How Long Can a Human Stay Awake?

I was just wondering how long a person can stay awake and still sustain good health. Is it possible to stay awake forever? Can the body rest enough without sleep? The longest I ever stayed awake without any sleep was about 52 hours and I thought I was about to drop dead from exhaustion.

[Edited on 23-2-2004 by chrisnolefan]

Originally posted by chrisnolefan
I was just wondering how long a person can stay awake and still sustain good health. Is it possible to stay awake forever? Can the body rest enough without sleep? The longest I ever stayed awake without any sleep was about 52 hours and I thought I was about to drop dead for exhaustion.

I would say 72 hrs is the max. After that your brain starts to overload from lack of sleep and constant chemicals it has been releasing and you lose perception of reality, it's a long hard road for a "trip"

Or you can read this story

www.time.com...

I know from experience though after 3 days, you start to see strange things....



[Edited on 23-2-2004 by NetStorm]

You can also check out this, too.

ATS Thread

A woman claims she hasn't slept for 8 years.

I have always suffered from insomnia, at times worse than usual. I am not sure of the limit, it is hard to keep track of how long you are awake, when you can barely remember your own name. No sleep works strangely, at certains times I found my memory sharper, other times it was hazy, and yes hallucinations of all kinds are apparent in later stages. This includes seeing things that you have imagined in your head, hearing noises really loudly all the time, which are normal noises but seem amplified, and of course flashing lights plagued me. I kept thinking someone was opening my bedroom door one time, since I could have sworn it kept opening up revealing a blinding light, but I would blink and it would be closed again. Interesting maximum to look up, I suggest reading the Guiness Book Of Records to check for this knowledge, they might just have a record for this.

Originally posted by chrisnolefan
I was just wondering how long a person can stay awake and still sustain good health. Is it possible to stay awake forever? Can the body rest enough without sleep? The longest I ever stayed awake without any sleep was about 52 hours and I thought I was about to drop dead from exhaustion.

[Edited on 23-2-2004 by chrisnolefan]

Entire lifetime.

There's a woman who stopped sleeping after her mother died, in fear that she'll have nightmares of her mother. After a few days, she didn't have the bodily urge to sleep at all, and has not slept for 8 years since and feels absolutely fine. Look it up I'm not sure where the article is.

EDIT: Just noticed someone already posted this. Thanks.

[Edited on 23-2-2004 by lilblam]

Severe body chemisty and mental changes in ur life can effect ur sleep as well....trust me on this!!

Got my first 2hrs sleep in near 8 days last nite and it didna do me much good.

I am used to stay up so late and workin around the clock my body is used to it and when i am like that i crave a lot more protien and sugar to keep myself going.

Thankfully i may sleep 2nite

Its a horrible feelin though...but..we have to deal with it so may as well stop moaning and get a grip

Lol, this thread reminds me when I was like 13 me and my cousins bet each other we couldn't stay up for 24 hours straight so we did.

Only, It was Sunday afternoon and we had like 4 more hours to break the cycle and we had to go to church and we were struggling to stay awake in the church it was so hilarious. Our mom's were pissed at us hahaha.


Yea, so my record is 24 hours.

72 hours for me, the worst 72 hours of my life, but that's another story.

I recently read or saw something somewhere that said scientists were experimenting with drugs that could keep us awake and not feel the fatigue due to the lack of sleep for more than 72 hours... don't quote me, I have no idea where i saw or heard this, but it was fairly recent like in the past week.

Anyone who truly has insomnia cannot function in realty at a job or school, since you see things, hear things, and go totally crazy. People say you can shrug it off, but those people do not truly have sleeping problems. Your mind warps during insomnia without sleep for a really long time, you have bad judgement, chances you would crash in a car are extremely high, and as are other dangers.

As for that article, I am not sure I believe it, 8 years is such a long time, the woman would have gone into a coma long before this, comitted suicide, or just gone totally crazy and ended up in an asylum, had she really been awake for even a few months straight.

Unless of course she has some new trait that other humans do not have, perhaps a new step in evolution, or perhaps just a hoax.

