How long can you go without sleep for?

[Jack]

Although I can go without sleep I can't do it for long, nor do I like to do it. Being a student, it's inevitable that I'm going to leave an essay or three to the last minute while all of my time is filled up with the more important things in life. Well the night before last, as in Wednesday night, myself and seven other people from my course spent the night in the 24 hour suite doing our essay for yesterday. I didn't struggle at all until I finished at around 5:30 and tried to stand up at which point my body realised that in order to move I need my legs which had been out of action, but still aware of their existence, for about 12 hours (I was distracted by Facebook numerous times throughout the night) and had forgotten how to move. So I've come to the conclusion that as long as I don't have to use my legs, I can stay awake all night. The annoying thing was that I had an active day ahead of me; lots of rehearsals and workshops which resulted in me nodding off several times on the bus home much to the amusement of the very attractive girl beside me who I was explaining why I was tired to, as I fell asleep. I'm awake now, but I feel weird. I keep thinking it's thursday evening.

I have gone without sleep before while role playing or watching a whole TV series in a night (The Wire), but I've often fallen asleep about ten o clock the next morning.

So, how long can you guys last for and what's the longest you've ever been without it?

[Jack]

Bollocks, I've just realised I may have posted this in the wrong forum section.

[Inkidu]

Nah, just say your doing it for science class and you're covered.

God, I have to get at least six hours of sleep a day, I'm basically misfiring seventy percent on that
Normally I get eight.
Ideally I like ten. I have no nightlife so I don't care.

[jouzinka]

I have recently realized I can still go on without sleep for some roughly 40 hours, without any real damage, but that's quite as much as I can do. After that I'm just... useless. :D

[Diabolus Lupus]

That would depend on how much caffeine I've had and how late in the day I have it. The longest I've gone without sleep is somewhere around 36-37 hours, but that's because I stayed up all night ready a book and then had to go to work for like five hours.

Normally, I'm no good without eight-ten hours of sleep. Although I have had where I've gone 23-25 hours without sleep.

[Jack]

40 hours? Jeez, that's impressive; although scary. How many iv's of coffee would you need to manage that? 25 I think I could handle. I've done the maths and worked out that I was up for about 35 hours - Eight o clock wednesday morning to about 7 o clock thursday evening.

Yeah, Inkidu, I'm with you. I'd rather be a lightweight when it comes to sleep.

[Oniya]

I once attended a weekend-long science fiction convention without benefit of a hotel room.  I learned two things:  1) Everyone is incredibly interesting at 4 in the morning, and 2) sleep-dep hallucinations are indistinguishable from hall costumes.

[jouzinka]

40 hours? Jeez, that's impressive; although scary. How many iv's of coffee would you need to manage that? 25 I think I could handle. I've done the maths and worked out that I was up for about 35 hours - Eight o clock wednesday morning to about 7 o clock thursday evening.

Well... Not much, really. Just when you got too much work on your hands, then you got too much work. ;D I don't think that I drank some unusual amount. At least not for the initial 24 hours... After that... maybe I doubled my usual 2 cups of coffe/day. :) But it's not an experience I'd like to repeat antime soon.

[Jack]

I once attended a weekend-long science fiction convention without benefit of a hotel room.  I learned two things:  1) Everyone is incredibly interesting at 4 in the morning

Yeah tell me about it; we had the people who were just on automatic pilot and the other group, which I was in, where we had got to the point when we were hyper.
[/quote]

But it's not an experience I'd like to repeat antime soon.

No, I have to agree with you there. Although I seemed to experience some god like delusions which were interesting, I don't think it'll be on my to do list intentionally, ever.

[HairyHeretic]

Think I did about 34 hours, doing a video marathan back at uni. The most within the last couple of years is 24 hours straight awake, or thereabouts.

[Jack]

Fair enough. I want to try and to a replica of this show I once saw on Channel 4 which I think was called, Shattered where contestants had to stay awake for a week and there were certain rules that they had to follow.

Of course if I do this, I will not be one of the contestants... I will loop in university freshers and challenge them to a week of hell.

