Sleep Deprivation

Vicious · Post by **Vicious** » 2006-01-25 02:10am

A bad habit I've gotten into is staying up too late and not going to bed, then going to school because if I go to bed when I finally realize what time it is, I'll snag about an hour of sleep and feel even worse.

My experiences with sleep deprevation are similar to those reported here. My mental acuity holds out 'till around the 30-32 hour mark, then I crash hard. If I can manage to stay awake for another few hours, I'll peak again for a couple hours, then crash again, this time usually putting me out. Using caffeine, I can extend the peaks in mental acuity, but it makes the crashes far worse. Waking up after running on coffee for 36-40 hours is what I imagine a hangover feels like (I've never been drunk, so I can't say first-hand). I wake up with a pounding headache, my body feels like I've fallen down a flight of stairs and my mouth feels like the Sahara during a really bad summer.

Something weird I notice is that my time dialation ramps way up when I'm sleep-deprived, i.e. 15 minutes will feel like an hour. I've also noticed that lack of sleep does have a profound effect on appearance, though a shower can reduce the visible signs. I look like a zombie after 30 hours awake without a shower. With a shower, I merely look very tired.

My sleep times oscillate between 6-10 hours a night, depending on how much I've been getting recently. For about three months this past summer, I operated on two hours a night without any noticable side effects, but that halted when school started.

Archaic` · Post by **Archaic`** » 2006-01-25 06:41am

5 days without sleep whatsoever (though not for lack of trying) left my body with such a buildup of toxins, that I was hospitalized for the better part of a month, and suffered from chest pains and an irregular heartbeat for the better part of the next 6 months.

Metatwaddle · Post by **Metatwaddle** » 2006-01-25 10:43am

Vicious wrote:A bad habit I've gotten into is staying up too late and not going to bed, then going to school because if I go to bed when I finally realize what time it is, I'll snag about an hour of sleep and feel even worse.

I thought I was the only one who did that. I do it all the fucking time. I usually end up napping during the day when that happens though.

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2006-01-25 05:46pm

I haven't any real evidence for this, but I'll wager that my averaging 5-6 hrs a night during high school contributed to the onset of neurochemical-related depression at age 18. I know enough people who slept similar hours at that age, and many who continue to do so after high school, that it doesn't surprise me that my age is an increadibly common time to have your sleep-related brain chemicals stop working right.

Medic · Post by **Medic** » 2006-01-26 09:16am

: To all the horror stories of largely self-inflicted indifference.

Even doing 2 hours on and 4 off excercises for over 2 days and numerous self-inflicted all nighters, I regularly get an average of 12 hours of sleep on weekends. And I never stayed up past 48, that's just stupid.

Although I'll admit that throughout high school and so far the military, school / work days I regularly got only the (seemingly typical) 5-6 hours of sleep. Don't think it's changed my personality at all (up or down) but I do admit I don't fall asleep easily for the most part. Usually if I've been going to bed at midnight or later, it's a fierce struggle to fall asleep at 9 in the middle of the week. I've gone "to bed" at 9pm before and fallen asleep a little past midnight but this has only happened a handful of times in the last year.

Other times I'm just so tired (like last night) that it really doesn't matter anymore and I can fall asleep by 7 pm and I slept all the way till 6 am, only waking up once to piss. Usually, if I'm in my room and nodding off in a chatroom just after work, it's a good indication that I'll be able to get a full night's sleep. 2 weeks ago on the MLK-holiday 4 day weekend, I slept for 15 hours on Thursday and woke up the next day at 5 pm.

mjn6172 · Post by **mjn6172** » 2006-01-26 11:36am

I've dealt with insomnia since I was fairly young, so I have a lot of experience with this. The longest I ever was up at one time was a little over 4 days. From what I remember, I wasn't very lucid that fourth day, and I kept having odd hallucinations but I couldn't fall asleep.

Generally, as long as I can get 4 hours of sleep a night I'll be fine the next day. Anything much less than that and I feel sluggish and foul tempered all day. I usually average ~6 hours of sleep on a weeknight, and closer to 10 on a weekend/holiday to make up for it.