When was the longest time you went without sleep?

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I have gone 3 days without sleep, i work night shift and it was summer, i try to sleep when its bright and hot out and it just was not happening, I eventually decided to get sleeping pills, now I have gone almost a mounth and have not taken them because now I know to regulate my sleep and cause its cooler out now.

40 hours. Very memorable. Was visiting grad schools. After the final visit to Harvard, stopped in Rhode Island for seafood. Woke up next morning, drove to NYC and since I'd never been there drove all the way down Manhattan and all the way back up. Exciting. Then drove non stop back to Kansas arriving very tired the middle of the next day. Of course sleeping was on my mind, but this was also the first time I had been away from my new wife of 3 months and presto, although it had been my plan to wait to have children until I had a PhD, nine months later my daughter was born on the day of my first final in grad school. As I said, memorable.

48 hours.

My mum had a brain haemorrhage and I had been up since 6am when I had to drive 9 hours home overnight and then spend 24 hours at the hospital until I knew she was out of immediate danger. By the time I went to bed I was feeling pretty wobbly and lightheaded, sounds were buzzing in my ears and my top lip felt 'fuzzy', like I had pins and needles in it - very odd.

three days.

For me it was just under 3 days. I have never felt so knackered in my life!! !! I don't think I could do that again now as I was 19 when I did that and am now 25. How things change eh?

Just a scrap of info for those wanting to be able to get along with less sleep. Two years ago when I was on a 'low carb' diet for 4 months I found that I could get along quite well with only about half as much sleep.

I think the most for me was around 2 days. It was the night before a holiday, and I couldn't sleep at all that night, so I felt rather exhausted by the time we got to the airport. ;^^ I've also suffered from insomnia for over a week before now, but then at least I do manage to sleep for a couple of hours in the morning. (I've also noticed that when I haven't slept, I tend to talk even faster than usual. Does anyone else get that? )

After my dad came home from his brain surgery, my mom had her gall bladder taken out. Well, there were complications, and she ended up staying in the hospital for a week, and then at my sister's for another week. For 10 days, I didn't get any sleep, from a combination of being sick with worry and my dad not being able to sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time. It may have been a full two weeks, but I don't remember anything from the last four days, as my brain had pretty much shut off. The last couple of days I do remember were emotionally turbulent for me, and without the energy to keep myself together I experienced one massive meltdown after another.

Somewhere between 36 and 48 hours. It was back in April of this year. My half brother died, and his son and I had three days to drive cross-country and claim his ashes. The first day went quite well. On the way back we got side tracked, then lost, and fell behind schedule. He drove all day, and kept it up till after midnight. Then I jumped behind the wheel and carried on. I got quite bleary, and overly emotional. Sometime near dawn I almost ran the rental car out of petrol. Some bloke from Iraq (!) stopped and gave me a lift to aa all night station. I thanked him like he'd saved me life. I drove my nephew home, then drove a coupla hundred miles to return the car, get washed up and dressed so I could get to work, and shoot some pics for Mr. Scrooge who insisted this house JUST HAD to be up online for sale THAT VERY DAY. Finally went home and slept for about 14 hours. Bloody house never did sell.

the longest i went without sleep was about a week...

when i was in Uni i did some crazy things.... real crazy things that i thought would make me more socially acceptable... things like snort cocaine off a "breakfast tray" ??

anywho as it turned out coke really wasnt a drug for me and i had the weird reaction of staying up for like 7 days straight without needing any sleep... during this time i ran lots, tried to tire myself but just kept going and going and going.....




beat that

3 days in 1986

A couple days & I didn't get much sleep for a couple days before & after that because I was on a steroid med for bad eczema that made it hard for me to sleep.

Three days. But purely and simply because I didn't feel tired.

For three days I just didn't feel like I needed to sleep, so I didn't. Stayed up, did all of the usual stuff, spent the nights on my computer. Must have been 16, maybe 17. After three days, the following night I felt a normal level of tiredness and so I went to bed.

I believe the same happened again a few years later, when I was 19, but only for two days rather than three.

Never since, though. You're lucky if you can get me to stay up for more than 12 hours, usually!

Around 28 hours. It was June 2011 and my parents had to leave in the middle of the night to take my grandmother to the hospital because she thought she was having a heart attack (she wasn't, and she's still alive and very healthy and physically active) and her husband was out of town. I was too anxious to go back to sleep and I couldn't settle down enough to actually get to sleep until around 1:00 in the afternoon the next day.

I was stressed about work one time this past week so I didn't sleep for 48 hours, if not more. I think it was the longest time I ever went without sleep.

78+ hours.