[Caeli]

I think a recent Law & Order: SVU episode went a little bit into sleep deprivation and what it could do the human body. It was actually exceedingly interesting, though I'm not entirely certain how much of it was true.

[Mindhazingsquid]

I read studies that say after about 48 hours of no sleep you risk all kinds of serious health issues, including hallucinations, increased risk of illness and death.

Not to mention you probably start having a pretty good chance of just passing out.

[OldSchoolGamer]

At one place I worked at, they offered unlimited overtime.  So this guy does about a hundred hours in a week, or something ridiculous.  I know by Thursday or so he was popping uppers.  (This was a tech support call center, so it's not like he was endangering anyone by being on drugs...except maybe himself.)

Definitely not something I would recommend.

[Oniya]

(This was a tech support call center, so it's not like he was endangering anyone by being on drugs...except maybe himself.)

Definitely not something I would recommend.

And anyone he passed on his way driving to work.  I fully agree with you.

[Nadir]

I can go without sleep for quite a while - I think I did 70 hours once with only bits of sleep, but that was drug-aided and I was down for a long while afterwards. I think I can handle about 30 hours or so, otherwise.

[Mnemaxa]

I can easily go 20 hours without sleep - if given a choice, my body prefers 10 hours of sleep and 20 hours awake.  However....

After 20 hours, I start to hallucinate.  At 30 hours, my mind does strange things aside form the visual hallucinations and I have trouble censoring my comments. 

The longest I've gone without sleep was 52 hours, and every few months I go for 48 hours without sleep due to my brain chemistry.  When I can't recall when I last slept was, it's been too long.

[Paradox]

5 years ago, at my 18th birthday party, there were copious amounts of cocaine. The party lasted three days, during which none of us slept. I had been up for about 18 hours prior to the start of the party, so 24 x 3 + 18= 90, so that's my record.

Since I went clean, the longest I've stayed up is about 43, during back-to-back Relays for Life.

For some interesting factoids, go here:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/sleep/facts.htm

The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.

[Nadir]

A rocking chair marathon?

I'm so very pleased my hobby is RPing...

[Dingo]

I suffer from insomnia (in bouts), and if I wait long enough in bed, during such a bout, I will eventually fall asleep for an hour, maybe two. But at some points I just get annoyed by just lying there, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds around me, that I get out again.

My personal best, during a very bad spell some months ago, was five days minus 2-3 hours. And the weird thing was, I just went to bed to sleep. I woke up after a nice rest of six hours and was feeling just chipper.

[Oniya]

I read somewhere that the human sleep cycle (from alpha to deep REM and back) is about 90 minutes, so if your sleep length is a multiple of that, you wake up easier than if you wake up mid-cycle.  So a 7.5 hour sleep would be actually more refreshing than an 8 hour sleep - although probably not as refreshing as a 9 hour sleep.

[Destiny Ascension]

My longest streak was 4 days and 21 hours before I basically had to sleep. Completely unintentional, also, and it wasn't healthy fyi.

[Death]

I can go 3 days perfectly fine as long as i have something to do.

[Marguerite]

I was able to go twenty four hours but only because during that whole time I was traveling from California to Mexico.

[Desan]

48 hours. Then I went home and a book was in the corner of my bed. I leaned down and stretched myself on my bed. My head hit the pillow before my hands touched the book and I was out.

[Kittenchan]

I used to do full anime conventions without sleep. Friday to Sunday. I haven't done that in a while though. Usually I'll only get a few hours like two or three at cons.

[luna146]

The most I did was 48 hours. It is harder to do now since I take some medication that makes me drowsy. As long as I don't get any sleep I can stay awake for that long. If I get 5 or less hours of sleep I am like the living dead the next day.

[Tankou]

My record was at on point closing in on 10 days when I was 16 XD That was back when I worked at my first barista job, and was going for an all tim e record. I passed out one night at my computer, and mom woke me up in the morning. She seemed really worried about me cause I didn't wake up until she started shaking me XD I had had a LOT of caffeine XD

[MusicNeverDies]

I'm sceptical about ten days. You'd have been hallucinating. I'd think if you were telling the story of the time you stayed up for 10 days, you'd mention it was enough to make you hallucinate.

