just under 72 hours. It came while I was still employed as an ER scribe and had just got hired to work a day desk job. I worked 6:30AM-3PM on a Wednesday, drove to the hospital for a 4:00PM-2:00AM, back to the desk job, then back to the hospital, then back to the desk job on Friday, then left to drive three hours down to a river to "float it." I pulled over five minutes before we got to the river to let my girlfriend drive because I fell asleep on the road and it freaked me out. Then we got to the river and I slept the entire five hours we were on the river, then that night, but I was good to float it awake again the next day lol.

I will NEVER let myself get anywhere near that amount of time awake again.

 

[eablackwell]

I'd like to hear how this got through an IRB.

I was thinking the same thing. Crazy.

 

[familyaerospace]

I'd like to hear how this got through an IRB.

I've been IRB certified since around 2004 and you would be surprised at what crazy stuff gets approved. Sad thing, lack of sleep is not the most dangerous thing I've seen get approved by IRB and I think it was dangerous primarily for the seizure problem I had (I think people would have stopped the experiment had the seizures been easier to notice). Heck my own thesis discussed lack of sleep as a side part of the project, although I was not depriving anyone except me from sleep. (The subjects had been sleep deprived by NASA and I was just asking about their experiences.)

I've seen some really strange things get approved including experiments on performance in high altitude chambers where after breathing pure oxygen for an hour, you are suddenly being thrust to the equivalent of the top of Mt Everest. There was a doctor (on oxygen) in the chamber with the subject though so as soon as there was a problem, that was it for the day. That was just playing with fire.

I know one thing that is being written up, I wish I were kidding, but it involves someone jumping out a window with a parachute. I don't know what they are trying to study, but I cannot imagine that this would be safe for anyone involved. If this seriously gets approved, I am really going to start to wonder about IRB.