OT: What Is The Longest Amount Of Time You Have Stayed Awake?

Submitted by Santa Clause on

I'm bored as hell and thought with all the crazy threads being created lately, maybe I'd throw this one out there. My personal record is 3 days in a row, which is a record I think I'm about to beat if I don't sleep at all tomorrow.

Sam1863

June 24th, 2016 at 8:08 AM ^

About 30 hours when I was in college. After a full day of classes, I worked from 6pm-midnight at a hospital, then had to cover the midnight-6am shift when another guy didn't show. I went home to shower and change before going to my student teaching assignment at a junior high. By 5th period I was falling asleep in my chair, and when my supervising teacher found out why, he ordered me to go take a nap in the teacher's lounge. Unfortunately, it's hard to sleep when your body lays there twitching from adrenaline and caffiene. By the time I got home, I was so tired I was in physical pain. I think I slept from 4pm until the next morning.

reshp1

June 24th, 2016 at 8:08 AM ^

Longest was somewhere around 48 hours back in college, but that was, um, substance aided. Longest sober was maybe 32 hours when running long adventure races.

macgoblue10

June 24th, 2016 at 8:19 AM ^

CMU grad who majored in gambling and minored in school. A Friday-Sunday poker session was the standard on a weekly basis. 48 hour sessions many times. 

JimboLanian

June 24th, 2016 at 8:36 AM ^

Maybe 24 hours once. I think I may have dozed off a bit reading this thread.

Which has me thinking about the greatness of DVR: Hey honey, I just fell asleep for a bit, could we rewind so I can see Danny apprehend the suspect?

1VaBlue1

June 24th, 2016 at 8:45 AM ^

Went 40-50 hours many times in the Navy, mostly during the weekly ops part of the schedule.  Weekly ops = head out to sea Monday morning, come back in Friday evening.  You do that for 8-10 weeks and the only time to do any maintenance work on the boat is during the weekends.  Ohh, the joys of military life!  Why do boats do that?  Because it's a better return on investment for a submarine to be at sea than it is tied to the dock...

I did one stretch a few years back between 50-60 hrs while deploying both HW and SW upgrades at a remote site.  Problems arised, shit piled up, and cleanup didn't end for a long time.

GoBlue2002

June 24th, 2016 at 9:01 AM ^

A bender that lasted two full days and nights. Probably about 56 hours if I can remember it all. A few grand and a few nosebleeds later...I'm still alive!

pfholland

June 24th, 2016 at 9:04 AM ^

76 hours. I was wrapping up a project for one of my EECS classes and studying (and then taking) a final. I had poor time management skills in college.

Nowadays I won't go more than 18-20 hours without sleep except when traveling for work. Changing 10 time zones really messes with me.

Kevin13

June 24th, 2016 at 9:16 AM ^

was the longest I ever went without sleeping at all. At the time I thought about trying to go another 4 hours to make it 48, but was so tired I couldn't make it.

pfholland

June 24th, 2016 at 11:16 AM ^

Newborns are completely different (and I think worse) than what I put myself through in college. When you're staying awake to finish something there's always an end in sight. With infants you never know if they'll let you sleep or for how long. If someone were to do that to you intentionally it would be termed abuse.

Having done both ill take a couple of days with no sleep over long-term sleep deprivation with no end in sight in a heartbeat.

DGM06

June 24th, 2016 at 9:40 AM ^

Maybe just beyond 24 hours. Obviously I'm not in the medical field; wouldn't last a week with those tumultuous schedules

gopoohgo

June 24th, 2016 at 10:09 AM ^

Surgery rotation at Detroit Receiving.

Fell asleep driving home (thankfully at a red light).  Woke up with my forehead on the steering wheel, car behind me honking.

MMB 82

June 24th, 2016 at 12:05 PM ^

While doing a Surgical Internship in Chicago. I came off being on call 24 hours on the last day of a rotation, and switched to another hospital to begin a new rotation- on call. I was absolutely in a zone at the end of the double shift. Got no sympathy, my superiors didn't care, but did earn some respect. I quit the program the end of the medical year and went into something much more sane....how would you like to be a patient being taken care of by a physician who hasn't slept in two days? I still get pissed off when I think about it.

Sopwith

June 24th, 2016 at 10:41 AM ^

and two back-to-back all-nighters, which was pointless because cognitive function is so piss-poor once I was into the second night.

But at least I wasn't treating sick people. It's unconscionable to me that we allow sleepless medical residents to make life and death decisions while they're the cognitive equivalent of drunk. If anyone should be required by law to take a break and sleep, besides pilots and professional drivers, it ought to be physicians.

EDIT: neuroscience literature is mixed as to decline of higher cognitive function with short-term sleeplessness, but still scary enough. And not necessarily helped by stimulants. Example:

 

Emerging evidence suggests that some aspects of higher level cognitive capacities remain degraded by sleep deprivation despite restoration of alertness and vigilance with stimulant countermeasures, suggesting that sleep loss may affect specific cognitive systems above and beyond the effects produced by global cognitive declines or impaired attentional processes.

