Hello

[A Thing of Eternity]

I think I went 48 hours or so once. I'm pretty sure that if you're forcibly kept awake for 2 weeks it kills you.

[Nekhrun]

I haven't done an all-nighter for a while now. But the last few I did, I always seemed to end up at the pub at the end of it the next night... just before I'd fall asleep in the pub

Happy days

That's strange, my hallucinations were purple as well.

[SandChigger]

Would it even take 2 weeks?

Probably depends on your state of health, age, and other factors when you start out, of course. Anyone seen any hard statistics?

[Omphalos]

Here's some "statistics." Happy tabulatin"!

[Freakzilla]

Would it even take 2 weeks?

Probably depends on your state of health, age, and other factors when you start out, of course. Anyone seen any hard statistics?

Sleep deprivation has sometimes been self-imposed to achieve personal notoriety in the context of record-breaking stunts. One such record belonged to Randy Gardner, who stayed awake for 264 hours (eleven days). Lt. Cmdr. John J. Ross of the US Navy Medical Neuropsychiatric Research Unit later published an account of this event, which became well known among sleep-deprivation researchers.

...

Longest period without sleep

Depending on how sleep is defined, there are several people who can claim the record for having gone the longest without sleep:

Thai Ngoc, born 1942, claimed in 2006 to have been awake for 33 years or 11,700 nights, according to Vietnamese news organization Thanh Nien. It was said that Ngoc acquired the ability to go without sleep after a bout of fever in 1973,[16] but other reports indicate he stopped sleeping in 1976 with no known trigger.[17] At the time of the Thanh Nien report, Ngoc suffered from no apparent ill effect (other than a minor decline in liver function), was mentally sound and could carry 100 kg of pig feed down a 4 km road,[16] but another report indicates that he was healthy before the sleepless episode but that now he was not feeling well because of the lack of sleep.[17]
In January 2005, the RIA Novosti published an article about Fyodor Nesterchuk from the Ukrainian town of Kamen-Kashirsky who claimed to have not slept in more than 20 years. Local doctor Fyodor Koshel, chief of the Lutsk city health department, claimed to have examined him extensively and failed to make him sleep. Koshel also said however that Nesterchuck did not suffer any of the normally deleterious effects of sleep deprivation.[18] People who claim not to sleep are usually shown to sleep when studied in sleep laboratories with EEG. Nesterchuck reports experiencing drowsiness at night, commenting that he attempts to sleep "in vain" when he notices his eyelids drooping. Many people experience microsleep episodes during sleep deprivation, in which they sleep for periods of seconds to fractions of a second and frequently don't remember these episodes. Because microsleep is frequently not remembered, microsleep or a related phenomenon may be responsible for lack of sleep and/or lack of memory of sleep in individuals like Nesterchuk and Thai Ngoc.

The Guinness Book of World Records in its 1978 edition stated that "The longest recorded period for which a person has voluntarily gone without sleep is 449 hr (14 days 13 hours) by Mrs. Maureen Weston of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire in a rocking chair marathon on 14 Apr.-2 May 1977." The Guinness Book of Records has, however, withdrawn its backing of a sleep deprivation class because of the associated health risks.

A 3-year-old boy named Rhett Lamb[19] of St. Petersburg Florida has a rare condition and has only slept for one to two hours per day in the past three years. He has a rare abnormality called an Arnold-Chiari malformation where brain tissue protrudes into the spinal canal. The skull puts pressure on the protruding part of the brain. It is not yet known if the brain malformation is directly related to his sleep deprivation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation

[GamePlayer]

I enjoy sleep far too much to miss it

[SadisticCynic]

Its not the sleep we enjoy but the waking up after having had it.That feeling, however, rarely lasts long as we have to rise.

What I enjoy is the state of mind found almost inbetween sleep and awake. I find it difficult to achieve but its blissful when you get it, anyone ever had this experience?

[Freakzilla]

You know that feeling you get when you're leaning back in a chair and you almost fall over but catch yourself just before you do?

I feel like that all the time.

[Rakis]

What I enjoy is the state of mind found almost inbetween sleep and awake. I find it difficult to achieve but its blissful when you get it, anyone ever had this experience?

I'm having it right now...

[Omphalos]

You know that feeling you get when you're leaning back in a chair and you almost fall over but catch yourself just before you do?

I feel like that all the time.

Stepehn Wright. The best comic of the 80's.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Would it even take 2 weeks?

Probably depends on your state of health, age, and other factors when you start out, of course. Anyone seen any hard statistics?

Nothing really solid, but I've read quite a few things on forced sleeplessness experiments on animals (kills them in 2 weeks-ish) and supposedly back in the day the US did some tests on prisoners, same result, dead in 2 weeks. I'm sure you're right though about health effecting the exact time it would take. As far as I know "we" (scientists) still have no real understanding of why sleep is necessary, or why we actually die from lack of sleep faster than lack of food.

[chanilover]

Hi.

[SadisticCynic]

Hi.

Better late than never .

To A Thing Of Eternity: Interesting that you should mention animals; from what I understand many animals have different sleep times (as in length) and thus I wonder why the two week(ish) limit applies to them also.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Hi.

Better late than never .

To A Thing Of Eternity: Interesting that you should mention animals; from what I understand many animals have different sleep times (as in length) and thus I wonder why the two week(ish) limit applies to them also.

I'm probably remembering BS that's why. Seriously though, I'll have to try and look it up, sleep fascinates me because as far as we can tell it serves absolutely no physiological purpose, but lack of it kills you faster than lack of food. Bloody weird, we're obviously missing something big.

[SadisticCynic]

We might end up stuck there until someone has an Einsteinian brain wave about consciousness; maybe you can do it
I do remember reading an article on sleep awhile back, there were no conclusions unfortunately. Perhaps if we sleep on it...