Can Lack of Sleep Kill You? Drive You Insane?

Another night of insomnia. I am back out of bed and on ATS once again. I’ve gotten a total of four hours of sleep in the last two days. (Too much coffee, and a pretty tough project during the day.) I guess I’m averaging a total of around 20 hours of sleep a week for the past month. Everything is a bit unreal at this hour, with the house totally quiet. I get a very contemplative and in touch with something that is hard to explain.

I see a lot of threads on ATS that mention lack of sleep. Can lack of sleep really kill you? How about drive you psychotic? Why do we sleep anyway? Why do we dream?

I’ve been browsing Masqua’s great thread here: Jungian Dream Analysis and I definitely feel like I am on the brink of some deeper understanding, and an answer to the above questions. I hope it isn’t just some sort of impending psychotic break.

Any ATS answers to the above questions? I see a lot of garbage on the Internet, but I don’t really trust it. I am not prepared to plow through all that disinformation to get the truth, even supposing the truth is known (which it probably isn’t.)

Thanks, and pleasant dreams for those relaxed members signing off in the eastern USA....

you will "go insane" if you do not sleep enough.

(so punish me for a one liner.)

Yes it can. I saw a documentary on sleep some years ago. A radio host back in the 50s took up the challenge of going as long as he could without sleep. After 20-something days straight (don't quote me on that number), he dropped dead.

Before that, he had hallucinations and was generally in a state of disarray.

I've had problems with insomnia too. For me, if I can't sleep, I need to have a fan running in the room to make a white noise effect. Total darkness helps. You've probably read all the hints, but not doing any complex work before bed time helps me as well.

I don't know the exact function of sleep, but if lack of it can kill you, it's pretty important. But then you stress over that, and can't sleep, and so the cycle continues.

Originally posted by billybob
you will "go insane" if you do not sleep enough.

How would this insanity manifest itself? Delusions? Hallucinations? And would this be a permanent situation, or something more temporary?

If you go insane for lack of sleep, and then get some sleep, have you permanently damaged your brain? I have heard that once you have been hypnotized (for example) it is much easier to be hypnotized again, and induce self hypnosis.

Seems like there should be some clinical studies, but I can't find anything that I trust. (Maybe that is just a delusion for me right now.)

i once saw a documentary on a clinical study of sleep deprivation.

people are asked to write. at first, they do perfectly well. twenty four hours later, and they THINK they're doing perfectly well, but, they are actually much slower and make way more mistakes.

but, rather than listen to MY OPINION, here's a nice search result.

go nuts.

"sleep deprivation" insanity

[edit on 28-2-2008 by billybob]

[edit on 28-2-2008 by billybob]

oh, irony.

the code is fubar, for some reason. it's driving me CRAZY!!!!

okay, approach two: google this: "sleep deprivation" insanity

the quotes are important to help narrow your search results.

[edit on 28-2-2008 by billybob]

A body needs sleep like it needs food and water.
You shouldn't force yourself to stay awake but you may be able to get by with quick power naps throughout the day.

here it is in a nutshell:

ezinearticles.com...?&id=293584

okay, CODE problems WILL drive you nuts.

try again....

a nutshell

[edit on 28-2-2008 by billybob]

Originally posted by billybob
here it is in a nutshell:
a nutshell

Excellent post, Billy Bob. I will read the article now (and try your Google keywords also.) I am encouraged by the above article from the start.

One of the biggest misconceptions about sleep is that it if you go for a couple of days with no sleep, you will end up losing your sanity. Eye opening discoveries were made a few years ago, and this has changed this great misunderstanding about sleep.

So I can relax a bit about inducing permanent or long lasting psychosis, for the time being. (The article goes on to say that one guy went nineteen straight days without sleep!) I guess I am not in immediate danger, anyway.

Thanks for the post.

reply to post by Buck Division


don't get too relaxed! you might fall asleep and realise in a dream that you didn't see the author's hairdo!

Originally posted by Alxandro
A body needs sleep like it needs food and water. You shouldn't force yourself to stay awake but you may be able to get by with quick power naps throughout the day.

Believe me, I'm not so stupid as to go without sleep on purpose. I will probably drift off around 3:30 AM and be up around 6:00 AM today. I will feel drained for the whole day, until around 10:30 PM tomorrow, when I will suddenly be wide awake again. That would be typical.

#

I disagree with one small point Alxandro. Obviously we need food and water to replenish our energy. Why do we need sleep? To replenish our consciousness? If I lie still in bed for one or four hours, perfectly still, if I don't cross over into sleep, then I feel pretty bad the next day. It is like some quirk of the conscious mind, not necessarily the body!

