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

Question

I used to be able to stay up all night, and i participated in a 24 hour pray fast, but I'm not able to fight sleep any more.

I stay up for a game I wanted to see on TV, then get comfortable and fall asleep during a comercial break.

I've never had much trouble sleeping, except when I broke my leg. That's the only time I ever (briefly) took sleeping pills.

Answer 1

I wasn't counting, but it was somewhere in the range of 50 to 60 hours. It was in college in a Landscape Architecture studio class, and it's very, very common for students in Landscape Architecture and Architecture classes to stay up all night working on drawings and models before they're due. So this one long night was not the only one. There have been many, many times when I've stayed awake for more than 36 hours in school.

One year we (the students) even decided to print t-shirts for ourselves with Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) holding drafting tools and "I'll sleep when I'm dead" printed at the bottom. I still have it.

There were times when I experienced hallucinations from sleeplessness. One day I got home and after not eating or sleeping for a very long time, I "heard" the slats of my bamboo steamer talking to each other as I tried to make something to eat before going to bed. (I was so tired and hungry, I didn't care, and I knew it was just an effect of sleeplessness, anyway.) Another sleepless night while trying to work in the studio, I watched shadowy shapes on my drafting paper move around by themselves.

There are certain times when you're so tired and you haven't slept in so long, that when you do finally try to go to sleep, you can't. It's strange but true, and it's agony.

Other sleepless students would occasionally do bizarre things. One person must have thought someone was talking to her, because she turned around and exclaimed, "But he's 10 years old and only this high," for no apparent reason. It gave normally rational people a short temper, and I've seen a star student throw a fistful of pencils at another student in anger while sleep deprived.

There is a certain giddiness that occurs at certain points of sleeplessness. Anybody who wants to experience an altered state of consciousness doesn't need drugs. Just don't sleep. It's much safer than any drug.

Answer 2

Only my sleep doctor could make an educated guess. I went through a period a few years back with sleep apnea. Doc said I was awake over 80 times an hour. I don't know if that counts, but I know I was so tired I feel asleep once in a class where there was just me, a prof, and one other student. That's sleepy. Fortunately, I was treated before I hurt anyone in a car.

Answer 3

Fifty hours.

Just to see if I could hit two days straight after skipping sleep one night. No drugs, term papers, or military service. Just sheer curiosity.

When I woke up some eighteen hours later, I realized I had misremembered when I woke up the previous time and had actually been up for fifty hours instead of forty-eight.

Answer 4

I once stayed up close to 60 hours because I foolishly left all of the papers I had due for all my courses until the last minute, and had four of them due the same day.

So I stayed up for two nights, wired on Jolt Cola and caffeine pills, writing research papers on topics as diverse as Global Megafaunal Extinctions, the First Peopling of Australia, and the Geology of the Moons of Saturn.

Somehow, I managed to get them all finished - even the thirty-page paper on megafaunal extinctions. Reading them afterwards, however, they were remarkably incoherent and jumped from topic to topic with no transitions. I have no idea how I actually got good marks on all of them - maybe everyone else's papers were even more incoherent?

After that, I slept for nearly two days straight.

Answer 5

100 hours. It was at a sleep disorder clinic. Tests were performed of course to figure out why I was so erratic with my sleep. Anyway, at the end of 100 hours we were allowed to go to sleep. Most recovered with only eight hours sleep, some slept for ten hours.

Answer 6

A little over 48 hours when I was in my 20s. Because I wanted to see how long I could and how much I could accomplish. As far as I am concerned sleep is a waste of time.

Answer 7

I'm sure it was about 36 years ago.

I was in the Vietnam combat zone.

I don't know how long I went without sleep at a time. Its hard to keep track of time when you are busy ducking bullets.

Pastor Art

Answer 8

Ive gone without Sleep alot and still do...i have a very stressful Life..and take Medication to help me Sleep....sometimes Not being able to sleep is because your mine is not at ease

Answer 9

Hmmm..around 36 hours. Not much I know, bit I like sleep. It's because I couldn't get to sleep one night.


G'night!

Answer 10

4 days(car trip you cant sleep in a car!) i was so friggin tired after that I slept from 6am to 5pm and i still was tired! you cant find comfortable posotions in a car so i had to stay awake the whole time