So I kinda just realized I didn’t sleep for the past 24 hours. Noy sure if it’s the longest I’ve been awake, but probably of the top 5 longest. I’m dealing with depression so my sleep cycle have been fucked up. Got coffee I think around the 12th hour mark.
I’ve basically just been watching youtube videos, browsing lemmy. Googled random things.
Idk why, I guess I just wanted some dopamine boost from coffee and now I can’t sleep lmao. Maybe a bit of anxiety around certain recent political events.
I honestly am not sure if I’m actually awake or dreaming.
Anyways, what is the longest time you’ve been awake without sleep? When did it happen and why?
Hmmm, I think mine was 96 hours? I worked nights, and was taking classes during the day time. I had set the schedule so my classes directly matched the work, which was Monday night starting, and the class ended at 1600 hours on Wednesday. Some weeks I would have to work Thursday nights, some I wouldn’t. I would usually grab 1 hour of sleep between work and school, and 1 hour between school and work.
That week though, I agreed to help someone out on the Sunday shift at work, and the Thursday day rotation at the hospital, and I just couldn’t get any sleep. So Sunday starting at 1800 hours, up until Thurday ~1700 hours. I drove home, and thanks to an agreement with my boss, I didn’t have to come into work until 2200 hours, so I crashed. Lo and behold, I woke up to a cop in my bedroom, because it was 0200 hours and I was late for work. My boss didn’t know exactly what I was doing, so they had no way to know that it was for lack of sleep. I hadn’t been late to work ever and only called in sick once during the 10 years I’d been working there. They panicked, thinking I was dead, and sent that damn cop, lol. Oh well, boss agreed I didn’t have to come into work and I wasn’t complaining.
Like another poster said, things just got weird as the sleep deprivation kicked in. Shadows sometimes wouldn’t line up with where they were attached, background objects would fade in and out of focus while looking at someone in front of me, and my recollection of what had happened five minutes ago blended with what had happened five days ago. What was reality and what was just in my head couldn’t be distinguished. Then, sitting on top of all of that, is just this weird ache where you’re craving sleep but you’re doing things like standing up or walking around to prevent any random lean from turning into a collapse as you nod off.
Anyway, two weeks later I hit a pothole on the side of the highway as I drove home, because I was drifting off the road with the lack of sleep. The pothole broke my oil pan in half, and I quickly realized how stupid I was being. I took time off in the middle of the stretch of classes/work, so I only ever was up for 36 hours at a time for the month after that.
About 36 hours. Borded on the plane for Mauritius (afternoon) , after 12 hours of flight, landed there, was told I need a visa to get in. Borded on exactly the same plane , flew 12 hours back. 2/10 wouldn’t recommend. Still gets 2 points for psychodelic effects of tiredness
40 hours. Mix between working to pay for college and overdue assignments. Then drive 2 hours to Thanksgiving and had Thanksgiving lunch. Then went into a food coma for 14 hours straight
I sometimes get bouts of insomnia. Usually when it happens, I’m just awake for about 30 hours or so. That’ll happen once or twice a month for me, and I’m pretty sure is just stress-related.
The longest I’ve gone was 75 hours when I was in my early 20s, which was due to a really bad allergic reaction to cedar pollen which kept me from breathing while laying my head down in any position, so I couldn’t fall asleep no matter how hard I tried. I was also running a pretty high fever while this happened. I probably drifted into microsleeps while sitting up a few times during that, but it was absolutely miserable.
I started having really bizarre auditory hallucinations after about the 40-hour mark. I’d hear a crowd of people laughing from behind the walls. Not like a malicious laugh, but like there was a stand-up routine happening in the next room over. Nobody else was home, no TVs were on, and it was like 3am so I knew what I was hearing wasn’t real, but convincing myself of that didn’t make the laughter stop.
I think I slept for about 13 hours straight after that.
There were a few times I was staying up late to play WoW and the computer fan would start talking. Not saying any words, but like listening to the Sims talk.
Approximately 36 hours. Got on a serious roll with some friends to beat Super Mario World 3, realized when we finished that it was about 4:30am, just went with it. I ended the day after throwing up a shrimp burrito from Taco Del Mar when the guy behind the counter misheard “shredded beef” and I had already got home (I don’t eat seafood, so it was already tough to get down). Never again.
About 20 hours. Half it was on a 10 hour flight and no matter how much booze I poured down my throat I just couldn’t fall asleep
About 24 hours. I’ll almost fall asleep standing up at that point and whatever reason I’ve got to stay awake just is not worth it.
About 42 hours. I start getting hallucinatory sparkles at roughly 40 hours and usually go to bed then.
Only done it a few times in my life, but the most memorable one was while in the middle of a 5-day LARP. We were going hard, I was NPCing, and I started seeing shadows in the middle of a fight. I took that as my cue to dip out and crash.
38 hours, I was working on a creative project I was passionate about with a hard deadline. I worked on it basically non-stop the entire time, I don’t remember much of it though. I do remember that after about 30 hours I started seeing patterns on things, like the walls and ceiling were covered in shifting sliding wallpaper.
I’m not entirely sure, but it took place over a week long military exercise. We setup SHORAD missile defenses at night too act as OPFOR for the Air Force, and then moved positions during the day. It was my first long distance extended training mission as an NCO so I was making sure I did everything I was instructed to do. Stay in constant radio contact, scan the skies, id targets, shoot move and communicate. My gunner started hallucinating by the 3rd or maybe 4th day. I don’t have any memories of sleeping that entire week, but I assume I must have been dozing off constantly. We rarely saw anyone else that week and just spent the days wandering the desert alone in some sort hazy dreamlike state. I should have made sure we slept more. It was a good lesson…“Hey Srgt., did you just see a Puerto Rican woman with a red balloon? Wait, did you just say yes!?”
I did a little over 4 days when I was a teenager just to see how long I could go. Really kinda sucked after the first 2 days. But I was just playing video games.
I did many 2-3 day stints in the Army. That sucked way, way more because yeah, I was definitely not playing video games.
Ohhhhkay comment was great but that username, lmfao.
I stayed up for over 2 nights but I was on some heavy drugs. Near the end I was hearing voices and there was shadow people in my peripheral vision. I also couldn’t put together a sentence , the words would come out in the wrong order .
Something approaching 48 hours, during college, to finish some assignments. It never works.
5 days in 1994, and for no particular reason, just for funsies. Now I get cranky if I get denied my sleep schedule for more than 4 hours.
36? 38 hours? Something like that… I kind of lost track around 30.
Gaming. Ultima IV.
The hallucinations were interesting. Hard flat surfaces like table tops and counters started rippling like water.
