Longest You've Ever Gone Without Sleeping

[adventurernumber1]

What's the longest you've ever gone without sleeping?

I have gone one night with zero sleep in my entire lifetime. My total sleep deprivation lasted 36 hours, in January 2014 when I spent the night at a hotel with my Church in Birmingham for a Student Conference. We stayed up all night playing pranks on eachother and eating pizza. The sleep deprivation did a number on me, for the next day I kept dozing off for a couple of seconds then a muscle twitch would wake me up all during worship. Later that night on the bus ride back I was paying attention to the road (despite it being dark), but my friend told me I could go into a coma; With my paranoid mind, after that, I was knocked out in seconds asleep. I slept like crazy the next few days after that experience 

[Zeffy]

72 hours; Yes, it was hell. Why couldn't I sleep? Something about school that was stressing me out...(thanks ADHD for not helping!) I uh... used a bit of unconditional methodry to ensure a good sleep the next day (specifically involving a wonderful illegal drug). Man. That was the most rested I've felt in my entire lifetime probably.

Nowadays sleepless-ness is all too common for me, but I've taken the liberty of establishing a constant sleep cycle as well as starting some routines I used to do before (specifically, reading a book before I go to sleep), and it does seem to be helping.

[SSOWorld]

I went about 30 hours one time due to having to pull an all-nighter for a class.  I tried sleeping on one of the tables but couldn't.  After everything was done and I went to sleep I woke up sick.  Not fun.  especially when older.

[agentsteel53]

88 hours.  76 of them continuously driving.  only 3200 miles because I was doing a lot of two-laners.

[Scott5114]

I had to do the 36 hour thing on several occasions when I worked 3rd shift.

[hbelkins]

Had several 36-hour stretches as a college newspaper staffer, particularly as a sophomore. By the end of that semester I was worn out. I blame that time of my life for my current seemingly constant need for sleep. My sleep patterns were ruined and have never recovered.

[Pete from Boston]

Three days, however many hours it was.  I was a newspaper editor working for folks who didn't understand minimum staffing levels and couldn't afford them anyway. 

Two days in, delirious, I got this handful of foreign quarters in change.  They had a guy on a horse on one side and... "United States of America" on the other.  I just about lost my mind.

(This was, of course, when the first state quarter came out after 23 years of unchanged US coinage, and I had no idea about any of it.)

I could write a book on staying awake from those days, except that going without sleep is so miserable I'd like to forget the whole thing.

[sammi]

I haven't gone nearly as long... My longest is ~27 hours, from ~7am on November 27 to ~10am on November 28, 2011. We had a full day of stuff to do in San Francisco (it was a school trip), and took a flight, around 9pm I think, back to Toronto. Landed around ~5am, got home around 6am, and not knowing better, decided to go to school that day.

[jeffandnicole]

I would say about 36-40 hours is my longest.

[corco]

When I was working graveyards in grad school, there were several days where I'd wake up at about 7:00 PM, work all night, go to class all day, work all night, and then get to sleep at about 10:00 AM two days later, so that's what, 39 hours?

I'm pretty sure I even repeated that cycle twice once (actually fell asleep standing up a few times! You wake up almost instantly when you lose your balance, but it's pretty scary), which would be 64 hours.

[jwolfer]

40 hours drove from Jacksonville to USF in Tampa for a party.. Stayed up all night went to the gulf in Clearwater.  Then drove across the state to Merritt island to take friend home, went to cocoa Beach so we could say coast to coast trip. Then home to Jacksonville. I drove most of it, by the time we hit St Augustine my friend Robin and I were singing along to hymns from childhood in Episcopal Church choir. ( full disclosure it was fueled by LSD)

[cjk374]

23 hrs...get up, work 12-hr day shift, then drive 10 hrs to Columbia, MO.  Did that 2 or 3 times.

[wxfree]

30 hours.  I left at midnight, drove 500 miles, climbed Guadalupe Peak (8.5 miles round-trip, 3,000 feet up and back down), drove on to Carlsbad Caverns and did the tour, got out not long before closing time, went to Presidio, drove FM 170 to Study Butte (a real roller coaster road), then started heading back.  About 6 am I was 400 miles from home and started thinking weird thoughts (I remember thinking I was on some kind of mission) and decided to stop in the ditch and sleep.  I woke up a couple of hours later and was still thinking weird thoughts.  I turned around and went back the other way for several minutes before I realized I shouldn't have done that.  I used my electronic car compass to verify I was headed the wrong way and turned back around and got home.