My record is about 55-60 hours.

[Tankou]

No Hallucinations, actually, but I did experience moments of blindness a few times, but I knew that my eyes were open.

[Inkidu]

We call that brain damage. If you had gone one more day you probably would have died.

[Will]

I've had that too, actually.  It really felt more like my heart was just too exhausted to get the blood all the way up to my noggin.  Over time that will of course lead to brain damage, but the losing sight in and of itself is not brain damage.  I think.  I'm not a doctor.

[Zadaris]

I could pull a couple of all nighters at most but then I'd be completely bollocksed if I didn't get some sleep.

If I don't get at least 7 hours sleep I won't want to function properly. But I'm still more reliable than a computer.

[saturnschild]

just one day for me that I can go, I tried longer but don't like how pissy I can get at people for no reason, so I just got to sleep.

[Andy]

My record is 72 Hours ( and 10 Red Bulls)

I was thrashed for a week afterwards though.

[Neferus Andolini]

My personal record is approaching 48 hours, with normal amounts of stimulants. I was definitely getting paranoid when I did that, but nothing else. 2-3 times a month I'll go 24-36 hours and still be normal, but will need to sleep for 16-20 hours afterward.

[Gracie]

I never tested this. I sleep every night. It's not healthy to not sleep.

[Izu]

I used to have huge sleeping problems a couple of years ago (after my first year at college). At the beginning of the summer and the beginning of my 'lovely' month of exams I stopped sleeping. It was 24-72 hours at first, which ended with me failing most of my exams and was supposed to go to the re-take exams in September, but by the fall my insomnia had got quite bad, if I didn't sleep for 72 hours I was lucky, because I stayed awake for 5 and more days. Personal record is 9 days. Ended up with failing exams again, being forced to take a gap year at college, lost a lot of weight, my sight got worse, and I ended up in hospital with a broken leg after being hit by a car due to my going out to the store and falling asleep as I walked. :] yep, not fun days. Now I force myself to go to bed even when I'm not sleepy, making sure that at least my body will be laying and resting for 6-8 hours per day.

[Lithos]

Three days is most i can do in normal conditions. Five days in army once, but on last day I kept poking these little growing trees as people I was supposed to wake up they say x.x. That was different though cause it was five days of not sitting on your ass but being on the move.

[Mathim]

Three days is most i can do in normal conditions. Five days in army once, but on last day I kept poking these little growing trees as people I was supposed to wake up they say x.x. That was different though cause it was five days of not sitting on your ass but being on the move.

Yeah, my friend used to do that kind of insomnia trip when he was in the military too.

Depending on what I'm doing, if I don't need to use my brain, I can be up for about three days before I need artificial awakening agents (Mountain Dew.)

[Tachi]

I can barely go 24hrs. It's sad, I once went almost a week with little/no sleep when I was a kid.

[Gunslinger]

2 hours

[Mathim]

For the record, it's really dangerous to not get sleep. Sleep is when your brain rests and repairs itself so you're causing yourself inadvertent brain damage. Plus you'll be prone to nosebleeds with prolonged sleeplessness. My friend got nosebleeds a lot from lack of sleep.

[Oniya]

2 hours

You can only be awake for two hours at a time?  When I first moved out of my parents' house, I had a roommate kind of like that - he was discharged from the military for 'hypersomnia', which is like the geeky little brother of the cooler 'narcolepsy'.

[Revolverman]

26 hours is about my peak, and I'm walking death at that point.

[sloc]

3 days at last count - that was 10 years ago.
I couldn't sit down or I promptly fell asleep :)

[Mint]

I'm not very good at staying awake for long periods of time and if I do, I never feel good after getting some rest. I think the longest I can stay up straight is about 30 hours or so. Maybe longer if I really push myself, but I wouldn't want to in most situations.