#

Regarding the cat nap idea. Works great on weekends, Not able to generally take power naps during the weekday. Thanks for the encouragement, Alxandro!

I have dealt with not sleeping for days on end. I'm fine with it, in fact, there are people that just don't sleep, they see it as a waste of time. So right there in the grocery store was this midget right, and I thought to myself that the moon should have been a lot brighter tonight than it actually is, but that still didn't stop the ants. They kept singing about the flag and the soda cups, they're videogames and their video games. But seriously man, get some sleep or the next time the spoon leaves your mouth, you'll have no idea how to ride a bike.

reply to post by gopher mines


if you weren't a massive explosive rodent i'd be scared.
khant dog.

I'm an albino gorilla...

I do not sleep much. I am a power napper. However, after 4 days of staying up straight, I see stuff. (like the carpet rolling like water or shadows out of the corner of my vision)
Many cultures use fasting and staying awake as a way to get visons or messages from a higher source. Personaly, it scares me silly. The longest I was awake was 6 days, I was seeing things (like above) but was not ranting or raving or trying to drive a car or anything. However, It made me sick to my stomach. I don't think I would have went stark raving mad if I continued to stay awake, but I guess studies show it can.

Originally posted by starskipper
Many cultures use fasting and staying awake as a way to get visons or messages from a higher source. Personaly, it scares me silly. The longest I was awake was 6 days, I was seeing things (like above) but was not ranting or raving or trying to drive a car or anything.

Six days? Wow! Were you trying to stay awake, or just suffering from a really really very bad case of insomnia?

Also, I find the comment about people purposely staying awake, to get visions and insights, quite facinating. I wonder if there are doors to perception (such as those described by Aldus Huxley) that get opened. Maybe the delusions and visions have some sort of deeper reality to them? Or is it just a break from what is real, and total nonsense, demonstrated by Gopher in his earlier post?

Regardless. Doesn't seem very healthy. And yet, the article posted earlier by Billy Bob seems to refute that (if it is an article that is trustworthy -- a big assumption.) Maybe it is actually more healthy than we know!

Lots of questions going through my mind at this hour. Now, I'm beginning to get sleepy. I have to get up in about four hours....

Edit: What seems weird to me -- people claim they get in contact with other realms in their dreams. MAYBE IT IS THE OTHER WAY AROUND! Maybe people can get in contact with other realms by staying awake? (I'm not going to test that. Seems unhealthy and scary, as you say.)

[edit on 29-2-2008 by Buck Division]

reply to post by gopher mines



that MAY be true, but i'll tell you that's what EVERY explosive rodent claimed just before it went off.
i'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, 'cause you seem like a nice primate. (although, the last one i said that to turned out to be george bush!)

reply to post by Buck Division

I think sleep deprivation cause chemical imbalance both in the brain and in the body. So the answer is yes.

If you want 'enlightenment', maybe you can dream it, so in this case you actually need a good sleep rather than sleep deprivation.

The military (DARPA) is actually developing drugs to combat the need of sleep. The latest is Orexin A. Google it, that might answer why human need to sleep.

But if you are religious, why God create humans that need to sleep. Perhaps so He can talk to you during your sleep. It is His mysterious way.

i remember a TV documentary (in Eastern Europe) about a russian man who got a disorder, he could not sleep at all for 20 years. There was no internet back then , so this guy just got a night job (security) and he started to make.. poetry! He did not look older than the real age , so I guess we could find a way to not sleep .
Then , more recently I remember an experiment where people try to sleep only 30 minutes at every 4 hours - but I do not know if this works.
In the end, I have to remind myself about experiemnts conducted or rats - they died after a certain period of sleep depravation..

Originally posted by gopher mines
I'm an albino gorilla...

You are now my most favourite person on ATS.

Congratulations.

I've done lots of shiftwork, they called it eccentric hours, we called it something else. I used to fill trains and they would come in irregulary, mostly they would be late and then sometimes early, which made it very hard to a)set the alarm and b)live some semblance of a life!
then there was days when they didn't come at all, so you never new what the heck you were doing. One day after five years there I walked into work and told the boss to stick it, litteraly, I was tired,grumpy, and I had just realized that I had been that way for five years!Trust me, everyone needs to sleep, the night you miss, say party out or whatever, is gonna take a week to catch up on.And yes, I have seen crazy stuff at four in the morning but i like seeing faces in the trees!!!