Ask Lemmy

Hmmm, I think mine was 96 hours? I worked nights, and was taking classes during the day time. I had set the schedule so my classes directly matched the work, which was Monday night starting, and the class ended at 1600 hours on Wednesday. Some weeks I would have to work Thursday nights, some I wouldn't. I would usually grab 1 hour of sleep between work and school, and 1 hour between school and work.

That week though, I agreed to help someone out on the Sunday shift at work, and the Thursday day rotation at the hospital, and I just couldn't get any sleep. So Sunday starting at 1800 hours, up until Thurday ~1700 hours. I drove home, and thanks to an agreement with my boss, I didn't have to come into work until 2200 hours, so I crashed. Lo and behold, I woke up to a cop in my bedroom, because it was 0200 hours and I was late for work. My boss didn't know exactly what I was doing, so they had no way to know that it was for lack of sleep. I hadn't been late to work ever and only called in sick once during the 10 years I'd been working there. They panicked, thinking I was dead, and sent that damn cop, lol. Oh well, boss agreed I didn't have to come into work and I wasn't complaining.

Like another poster said, things just got weird as the sleep deprivation kicked in. Shadows sometimes wouldn't line up with where they were attached, background objects would fade in and out of focus while looking at someone in front of me, and my recollection of what had happened five minutes ago blended with what had happened five days ago. What was reality and what was just in my head couldn't be distinguished. Then, sitting on top of all of that, is just this weird ache where you're craving sleep but you're doing things like standing up or walking around to prevent any random lean from turning into a collapse as you nod off.

Anyway, two weeks later I hit a pothole on the side of the highway as I drove home, because I was drifting off the road with the lack of sleep. The pothole broke my oil pan in half, and I quickly realized how stupid I was being. I took time off in the middle of the stretch of classes/work, so I only ever was up for 36 hours at a time for the month after that.

36? 38 hours? Something like that... I kind of lost track around 30.

Gaming. Ultima IV.

The hallucinations were interesting. Hard flat surfaces like table tops and counters started rippling like water.

~40 hours literally a few days ago. Had a project due date through which I procrastinated heavily. Not proud of that one.

I don't think I experienced any hallucinations, but it sucked. What was weird was that by hour ~33, I tried going to sleep, but failed and ultimately got back up. Hopefully never again.

Edit: just occurred to me as well that of that time, I worked for 20 straight hours. Don't be like me.

3 days for a game jam where we were attempting to make a game in a weekend

About 36h. One day, one night and the next day. Party + drugs.
I did this twice actually, but I like sleeping too much to make it a regular thing.

About 36 hours in Marine Corps Boot camp. I'm not sure how long everyone else stayed awake because at about 24 hours I failed the medical exam and was separated for discharge.

Probably like 3 days because my high school insisted on overworking students for the black excellence and just about everyone in my life glorified sleep deprivation, starving, overwork, and abusing people into doing better because mental health is For White People. Today I'm still fighting burnout I've had since 2019, and suffering from falling down train station stairs on the third day of having no sleep. I really just wish I was born white or dead.

30 hours. Electrical substation upgrades. Back in the '80's, when I was young.

About 36 hours. Borded on the plane for Mauritius (afternoon) , after 12 hours of flight, landed there, was told I need a visa to get in. Borded on exactly the same plane , flew 12 hours back. 2/10 wouldn't recommend. Still gets 2 points for psychodelic effects of tiredness

Not very long. About one and a half nights. Went to a rave where I stayed up all night and day then went straight to a metal festival next night. Tried to drive after to go back to my far away home but couldn't drive safely because my eyes couldn't see the road very well. I was exhausted and had to nap for a few hours mid trip.

Used to be on an odd schedule when I worked overnight.

My work shifts were Thursday to Saturday, 1800 - 0500. So Sunday, when I got off at 0500, I’d stay awake until around 1900 (being up for ~26 hours) and then to go bed. Wake up Monday morning and have a normal Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, then stay up all night Wednesday night until Thursday morning (another 26 hour stint) and the go to bed Thursday morning so I could then go to work at 1800 Thursday night again.

Did that for about a year and it actually worked out reasonably well, but not something I’d entertain now that I’m older.

That schedule is also the reason all my clocks are always set for 24-hour time and I can still fall asleep in broad daylight without any trouble.

3 days so that I could finish my thesis. It happened because I was a procrastinator (I still am, but not as bad).

Very often almost 3 whole days because I didn't want to (younger) or because I couldn't (2 weeks ago). Hard to remember because after like 30 hours, shit gets blurry and I don't know what was real or what was a dream.

Army.

Because basic training.

Like 3x3 and close to none for 4. It was insane and I'm surprised I lived.

(They'll tell you the DS isn't allowed to mess with your sleep, and they told us that on day one as well. Just so we knew that they weren't messing with it. )

5 days
Was mostly partying and doing stuff on the computer

More often I did 2-3 days, when I got hooked at something that interests me - usually something computer related

72 hours, uni final exams

24 hours is sadly quite common for me. Max might have been just past 45 hours. I don't think I ever reached 48.