[Soran]

36 hours..... was ghost hunting, then having to drive back... migraine hit me hard afterwards

[AdianaCelestyn]

My personal record is about 57 hours during a Legend of Dragoon marathon. I could of lasted longer, but I fell asleep during a particularly long cutscene...lol xD

[Oniya]

My personal record is about 57 hours during a Legend of Dragoon marathon. I could of lasted longer, but I fell asleep during a particularly long cutscene...lol xD

I hope you saved before hand!  It would suck to play that long and lose it because a low-level monster wandered up to you and you weren't awake to fight back.

[King]

I think somewhere around 60 hours is my personal record. It's definitely not normal for me. I can go up to two days without sleep normally, if I have a lot of stuff to do, without risking many problems.

[Sel Nar]

Including godawfully-huge amounts of energy drinks (aka, natural toxins in canned form), I can last for upwards of 80 hours, but by the end-point of that I'm slightly less mentally capable than your basic rock.

Also, I find that too much caffine causes.... well, digestive issues after some time. Not fun.

[Desan]

I know this is the opposite answer to the question asked  but


I just slept a good 14 hours o.O

[Defiance]

I used to go about 36-45 hours of wakefulness all the time at my old job. Wake up, go to work, stay because there were things to do and staff I enjoyed working with and customers I enjoyed seeing, get nothing done,  work through the night, sun comes up, "Oh wow, how convenient that I open the store today." then just keep on working till my shift ended around 6-8 that day.

Tim Horton's, nicotine, and a reason to be a wake.

's all I need.

I don't think I've ever gone over 45-48.

After a while, I just sorta get pissed off, decide "Fuck this." and go to bed.

[Serephino]

I can usually go about 20 hrs, then I'm pretty useless.

[Nimmy]

My tested limit is about 30 hours. I get to about 24 without sleep and everything's funny... or just doesn't make any sense and is funny for that reason. Typically this is pulled from 7 AM on one day to 1 PM on the next, and with lots of sugar involved (and various animated films). No ill effects, I just need to nap until about 4 or 5, get up for a few hours, and go to bed around 10 and my internal clock resets itself.

Never gone beyond that, but then again, I've never really had a reason to. "No-Sleep overs" (as my dad liked to call them) were the reason for the 30 hours without sleep, but once I hit college I realized "hey... sleep is really nice" *took a nap per week on average over the year, when she had never been interested in napping before college, even when she was under the age of 6 and naptime was expected*

[Lithos]

Also, seems that ability to stay up starts decreasing as one gets older. I cannot do crazy stuff that I could at my student / army days anymore :(

That might be a good thing though >.>

[Indigo]

Ack...I actually enjoy sleep...lots of deep, -fan on providing cool air- over me sleep.  I can't stay up anymore unless it's an emergency, ( emotional or physical )

I like to sleep..fully deeply, uninterrupted.

So...seriously? 24's max now, before I become a raging wildwoman, demanding someplace to nest.

>:)

[CWand]

my personal record is about 276 hours or so.  I got kinda....weird near the end.it wasn't pretty.

[Oniya]

11 days?!  :o

[CWand]

yeah, almost twelve, and it began to show near the end, I started having minor hallucinations and such.  It was back when i was like twelve.  Haven't done it since.

[BaronS]

53 hours.

A full day of high school exams followed by a dusk-til-dawn laser skirmish (was too young for paintball) session.  Usually at the end of those Id come home, shower, take 3 headache tablets and sleep all day but one of my overseas friends had left me an email saying she was going to kill herself.
Cue me unable to sleep all day waiting for her to get online then trying to call every hour and pacing around my room, then my house and finally having to go for a walk around my town because I was that damn anxious.  Finally at around 10AM she comes online...her first words to me "I hope I didnt worry you."

I dont remember going from the computer to my bed but I woke up at around 10PM thinking it was early morning.  Yeah - dont want to repeat it anytime soon.

[Banderas]

I think my personal record is almost 72 hours.  January 1991.  US Army Command Post Exercise in southeastern Arizona, Ft. Huachuca.  I tried to get some sleep somewhere in the middle of the exercise, but just laid there for an hour with my boots on, staring at the interior wall of an Armored Personnel Carrier.  I slept 2 days straight when the exercise was over, which is my other, opposite record.

