How Long Can a Human Stay Awake?

Untill he falls asleep.

Deep

the most i can hadle is three days. i don't even try to take it passed that. i know a couple of people who can do five or six no problem, and seem to function pretty well too.

Originally posted by ZeroDeep
Untill he falls asleep.

Deep

After this, I don't know whether to think you are funny or you are a smartass.

As far as I know, it varies from person to person. Anyone, if given the proper practise, can avoid sleep upto to couple of weeks.

But you wouldn't function that good if you haven't slept once in at least 2 days. Besides what would be the point of staying up for that long.

After this, I don't know whether to think you are funny or you are a smartass.

Somewhere in between mind you !

Deep

i didnt sleep for 60 odd hours once and when i finally went to bed i couldnt sleep it was like it was locked in my mind that i didnt need it???? anyway i finally crashed out and woke up say 10 hours l8er ( yes im a clock watcher in bed , i take the last time i saw the clock as the time i went to sleep) anyway the next couple of weeks my body was fuked, i got to the point where i was falling asleep on breaks at work! this cant be normal after 2 weeks of catching up on sleep can it?

correct me if im wrong but i thought that it was up to a week. then the body automatically shut itself down and goes to sleep for a very long time.

the most ive ever heard was 11 days for an experiment ive gone 4-5 days with no sleep at most

my friend told me this guy once stayed awake for like 1 or 2 years but he died i dont think that really happend though i thin a person could stay awake for like a month and thats it then they will die

Who knows... maybe sleep was the first drug. Maybe we are all evolutionarily addicted to it.

I've done a couple days, no drugs and no caffeine (when you come down off of caffeine you crash too hard). After the first 24 hour period I had my 'second awakening' (second wind). Once I hit the 48 hour mark I was feeling a bit wierd, but otherwise fine. I was actually feeling a bit better than the day before. After 72 hours I think I could've been fine. The rest of the summer I would do a couple-day binges on and off, not really even thinking about it, and the rest of the time I would only do about 2-3 hours a night... whenever I got bored watching TV I would go to bed. I worked and functioned just fine, as well, I did notice that my psychic abilities were extremely enhanced for that entire summer. Kinda kewl.

After I went through my CR binges I couldn't do that stuff anymore. Whenever I stay up too long my back starts to ache and hurt really bad. That is the NASTIEST drug I have ever done... bad bad stuff. We knew cooks, too, so we would always have the shiznit. That crap will screw up your bones faster than a wire wheel in a bowl of jello.

The longest I have ever been awake, is around the 70hour mark. It is quite neat, in my instance around the 25 hour mark I get extremely tired for about an hour, but once I make it through this hour, then I am good to go for however long i want. The reason I had to stop at 70 hours, is I had been playing an online game and had not ate, slept, and only went to the rr once. I think the lack of everything hit me all at once and i said "Woah im tired"...immediatly passed out on the couch. Then I woke up 12 hours later, ate a sandwitch, and slept for another 10. I want to know how long a human can sleep, without the use of any sleeping drugs...

Some have mentioned the heightened state of alertness you can experience through sleep depravation...and thats exactly what I experienced after the first day of a 3-day awake 'training'. And found, despite the obvious bodily exhaustion heading into the 3rd day, your mind became sharper still.

We would be given tasks to do...mainly visual/hands-on tasks like puzzles...and timed on them, after a while of repeatedly doing them your mind sharpened up substantially and solving the puzzles became almost instinctual...and you did so at an accelerated rate...like your mind was moving a few steps ahead of your hands, seeing the next few pieces in place before you even laid a hand on them.

Then we would break and do weapons training, field-strips, range-practice, snap-shots (holstered weapon, or rifle on bench) on flip-targets etc from varying distances...the speed of the targets would increase, as would the variance of the distances from close 10m to more distant 30m with the holsters, and 50-100m with the rifles. Then it would be back to the puzzles again...rapid solving. Back to range-training and instruction. Basically the idea was to get you to the point that the shot was not something you consciously thought about...it was instinctive, and accurate...the target appeared and without thought you had snapped up (or out) your weapon and put a round through it.

On the way back was the highlight...as mentioned, a target appearing at a distance of 100mtres away...from behind us. I heard the sound of the spring-release on the target and just instinctly snatched my rifle, spun around and capped it cleanly in an instant. To which one of the Instructors smiled and let me ride in the truck on the way back, while everyone else who didn't react as quickly had to walk/run...lol.


And no...before anyone asks this was not Military Training as such, though our instructors were/are ex-Mil...just a group of people of like-minds who are preparing for a time when familiarity with weaponary and instinctual reaction will likely be all that will separate you from life and death at the hands of an Armed Agressor.



