I have been awake for 36 hours now

El Sapo

El Sapo

Bevo's BFF
No, apart from some coffee this hasn't been chemically assisted.
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I could not fall asleep last night and when I looked over and saw 5:30am on the clock I just said **** it and got up. I figured I'd stay up all day and get myself nice and tired so i could try the whole sleep thing all over again tonight.

So far all I have gotten out of the deal is some tracers. That started about an hour ago. This is chump change compared to real sleep deprivation... which I think is one of the coolest experiences on earth.

I haven't gone nearly as long as some people, but I
had 2 hours of sleep in 3 days one time on a field training exercise. By the last night I was full-on hallucinating. It was a full moon and partly cloudy so I guess it was the perfect stage, really. I saw enormous faces, devils riding rockets, and big spanish warships flying around in the clouds. At one point I clearly saw a tiger slink out of the woods and lunge at a couple of guys in my platoon. Then I got everyone in a fuss when I tried to point out the OPFOR that I had been watching crawl through the grass towards our position for the last 10 minutes.

Ah yes, sleep deprivation. It is truly one of the great 'natural highs'.
 
Is it true that its impossible to die of sleep deprivation? Ive gone on about 3 days before and it was terrible
 
My job used to require that I stay up for as long as 3 days at a time. My job now requires that I stay awake for eight hours. I find it much harder to stay awake at my new job.
 
I think the max I've stayed awake was a little under 30 hrs. I wasn't hallucinating, but I sure as hell felt like the walking dead.

I don't know if I could go much longer. It's seriously torture after a while.
 
My best sleep deprivation hallucination was on I-10 driving all night to Big Bend.
I was getting loopy and had to pull over to stretch. We were on one of the long deserted areas west of Sheffield before Ft. Stockton where there are no pit stops for coffee.
The dawn was coming up as I got back on an entrance ramp. As I got up to speed, I slammed on the brakes, as directly in front of me on the ramp was an enormous peacock.
My friend woke up with a start, as the peacock evaporated into the shredded parts of an 18-wheeler tire.
I pulled over and made her drive.
 
Man, I can't even remember how long I have been continually awake?

I guess around 30 hours.

Do people really hallucinate?

How about jet lag. When I went to Europe I arrived in Holland and was just done.

California ----> Holland is rough.
 
I did that once. I was still @ UT and had stayed up for most of 2 straight nights. At the time, I was a morning prep for Taco Bell. I had a bunch of tomatoes that I was slicing. I saw one roll toward the edge and dove for it. Turned out, none had even moved. I remember thinking how cool that was being that then and now, I've never done any drugs.
 
Nice.

I used to be awake for 45-50 hours during college many times since I was working 70 hours a week and then reading my books and writing my papers till all hours of the night.

Oh, sorry, some douche is going to say that I am trying to "one up" someone. Facts are facts.
 
I've done 30-36 a number of times, never any more than that though. No hallucinations, but definitely tracers and distortions. I've gotten to the point now that I kind of like jet lag. Get enough caffiene in you so you're not nodding off, and you feel just kind of balanced and confused and bulletproof. My decisions may be worse but my justifications are better. Sometimes I think I function better that way than when I'm at home fully rested.
 
I remember leaving Big Bend around 8pm as a storm was rolling in. We just decided to drive back to Austin. Threw the tents in the back of the suburban and took off. Major storm, raining cats and dogs. Stopped for 20 minutes under the INS inspection station. AM radio broadcasts mentioned possible tornados, not that I could see more than 50 feet. I missed the turn in Marathon to Ft Stockton so I went 90 miles towards Sanderson(?). I realized I missed the turn, found our map, and saw an alternative route. Went down 2 miles, it was still raining like the end of times. Sign said "low water crossings, flashing flooding, next 78 miles." Turned back to Marathon. Hit a deer outside of Fredricksburg. Didn't stop. Pulled into Austin 7am. Most tired I had ever been in my entire life.
 
