Thread: Lack of sleep.

How harmful, if at all, is lack of sleep?
Im curious what happens when you experience like 48+ hours without sleep. I've heard of people talking about things like hallucinations and whatnot.

Rite now im at about 30 hours without sleep, im kind of in a hurry to know what will happen as im wondering if I can do damage to myself. From my research I don't think you can but I would like confirmation on that.

i have a sleeping disorder when i will sleep a good 15 hours some nights (and days) so to reconstruct my sleeping pattern i will stay up going on 40 hours just so i will be tired enough to fall asleep at the right time..i think 48 hours wont hurt you too much all that will really happen is you will fall asleep...but prolly more than that like 72 hours or so is where it starts getting bad

notice how I said 48+ hours.

I have the intent of staying up much longer than that if it will do no permenant damage. I am insanely curious what 72 hours and more of sleep depravation can do to you, that is if I can make it that far.

after a while you'll probably have dreams while your eyes are open.

Originally posted by xcrissxcrossx
after a while you'll probably have dreams while your eyes are open.

Uh oh, that makes me want to stay up until that happens, imagine that.. lucid dreams whenever you want.

By the way, the longest I've remained awake is 30~ hours. Reading.. was hard, eyelids too heavy and then I took a long nap after that...

the reason people on speed and meth are crazy is not the drug itself but because they stay up days without sleep. I feel a little crazy after 2 days but Ive never kept going. I could only imagine how bad things would get.

yea and i was giving my point of view on the subject

Originally posted by dropout14
yea and i was giving my point of view on the subject

hahah woops, i think you figured i was being sarcastic when i said my earlier remark. I didnt mean anything by it, dont worry about it.


But back to the original post, any other opinions?

It's probably not that harmful. I mean yeah you'll be incapable of doing anything after 48 hours of sleep or so, but once you do get the sleep, you'll be out for like 24 hours and make up all the sleep you missed

its cool man haha i wasnt sure but its cool

Its not good for you at all and these hallucinations aren't the good kind. Just look at the homeless people that stay up a few days at a time. But if that's how you wanna be, have fun.

Probabally no harm, other than the discomfort of the struggle for the will power needed to pull it off. Without outside intervention, you'll eventually fall asleep involuntarilly. With intervention then there's the possibility of experiencing psychosis.

An interesting account of the setting of the world's record for sleep deprivation:
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p980301b.html
http://www.sdreader.com/php/cover.php?mode...g=1&id=20040923

you'll feel high with out the drugs!

I don't think it's harmful, the longest I have stayed up was three days, which is about 70+ hours. By the time I wanted to sleep, I was having trouble with reading and playing games.

A great way to not fall asleep is to keep moving and if you have to sit down, sit on one of those exercise balls. The movement from the ball prevents you from drifting into sleep.


- Axis

the longest time I spent awake was 50 hours and after that I just wanted to sleep so nothing bad would happen to me.
My XP:
at about the 20th hour I was a bit wary...I couldn't sleep because of too much energy drinks so I just wandered around. It was quite difficult because my body wanted to fall asleep but it couldn't after several hours this passed.
I spent several hours playing SingStar (which means also reading a text...). Reading wasn't a problem at that time or at least not a text of that size. Worse was looking at the screen all the time as it made my eyes hurt and sometimes I got a nausea feeling.
Several hours later. (around my 32th hour) I played Dance Dance Revolution (actually ITG) and I haven't got a problem passing tenfooters and eleven footers (even though I though it would kill me, because I haven't eaten much nor slept).
This quite demanding physical exercise woke me up and I was quite alright for another several hours.
but at home I had problems with reading, I got a problem with the the flow of time (ehm..I know how the time passes....even when I sleep if I don't black out...) but after 40 hours without sleep it becomes a bit difficult to follow. (it's like time dilatation).
Also my brain has much slower reactions and does not think that fast as it usually does. I'm more open to nonsense jokes or other nonsense.
My body was moving slower (but I could still play DDR without a problem) and was quite lazy.

that's it... I think that it wasn't harmful to me at all. just my memory had a problem...I had to "save" a longer period of time than usual.

"A person who has fatal familial insomnia may die after several months with no sleep at all"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation

My own experiences with lack of sleep is that I get memory losses, similar to what you might experience in you have a hard night with friends and vodka *cough*... its hard to think clearly and my eyelids constantly fell down, eyes started rolling when they where halfway closed. My fingers started to feel swollen after awhile.

Theres no reason to stay avoid sleep because you feel you're loosing valuable time you could stay awake. Either you fall asleep later, sleeping longer than you normally do because you need more sleep, thus loosing more awake-hours. Or you'll sleep around 4 hours every day and it'll take its toll on your body... brain damage, heart diseases (it increases colesterol and stress) or anything else meanie weanie... making you die younger, loosing more awake-hours.

And why do that? Learn to stay awake IN your dreams instead

Shadowrunner, keeping awake in your dreams IS a great idea. can you imagin 24 hours of full conciousness? That rocks! 8)

Anyway, this friend of mine sleep deprivated himself for five days to finish a school project (I also deprived myself from sleep but not that much ). He told me that he started having halluciations of little gnomes helping him finish his project and people partying outside of his room. I think this should be quite interesting to experience but he also told me that he felt like he had diarrea. I didn't experience this.

P.D. pardon my bad english