Peace,
ALIEN

[Edited on 24-2-2004 by alien]

Some info I found:

Night Fever
The Guardian
Tuesday January 6, 2004

The brain, perhaps surprisingly, tends to be the only organ affected by sleep loss. "There's very little evidence that the body fails at all if you go without sleep," says Professor Jim Horne, director of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University. "Provided you get adequate nutrition and physical rest, all of the organs from the neck down can cope fine."

Sleep deprivation does more than turn you into a non-communicative vegetable, however. Sleep-deprived people have increased appetites, become shaky, get headaches and, mysteriously, get more horny. "If you consider that the average man thinks abou sex once evey 15 seconds, and you're awake for 24 hours a day, it's not surprising," says Stanley. As if to quell the urge, their bodies cool down a third of a degree.

After three days without sleep, hallucinations can kick in. The longest scientifically documented case of sleep deprivation was the provided by an American, Randy Gardner, in 1964, who, in an attempt to set a world record, stayed awake for 11 days. Four days in, he had a hallucination in which a street sign turned into a person, an episode quickly followed by a delusion where he though he was a famous black footballer. The hallucinations are due to what sleep scientists call dream intrusion. "If you deprive yourself of sleep, your body still needs to dream," says Stanley. "But because the dream is playing while you're still awake, you have two realities going on, so the hallucinations can seem very real."

Little is known about any long-term damage that sleep deprivation can cause. Studies in rats that were fed and watered, but kept awake until they died, showed that the animals eventually keeled over as their body temperature went haywire. They survived only 14 days, but as Horne points out, that's a long time for an animal that normally lives just two years.

Just how long a human can go without sleep is hard to judge, except to say that it is likely to be much longer than Gardner managed. After sleeping off his 11 day awake-athon, he showed no signs of long-term physical or mental damage. Horne says the idea that people kept awake for days will eventually go mad and start beating each other is nonsense. "What's far more likely is they'll just sit around and finally conk out."

Read the whole report here:
www.guardian.co.uk...

I've found I can stay awake for several days. At first I seem to have better clarity in mentally challanging tasks, there's a sort of euphoric stage that you go through where you feel mentally sharper & stronger but eventually you notice that physically your begin the become weak & experience momentary losses of balance etc. and you lose your ability to focus on what your doing. Driving is definitely a no no.

Eventually you feel completely out of sync with your body. I noticed that there was sort of a delay of my own shadow. Maybe a hullucination or maybe just the loss of my brains ability to process the information on timely basis (perception?) - not really sure.

Nice thing about it is you can sleep anywhere, but the bad part is you clock cycle takes a few days to get back to normal.


[Edited on 25-2-2004 by outsider]

Being in the Fire/Rescue business, I can tell you about sleep loss, it sucks. Now I gotta go to bed. well, not really, I'm at work until 7am. lol

Well, I will tell you that after 90 hours without sleep, your body begins to break down. In otherwords, after 90 hours your health will begin a slow decent.

I'm a caffeine junkie, so it's not unusual for me to go 24 hours or more without sleep once a week or more.

This too only on one Bawls/Jolt/Monster (monster usually gives me a thirty-six hour stint).

The longest I have stayed up was 52 hours, which was...err...brutal. It had to push myself. I could have gone longer but it was rather unpleasant, combined with a hangover didn't bode well. So I tried to sleep (and failed).

Does anyoen else have troubel gettign to sleep after staying up awhile?

DE

Ok Here's something you should NEVER do.

Don't sleep for about 48 hours then read this site. I made the error of doing this and spent HOURS totally shaking in terror and positive I was seeing and hearing monsters out side ready to kill me. Then I actually slept and went back and looked at the site and felt like a moron!

I think Netstorm is right. Not that it's impossible to stay awake longer, but after 72, most people will start feeling really bad and usually have a few hallucinations.
(maybe not all people, but some do, it's true.) So if you want a cheap way to get hallucinations ...

some good bodygaurds are trained to deprive sleep in order to protect someone that is asleep

I once pulled 24 hours on a flight to Maui, Hawaii. That's a long time when during the entire time, you have to be awake doing things. I almost fell asleep on the flight, except the stupid attendent we had decided to turn the lights on right when I was about to fall asleep. This past December I pulled 33 hours on a flight to Las Vegas, with what was supposed to be a 30 minute layover in Atlanta, ended up being a 5 minute sprint to the Vegas bound flight. That was extremely long for me, because I had to keep track of everything during that time period, and of course on the plane, some lady decided to let her kids kick the back of my seat, and the person in front decided to lay down and rest. The U.S. Navy SEAL's pull 5 days straight suring Hell Week, I've heard or guys saying that they've seen Pink Choo-Choo Trains Going Across the Ocean as they rowed their rafts. They said if you go any longer without sleep, your brain will have problems.