Two sleep deprived stories.

1. When I was 16, my dad and I drove from Houston to Salem, OR. I was convinced that we could do it straight through with breaks only for food and gas. So we did. It's around 40 hours depending on speed and stops. The idea was that we'd drive in shifts and take naps while not driving. I think I slept for a total of about 2 hours the entire trip. I had never driven across country and I thought it was cool. My dad was driving as we were about 2 hours out of Salem, coming out of the Cascades into the Willamette Valley. Two lane highway with mostly logging trucks at around 4:00 am. Here was the conversation:

Dad: Did you see that?
Me: What?
Dad: The trees. They're moving.
Me: Yeah, there's some wind.
Dad: No, they're coming.
Me: Coming?
Dad: YES! THEY'RE COMING FOR US!
Me: Uh, Dad. Why don't you pull over.

I got him to move over to the passenger's seat and I drove into Salem. I had no idea where my grandma's house was but I drove around until he woke about 7:30 and he pointed me in the right direction.

2. When Mrs. Macanudo was in med school, she did a rotation in Corpus Christi. She was there a month and UT-Houston had an apartment that the students shared. I drove down every weekend to see her. One week, she got a **** schedule and had to work until after 10:00 so the plan was for me to drive down on Saturday morning. I was going to get up at like 4:00, haul *** and be there around 7:00 am.

Well, on Thursday night, I went out with some friends and, while I didn't get plastered, I was drunk enough when I got home at around 1:30, that I tried to stay up until I didn't feel the buzz. Well, that was around 5:00 am on Friday morning and I decided that it made no sense to get an hour or so of sleep before I went to work. So I goofed around the house for an hour or so and then went to work. When I got home Friday afternoon, I wasn't really that tired so I went to workout. I got back around 7:30 and was feeling pretty good. So I plugged in a movie. And then I got hungry. So I went out to eat around 9:00. I was bored do I went to a 10:00 movie. I got home around 12:30. I got on-line (pre-Hornfans days) and goofed off for a while and it was all of sudden almost 3:00. So I said, "screw it, I have to be up in an hour, I'll just get ready and go." I left around 3:30, stopped at IHOP for some pancakes and drove to Corpus. I finally went to bed around 11:00 on Saturday night.

That was about 65 hours awake. I will never do that again.
 
I think the longest I've done was around 36 hours. Back in HS we had band lock-ins where you'd stay up all night in the band hall watching movies, playing games, karaoke etc. We had practice at 7 AM in the morning. I was up by 6 that morning went to practice, went through my school day, killed time before we had to be ready for the football game that night at 7.

After the game was the lock-in, stayed up that entire night until they let us out at 7 AM. After that I drove to downtown to meet my dad for some Mexican food before a UT game at 11 AM. I wasn't feeling very tired until around the 2nd half of that game. Our family's season tickets are in the West Side upper deck - Row 52, near the top. I never began to hallucinate but I do remember thinking that I knew EVERYONE. Random people in the stands looked like people I went to school with, old baby sitters, everyone imaginable. After the game we drove to Killeen for a family wedding, stayed awake until after it was over at around 9 PM where I proceeded to crash out in the truck.

Everyone looked familiar too me, I remember saying to myself over and over again.. "that's _____ " and I truly believed that it was them.
 
I stayed up 36+ hours a couple of times in boot camp. The worst part was that you don't have the ability to just go grab a cup of coffee and since we usually ran on 4-5 hours of sleep a night we were falling asleep standing up. Really sucked.
 
I've been awake for maybe 80 (albeit with the use of stimulants). Nothing interesting happened - I just alternately felt dead and lightheaded.
 
I think the magic number is around 45+ hours. That's when the good stuff really starts. For me the laughing comes first, then the hallucinations come. I heard from a former Navy seal that by the end of hell week he was hallucinating things like an entire argument happening between two guys in his platoon that had dropped out the week before. Now that is big time.

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