Those drugs sound interesting...I would like to stay awake with no ill effects.

Someone told me that you will go insane if you stay up for 7 days straight...they must have been wrong if someone stayed up for 8 years and is fine.

here's an article, neither are the one I recently read or saw:

Could sleep become Optional
abcnews.go.com...

and another
Military Seeking Radical Ways of Stumping Need for Sleep
abcnews.go.com...


[Edited on 2-23-2004 by worldwatcher]

As a science project in High School a friend of mine & I, with some help from friends, kept each other awake for almost five days. By the end of the experiment we had each started to hallucinate and fall into "microsleep," where we would nod off for a few seconds. To observers we would appear to fall asleep briefly, even in the middle of a sentence, but we did not realize it had happened. My part of the project ended when I finally fell asleep in class, slept for 36 hours straight, and could not be fully woken. My parents, unaware of what we were doing, were completely horrified then utterly pissed off. Fortunately, they found my notes and diaries and spoke to our helpers thus didn't assume we had overdosed on animal tranquilizers or something.

A quick call to our family doctor confirmed that I would be fine as a result of the sleep deprivation but that I obviously had some sort of pre-existing mental illness to even try something like that.

I doubt a mental illness would be required for someone to try something like that, young children do things like this all the time, it is all about seeing how far they can go, just like all the silly bunjy jumping and things. Besides, a physician is not qualified to say such things to you, it is just their opinion.

Interesting experiment, who knows how accurate it was, considering you may not have factored in the micro sleep, but at least you got to experience some of the normal events in an insomniac's life.

...either that or the lady is lying, or is simply unaware that her body perhaps goes into micro-sleep at regular intervals. Or...even perhaps she operates like a Dolphin, portions or her brain sleep while other portions remain alert. I find it rather hard to believe she has not slept for 8 years...

Longest I've been without sleep was during training...3 days awake...arrrrghhh...worse fecking time of my life...cold, wet, hungry, dead-tired and some loudmouthed prick I swear was non-human yelling at you to stay awake...

...bonus of that: even after that 'living death' I could still snap up and crack a target at 100metres...niiiiice...

[Edited on 23-2-2004 by alien]

Hi all!!

UK "reality" TV show was on recently where contestants had to go without sleep for a week. Every time one person closed their eyes for longer than 10 seconds (I think!!) they lost �1000, decreasing the start figure of �100 000. Eventually, a winner was chosen - a female of course!!

Story here

Me and a friend one time at spring break chalanged each other to a binge contest. The contest was to see who chould party the longest, meaning; drink, laugh, slurr, stagger, and keep drinking. Well I passed out after 49+ hours of this. He made it passed 79 from what I was told. I didn't know because I slept for about 2 days after that! But Iam willing to bet I could go well past 79+ hours if I wasnt drinking........... then again maybe not, what would be my motive?

Wired magazine has an article on a drug that will keep you awake for a week without any ill effects, maybe the drug has side effects, but none from sleep deprivation, and at anytime when you were ready to sleep you just laid down and slept. I believe the magazine had another article about the swedish military on drugs that kept them awake for 2 weeks. I really would like the three day drug so that I don't sleep on the weekends, and no not so I can party.

I have went about a week in my younger days but I had help if you know what I mean. After a few days you start seeing things and by the end of the week you are in your own world. I would not advise anyone else to do it.

Advise taken! I too have stayed awake too long (no record breaker, but to long in that state of mind) off of "helpers" and trust me the only thing in the world that I wanted was to sleep, and thats the only thing I couldn't do........other than pass a sobriety test.

Originally posted by chrisnolefan
I was just wondering how long a person can stay awake and still sustain good health. Is it possible to stay awake forever? Can the body rest enough without sleep? The longest I ever stayed awake without any sleep was about 52 hours and I thought I was about to drop dead from exhaustion.

[Edited on 23-2-2004 by chrisnolefan]

I have worked two 36 hour shifts in my life (not consecutive), and have stayed awake for 78 hours without the help of illegal drugs. Beer, caffine, and sugar is all. I was wiped for days after each of the above instances.