I'm not sure I was awake that whole time.  Back in those days I could drive while sleeping (I don't do that any more).  I was half-way asleep for most of the FM 170 drive.  I woke up a few times during that drive, about 80 minutes, and didn't remember how I got there.  The part I was awake for was fun, hilly and curvy.  I was impressed that I could navigate that road asleep.  For several years after, I did that occasionally.  I once drove asleep for a solid half-hour down I-10 before waking up and wasn't tired at all for the last 300 miles home.  I don't do that any more.  I almost always avoid sleep deprivation, but 5-Hour Energy always gets me home the few times I've used it.

[Pete from Boston]

40 hours drove from Jacksonville to USF in Tampa for a party.. Stayed up all night went to the gulf in Clearwater.  Then drove across the state to Merritt island to take friend home, went to cocoa Beach so we could say coast to coast trip. Then home to Jacksonville. I drove most of it, by the time we hit St Augustine my friend Robin and I were singing along to hymns from childhood in Episcopal Church choir. ( full disclosure it was fueled by LSD)

Let me guess–you tried to follow the map, but could only bring yourself to use the roads that stayed attached to the paper. 

[jwolfer]

40 hours drove from Jacksonville to USF in Tampa for a party.. Stayed up all night went to the gulf in Clearwater.  Then drove across the state to Merritt island to take friend home, went to cocoa Beach so we could say coast to coast trip. Then home to Jacksonville. I drove most of it, by the time we hit St Augustine my friend Robin and I were singing along to hymns from childhood in Episcopal Church choir. ( full disclosure it was fueled by LSD)

Let me guess–you tried to follow the map, but could only bring yourself to use the roads that stayed attached to the paper.

No need for a map. I am a roadgeek. It's all in my head. This was 1991 so well before ubiquitous GPS

[english si]

I've done 40 hours a couple of times - I could never quite manage that second night of staying awake.

[kurumi]

40 hours drove from Jacksonville to USF in Tampa for a party.. ( full disclosure it was fueled by LSD)

I realized I skimmed the beginning and end before reading the whole thing, and thought "no wonder J-ville to Tampa took you 40 hours"

[vdeane]

The highest I've gotten is around 36 or so.  I tend to get to the point where I have to force myself to keep my eyes open after 29 hours, so there's only so much further I can go - and that's if I have something to keep me busy!

[corco]

Had several 36-hour stretches as a college newspaper staffer, particularly as a sophomore. By the end of that semester I was worn out. I blame that time of my life for my current seemingly constant need for sleep. My sleep patterns were ruined and have never recovered.

I spent two years working graveyards while in grad school, essentially never sleeping until I was about ready to pass out. I still have trouble falling asleep now unless I'm really tired, two years later.

[Arkansastravelguy]

I take mini road trips once a month... Where I work from 9am to 8pm then drive all night to where I'm going stay 2 days then drive back. This weekend I'm going to New Orleans. So I stay up 40 hours straight at least once a month. My longest is around 72 hours. Vegas.


iPhone

[Alps]

44.5 is my current record, from about 5 AM one morning through to relatively late the next night (do the math). I generally only stay up when I don't feel like sleeping and I know I can crash for 9-10 hours. I could have gone longer but wanted to stay on schedule for the week.

[formulanone]

Around 39-40 hours, 5-6am one morning until about 9-10pm the following day. Did this too many times in college for a variety of reasons (work and/or school, play, then drugs, friends, talk, music, more talk, go watch sunrise, stare at clouds, followed by work and/or school again).

I was not all that happy for the last 2-3 hours of work if I'd gone without sleep the day/night before.

[Roadrunner75]

I'm pretty sure I did at least 48 hours at some point back in college, and probably more.

[Pete from Boston]

All the allure of stsying up all night left me by about 35, at which point it was clear to me that the recovery time was just getting longer and longer, and involved me feeling much shittier than I did under the same circumstances in my 20s. 

On rare occasions I'll still drive down there late after a workday and close a bar in New York, and I'll catch a bit of the morning light, but unlike all those years ago, I don't just get on with my day at that point.  It's making me tired just thinking about doing that.

[JMoses24]

I think I have gone 60 hours without sleep.

On the other hand, as far as hours with limited sleep? Though that's likely a separate thread altogether, I have strung together four or five days with probably 12 hours sleep total, and that wasn't very restful. It was 2 months prior to my recent surgery.