Thirty Six Hour Days?

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11-20-2008, 08:35 AM
22fcms

Thirty Six Hour Days?

So, this is just my report on an interesting (and unintended) adventure into an alternate sleep pattern. It happened out of 'necessity'. Basically what happened is this: I stopped being able to get up in the mornings.
I went a semester and a half (first year of college) getting up at 7:30 every morning with absolutely no problem. Then, one day, I stopped being able to get up. I didn't change my sleeping patter or anything. I'd wake up hours after my alarm had gone off only to discover I'd turned it off (my alarm is literally under my bed. I have to actually get out of bed to turn it off). I don't remember turning it off, but I set it like clockwork (:roll:) every night. I tried getting to sleep earlier, chanting "get up" as I fell asleep, etc. Nothing worked and I was missing class.
Because I couldn't miss class I came up with an idea. I could stay up (I've never had a problem staying up) for 24 hours, and then sleep for 12 because I didn't have class on Tuesday or Thursday. My schedule was basically this:
Sunday- Wake up from 12-5 PM. Stay up until Monday around 12-2AM.

Tuesday I would get up around 12-3PM and stay up until Wednesday night around 12-2.

The only day that differed from that schedule was Saturday where I'd be awake from 12-3PM to 12-3AM.

So in the end, I got about the same amount of sleep as I normally would, just in bigger blocks (I'm not suggesting it had the same effect as normal sleep, because it didn't). I kept this up for about two months and by the end of it I was starting to fall asleep a couple of times a day in class (my first or second class and my last class).

I don't think this was that great for me (didn't really effect me mentally in any way; for instance, while I slept through calc (:\, yeah it had that effect), the 2 weeks before the final I studied like mad and actually taught myself calculus and got an A on the final (which was also the final grade)), but what are your thoughts?

Also, an interesting thing that happened during my 36 hour day adventure. I was on a road trip which began at midnight. So I had already been up for 38 hours and had to be up another 6 to keep the driver up (the buddy system). So we're driving down empty highway, and what do you know, I start having the most insane and real hallucinations I've ever had (yeah, I've had them, and no I'm not schizophrenic ;) ). They were just unreal and lasted a good 6 hours.

tl;dr?
What are your collective thoughts on 36 hour long days?
11-24-2008, 07:04 AM
Phantasos

It is one of the sleep deprivation's modifications - LSD for poor man ;). I've never tried it, but read on the Internet that some of the hallucinations are the same among different people. What have seen?
11-28-2008, 04:03 PM
Placebo

Delayed sleep phase syndrome and Non-24-hour sleep wake syndrome
You has it ;)
11-28-2008, 11:38 PM
arby

Oh wow, that's pretty interesting.
12-03-2008, 05:04 AM
22fcms

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phantasos

It is one of the sleep deprivation's modifications - LSD for poor man ;). I've never tried it, but read on the Internet that some of the hallucinations are the same among different people. What have seen?

Well let's see. The first things I started seeing I thought were just my imagination; they were just little black balls (more like scribbles (if you've seen Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, they look like those scribbles) that flew at me from the road. Then the median line started melting and pooling out. Parts of the yellow line were a good 3 feet across. I didn't think anything of these though, they were pretty tame.

After a little time the scribbles started turning into quite menacing (they just felt 'evil') phantoms/ghosts; they looked (yes, another childlike reference lol) like those ghosts in the original pokemon games, the purple ones. Because these hallucinations were bugging me I decided to look out the window instead.

Well, that didn't help. Every couple of minutes I'd see a dead body they all looked like construction workers) on the shoulder of the road. And the ghosts were still coming with the same frequency. This persisted for a couple of hours and then I had the most real and startling hallucination I've ever had; a giant baby, about the size of the car, in a pink onesie.

He was facing the car and crawling sideways along side us (70 mph lol). Now he was technically crawling towards the car, but he was going the same direction as the car. I was sure that this giant baby was going to slam into the car and get me. I nearly shouted to the driver to look out (and this comes from someone who handles his psychedelics pretty well).

At some point the bodies stopped, and the ghosts became infrequent. But the median never stopped melting and in fact became a kind of yellow river with green banks. This lasted all the way to Vegas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Placebo

Delayed sleep phase syndrome and Non-24-hour sleep wake syndrome
You has it ;)

Yeah, I was looking into that at the time and I'm pretty convinced I have it. Unless I'm dead tired I can't get to sleep till 3 or later. Oh well. I'm back to a normal schedule now, but it's absolute murder getting up in the morning.
12-12-2008, 11:07 PM
_massive

Quote:

Originally Posted by 22fcms

What are your collective thoughts on 36 hour long days?

I have read somewhere some time ago about that. The subjet of the paper was about few people being trapped in some kind of storage with plenty of supply to last years. No light penetrating. They were there for some time and, apparently, their wake-sleep cycle became a 36-hour one. They were awake for 24 hours and 12 asleep. That is interesting, because it suggests that there is NOT a natural sleep pattern. I don't know if it's true or not, but it's quite interesting. And it also amazes how little research it's done about alternative sleep patterns and things like that.
12-12-2008, 11:38 PM
The Subatomic Level

I've been thinking about this same thing lately...

We have cues that we associate with sleep such as when it get darks and how long it is dark. It just makes sense to be sleeping when you can't see anything because our ancestors couldnt be productive without the light bulb, and our society adopted our current sleeping schedule accordingly.

Here is what interests me though...

Most scientific research says we have a sleeping pattern that starts every 24-25 hours, and that technically without light we would sleep an hour later each night without cues as to when to go to sleep. While that maybe true I don't know that I believe that our sleeping is predetermined at 24 or 25 hours, but rather it is something that we have adapted to. Whether that is genetic and cannot be avoided or not I do not know. But, think about it...

If we lived on a planet that made a rotation once every 30 hours instead of once every 24 do you think there would be a chance our bodies would be limited to a "24 hour cycle". Not a chance. Well you can argue that our genetics would have been predetermined all along for that 30 hour day then, but consider this.

Let's say the Earth suddenly sped up to a 15 hour per day rotation. Society would have to change to there environment and their would be no choice. You couldn't get a job and survive staying on the same sleep schedule we have for a 24 hour day. If you didnt adapt you wouldnt make it. Survival of the fittest.

I believe it would take some time getting used to and the world would be turned upside down if something like that happened, but I also know that most would eventually adapt.