[kylie]

Also, seems that ability to stay up starts decreasing as one gets older. I cannot do crazy stuff that I could at my student / army days anymore :(

That might be a good thing though >.>

Ssssssssh.  Some of us are still in our student days...  And getting older!
Zzzzzzzzz.    ???  Oops.

Suppose it really depends what you have to do in the surrounding days, and while you're not sleeping... 
I haven't tested it precisely recently...  I think I can just walk around town, and say something short and minimally coherent after around 30 hours. 

It probably helps that those are usually situations where I just turn something in and limp away.  I wouldn't do very well if I had to work with others in some office the whole morning.  Although I have trudged through that with very little sleep occasionally.

Also, the difference between "absolutely no sleep" and "automatic, short naps I can barely notice" is very fuzzy for me.  I'm not sure quite how to measure it.

[Jadyn]

Around 30 hours or so. I'll wake up in the morning, go through the day, work though the entire night, go through the morning and early afternoon of the day after, and then crash into bed in the early evening.

I'm not a fan of shooting my circadian rhythm in the head. Everytime I end up pulling one of these routines (which fortunately only happens around once or twice a year), my appetite disappears and I get dry eyes that last until I get a full night's sleep again.

Sometimes, depending on the work, I will purposely leave a portion of things undone and get a few hour's sleep in first before waking up extra early to finish it off. Certainly not ideal, but at least this way I can go through the next day with acceptable functionality.

[Callie Del Noire]

My personal best (or worst if you like) is something like 50 hours. I DO NOT suggest you try this. I was working on my first deployment cruise and by the time we were done with pack up, staging and offload I had not slept for the best part of 2 1/2 days.

At the end I nearly had to get help to walk off the boat and when my buds collected me I slept nearly 30 hours straight.

It is NOT fun.

[SilverGhost]

Far away and long ago, I once did 96 hours without any sleep but a few winks here and there. Believe me when I tell you it was not fun, but it was required for a special project at work. Three of us passed the hours working hard with the aid of strong coffee and this was in the time before Starbucks. Normally, I can get by with 4 hours sleep each day.

[Jag]

I start to nod off uncontrollably around 50-55 hours. People can tell when I'm over tired cause I get really big bags under my eyes when I'm sleepy. I can go longer than the 50-55 hour limit if I push it, but I'm useless.

I used to have to stay up long hours when I was in training at the call center because of how my transportation was. I only slept about two hours a night during the month long training class. I still don't know where that last screw went from the desktop pc that we had to take apart and put back together...whereever it went, it was not needed cause the system booted up fine and worked. Did that around hour 40 of no sleep during that time. I'm nearly useless around that point.

[Kirei]

I get tired to a point. After the point I don't get more tired, my consentration weakens and all, but I don't feel more tired. I have stayed up for 78 hours straight (I think.)

But really, I believe I could go on easily until I dropped dead. I always go to sleep because of time, not because I felt all that tired.

[Raven41174]

Longest I've gone was 2 1/2 weeks while in Desert Storm

[Beguile's Mistress]

84 hours

[Destiny Ascension]

Somewhere between 180 hours and 200 hours my first tour in Afghanistan.

[Saerrael]

I can't do this anymore, probably the age factor, even if I'm only 30. But, with a circle of an hour meditation (alpha/ beta/ tetra) every 8 hours and every 4 hours when your mind goes funny, no caffeine, light digestables and a stress free environment, I once could 'stay awake' for as long as I pleased. Granted, those meditations go very deep, though.
The only things that really went wrong after a few days were my body not being happy with the change in diet and my creativity dying due to lack of dreams.

[Gunny1]

Well, when I was younger - early to mid 20's - I could do 50-hour stints without much problem, as long as I could get a good eight hours sleep (at a minimum) between them. These days...? I usually 'hit the wall' somewhere in the 30-40 hour range - though still technically 'awake', about the only thing I can do 'well' is a heck of a Zombie impersonation. (Just substitute the word 'coffee' for 'brains' in any Romero flick, and you've got it... *Grin*)

[Le Immortelle]

72 hours or so is max i've ever gone. My head started aching quite a bit near the end of it. After that I well, slept for a long time lol.