About 70 hours, at that time in my life it was normal for me to go 24 hours or so without sleep because I was addicted to WoW.

That time I realised I'd hit 30 and decided to see how long I could go without sleep.

At somewhere after 60 hours I began hallucinating and became convinced that there were elephants inside the walls making them deform.
That was the sign I needed to go to sleep, and I slept for almost 20 hours straight.

A couple of months ago I didn't sleep all weekend. Got up Friday and didn't go to bed until about 10:00 p.m. the following Monday.

No drugs, no caffeine just didn't feel like sleeping. It was kind of refreshing.

5 days in 1994, and for no particular reason, just for funsies. Now I get cranky if I get denied my sleep schedule for more than 4 hours.

56 hours was my longest stint. Was in late high school and just had back to back to back events non-stop including a 24h film festival planning production and submission after a day of classes followed by a big blowout senior party by which point it was just a challenge to see how far to take it. Was a pretty fun roller coaster all told. Plenty of 30-36 hour days since then too, but it’s getting more difficult to go past 24h as I age.

40 hours. Mix between working to pay for college and overdue assignments. Then drive 2 hours to Thanksgiving and had Thanksgiving lunch. Then went into a food coma for 14 hours straight

My sophomore year of high school I snuck out of the house one night, my friends and I pushed the car down the driveway and got it going. Hung out all night. Got caught about 5AM by the local police. (I didn’t have a license either, I was 15 I think.) Cop drove me home and dropped me off to my mom. By then I had been awake 22 hours and was exhausted and tried to go to bed. Oh no. My punishment was going to school. So about 4PM when I got home…. 34 hours awake? (I was a pretty good kid in school…. Most of the time..) 😁

I used to stay up all night when having fun on occasion. The longest was two nights and then I went to bed at around 8pm on the third day. It's been awhile since I lived that life but I used to wake up feeling great and generally be in a great mood, and it helped me reset my sleep cycle so my insomnia would get less disruptive for awhile afterwards. That said, not sleeping is bad for you. If you're doing it regularly you will have negative health effects, and if you stay up for more than a day you will start hallucinating and probably make bad decisions.

Three days. I just wasn't tired. The extra free time was great but I was getting worried.

Years before that I was awake for 36 hours. This didn't end well, which is why the more recent episode was starting to worry me. I was coasting down a hill on a bicycle and fell asleep. I nodded off just long enough to lose my balance. 3 stitches in my head ( I still have the bump as a reminder ), left knee swollen like a football, lots of roadrash.

I'm very glad I didn't have a drivers' license at the time as this could have been much worse.

Dreamhack… I spent around 60 hours awake before I crashed

When I was a student I wrote a piece of software. Originally an assignment to be done within 6 months, I decided to go for it at once. I started programming on Thursday, and finished it on Saturday, while living on snacks, pizza, soft drinks, and tea. No time for sleep while being 100% in the zone.

After a night long drug binge, I stayed awake for five days. It was interspersed with small naps, and by the third day I was getting some healthy sleep again (perhaps 30mn or so at a time), but it never felt long enough. I was only back to a normal sleep schedule on the fifth night. It was terrible. I phoned a friend at some point to help me because I was in shambles and absolutely panicked I would never settle again. Don't do cathinones

67 hours. After a full day of work, my wife and I hopped an international flight to Europe. There were two layovers, including a 6-hour one in Dubai. I tried to sleep on the longest leg of the flight, but with my restless wife on one side and a restless stranger on the other, I couldn't. Once we landed and reached our AirBnB, I announced I was going to take a desperately needed nap. My wife stood at the bedside staring at me until I gave up and we went for a walk to see Prague.

Dreamed of seeing that city for half my life, but it was a couple of days before I was capable of enjoying it.

40ish hours. I was in my 20s, a phd student, with time on a one-of-a-kind scientific instrument. Got a lot of data.

About 20 hours. Half it was on a 10 hour flight and no matter how much booze I poured down my throat I just couldn't fall asleep

Close to 72hrs. I work in the entertainment industry and we had a project that was poorly lead. Overpromises were made, not enough time and people. It was two of us working from Friday into Sunday. The issue with the place with worked at (besides the company itself) was that the heat would shut off at night and the weekends. We both worked in a little small office, that used to be a closet. An electric space heater kept us warm while we worked, but once you opened the door into the main office space it was freezing, because it was the dead of winter. I tried to catch a nap a few times, but it was way too cold to actually sleep on the couch. The other issue was the noise being created by the city that was building a park across the street and breaking through the foundation. We eventually finished the project, and when they were thanking the people involved for all the great work, the two of us were not mentioned. Lovely place.

Approximately 36 hours. Got on a serious roll with some friends to beat Super Mario World 3, realized when we finished that it was about 4:30am, just went with it. I ended the day after throwing up a shrimp burrito from Taco Del Mar when the guy behind the counter misheard “shredded beef” and I had already got home (I don’t eat seafood, so it was already tough to get down). Never again.

Apparently a not insignificant portion of the electorate has been asleep for 8 years

Edit: actually on topic, I’ve done a few 36 to 40 hour stints over the years, but i don’t make a habit of it