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FrozenGate by Avery

48hr No Sleep

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Apr 26, 2010
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4,175
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Wrote this up on Facebook, and figured some folks here would find this interesting.

Next 3 or 4 day weekend, I'm staying up for 48 hours. To break my current 42hr max. Which really isn't a lot. If I had more things to do, I could have easily stayed up later. I wasn't tired until my head hit the pillow.


The problem is running out of things to do and getting bored. No shit, that's why I went to bed, and why I normally stop around 36hr. Your body/brain is used to sleeping for 5-8hr and being active for 16-18hr.
24hr isn't bad at all. The equivalent for waking up for school/work, and staying up until you can see the sun again (though in these months that's closer to 25-26hr).


Then the next day begins. For me, once I see broad daylight, it's game over, I'm not sleeping until it's dark again. Not the daylight of sunrise, but the animals are awake and most stores have opened, and hangover drunks are drinking bloody maries. If I'm awake to see two noons, then I'll be awake to see 2 moons. Simple as that. That's about 36 hours.


Then your room gets dark, most places are closed, you don't really have the motivation to be up and active. Simply due to laziness and the fact that your entire body, by this point, is fairly fatigued. Not really muscle-wise, but brain and vital organs are exhausted.


Then 40-42 hours hits (my max is 42) and you get BORED. During the day, 24-36 hours, you may be a bit bored, yes. Though there's an incredible difference between daylight boredom, and night time boredom. You can still order a pizza during the first one, mainly. That's the main piece here.


I just ran out of things to do. You can't really research, or really read at all at this point. Your brain just sees the words and goes "yup ... those are words, show 'nuff." and you can only play video games for so long. You just RUN OUT of things to do. Sleeping is the last thing left.


However! I will not let this prevent me from breaking 48 hours! Probably 50 since it's a nice solid number. After that, 60 hours. Though that's not even on the radar yet!


I might even document this .... rumor has it (my friend that's done 72hr+ "sleep studies") you begin hallucinating around 48 hours.


The worst part, honestly, is trying to sleep. Your body is so tired that it's working overtime to repair. You're stuck in REM sleep, and you can feel it. Your body is like super saiyan sleeping. It's just going ham, sleeping so hard you can feel it. The whole night. By this point, your blood is pretty much replaced with adrenaline, so you are tired and wide awake at the same time.


It's a good time ... So just stay up anyway, because the sleeping is going to suck!


This became a much longer post that I originally anticipated.....
 





Just be careful, it puts an incredible tax on your vital organs. Your brain will induce microsleeps longs before you die, but your organs don't have this capability.

As an interesting comparisson; given my adrenal failure and all-around endocrine instability I can barely manage to be awake for more than 14hours without getting violently ill. 12hr days are the norm for me now. A single 18hr day takes almost a week for me to recover from.
 
I can't go that long anymore :p

I can do 35-38h if I'm not moving, less if I've got to move around. Beyond that I start to fall asleep on my keyboard.

When I used to be able to go longer I never found boredom to be a problem. The only reason I've stayed up so long in the past has been because I've been engrossed in something.
Programming is one of the few things that gets me engrossed enough to not notice the time. It's very hard to put down a piece of code once I've started working on it.
 
IIRC the world record was 11 days without sleep?

I can't function for function for missing even 1 night of sleep. Shifting to a night shift is fine, missing sleep to me is not. I just like to sleep. :)
 
Goodluck bloom!

Longest I've lasted awake was around 30 hours I believe, I slept for 10 hours that night :D

-Alex
 
Have fun. I don't know what my record is. I know it's over 24 hours though. That was back when I went to LAN parties.

OT - It looks like there's a double post problem.
 
stayed awake for 49 hours once minus a two hour sleep break in between with a friend.
 
I don't know that I can do 48 hours anymore.

I still have the occasional 40 hour days a couple times a year (which is basically just pulling an all nighter after getting up at 7 am, and then going to bed the following day at 11pm).

EDIT:
stayed awake for 49 hours once minus a two hour sleep break in between with a friend.

If it's not continuous, it doesn't count. Once you have a nap, lots of stuff resets. If 2 hour sleep breaks count, then I've gone 20 or 30 days without sleep ;)

EDIT 2:
7,500th post. Wow! I retire.
 
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IIRC the world record was 11 days without sleep?

More like, one year and a half,

Fatal familial insomnia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

See second-last paragraph under treatment. Also, the entire article is nightmare stuff. And no, it's not a horrible pun.

I pulled 48-hour routines only a few times. Both through the last half, and the entire day after that you're brain-dead and basically any productivity you were going after is long gone. Well, at least for me.

However I would VERY much like to have a 30-hour day. I think I'd work best with that.

But, sometimes you just have too much fun to have.

"I'll sleep when I'm dead."
 
"I'll sleep when I'm dead."

I used to say/think this all the time. It's funny how it got reversed on me. Now it's "I'll sleep, or I'll be dead", hah.

I will agree that there simply isn't enough hours in a day to be as productive as I wish to be. That is for damned sure.
 
In my early DJ'ing years , I used to go for 2-3 days without sleep , now I'm old, I have to go to bed between 22:15- 22:30hrs , or I am messed up beyond help. It's stupid.
Also, with reference to the Fatal Familial Insomnia link, I watched a Discovery Channel docu on that subject, it frightened the life out of me.
 
Reminds me of something a friend of mine tried- stay awake for some ridiculous amount of time, then when you finally sleep you hit a hard REM cycle. Then supposedly he would only need to sleep like 30-60 minutes every 8 hours. No idea how that worked out for him, but it sounds like hell to me.

Whats the point of staying awake that long? Just because?
 
I'm almost 30 and still don't have a stable sleep schedule despite an office job... I guess that's what comes from being an insomniac.

Longest I stayed awake was around 85-90 hours. Work up early on a thursday and went to sleep late sunday. This was during college, and yes some stimulants (all legal but some prescription were involved). Definitely not going to do that again anytime soon.

Since that time the longest I've been awake was on a short trip to montreal in 2007... left on a thursday morning ~7am, didn't get any sleep except a short 3 hour nap saturday evening, and actual long sleep until monday morning.

My biggest problem, aside from an increase in fatigue and irritability, is I experience severe mood swings.
 
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Ive done 70-80 hours before but lets just say there were some stimulants involved.
 





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