 

 2010;185:105-29

So go to bed, people. I don't want you out there on the road or operating on me if you haven't slept.

chatster

June 24th, 2016 at 12:04 PM ^

I've written below about an ordeal that kept me up for 124 hours with no sleep while engaged in settlement negotiations of complex litigation. I was actively involved in drafting and revising  settlement documents after we'd reached agreement on the settlement details. Never before and never since would I experience the intense stress that focusing on those details required.

This happened about ten years ago, and I'm now in the Medicare generation, so the experience probably took a few months or years off my life.

Long after the fact, my client called to thank me for having caught some drafting errors that the other side had made. In hindsight, I'd have to say that I got very lucky.

There's no substitute for a good night's sleep,

CTSgoblue

June 24th, 2016 at 10:22 AM ^

Studying?!  We in here talking about studying?!?!

I'm a reasonably healthy early 30s guy and there's nothing outside of life-or-death stuff that would keep me up beyond 30-32 hours.  I sure as shit would never do it for something as trivial as studying.

Respect to the military guys and doctors--those are obviously different stories.

JamieH

June 24th, 2016 at 3:14 PM ^

When you are talking about upper-level projects in UM Engineering, they can be worth a huge chunk of your overall grade for the semester, and the difference between getting done and not getting done can be an A and a D or an F.   That is a bit more than just "studying". 



Yeah, I won't deny that I screwed up the time management aspect that caused me to have to stay up for over 2 days straight to finish the projects, but I don't for a second regret doing it.  

Bando Calrissian

June 24th, 2016 at 10:33 AM ^

Probably when I did Dance Marathon in school. It was, what, 30 hours, plus the few hours before and after getting there and back. Included a Hockey Band gig in the middle (the infamous St. Patrick's Day game). Never been more uncomfortable and tired in my life.

DrAwkward

June 24th, 2016 at 10:45 AM ^

Of course, I was a freshman in college. I was seriously messed up by the time I finally collapsed into sleep. But I got the paper turned in and even earned an A.

FolkstyleCoach

June 24th, 2016 at 10:55 AM ^

Whoooo between Aderol and acid and some yip yay I've made it 3 days on more than on occasion. Not fun though.



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Medic

June 24th, 2016 at 11:16 AM ^

79 straight hours of Quake/Doom2/Warcraft 2 at a LAN party with about 100 other people. I slept almost 22 hours after that. 

That's one of those things you only do once.

blueday

June 24th, 2016 at 11:21 AM ^

Flew overnight to Germany and drank beer in business class. Arrived, went to hotel. Changed and went to work. Left work at 5pm, changed at hotel then went town hopping and drank beer. Back at hotel 4pm. Watched tv ... got ready for work. Worked till 5pm headed out to Innsbruck found some crazy party and stayed out late ... Seems longer than 56 hours.

BPocern

June 24th, 2016 at 11:30 AM ^

40 hours, UTL I, went to college game day, stayed up all day tailgating, and then went to the game. One of the best days of my life! I was too tired to post game party though.



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uminks

June 24th, 2016 at 11:31 AM ^

Back in 1993, I was working a mid night shift than had to work 10 hours OT after the shift, then I got home and could not sleep, so went to my 2nd and last midnight shift, then had to fly up to Michigan to attend my Brother's wedding since I was one of the Groomsmen. Surprisingly, I only slept 8 hours after all of this and felt great.

UNCWolverine

June 24th, 2016 at 11:45 AM ^

I don't recall exactly the longest I've been awake consecutively. But during a grad school trip to Argentina and Brazil a few years back I know that I slept 24 hours total over an 8 day period, including one night with zero sleep. I can't believe I survived that as I aim for 8 hours per night.

chatster

June 24th, 2016 at 11:52 AM ^

TL:DR Version:  Litigation isn't always what they show in films and on TV.
 
Compared to the ordeals that military service members face during wartime, my experience was nothing. but it gave me greater respect for military service members and the stresses that they face every day when stationed in combat areas.
 
No sleep from 5:00 AM Monday through 9:00 AM Saturday. All for trial preparations and round-the-clock settlement negotiations of  complex litigation that was supposed to start trial on Monday at 10:00 AM, but that lasted more than five days in settlement negotiations.
 
Lawyers met with the judge right before trial was scheduled to start, and after listening to brief discussions of the parties’ respective positions, the judge said, “This case should be settled.  Go out to the jury room and get that settlement done.”
 
When the court building closed for the day, we went to one of the lawyer’s offices and continued to negotiate though the night. My partner told me to handle the negotiations without him, so he just had to make token appearances whenever we returned to court each day. The only breaks we got were to allow everyone to go home, shower, change clothes and get back to court.
 
I was the only lawyer whose home was an hour's drive from the city where the trial was being held. Because I never expected that we'd be engaged in round-the-clock negotiations, and couldn't predict each morning when or whether we'd get the case settled that day, I made the mistake of not arranging to get a hotel room in the city that week. Most of the lawyers on the other side of the case were from out of state, so they had hotel rooms to return to every night to get some sleep befoe we had to be back in court that day.
 
This went on until a settlement agreement was signed as the sun was coming up on Saturday morning. I went back to my office and took a three-hour nap before driving home. I'm very lucky that I stayed awake while driving home.

Hail85

June 24th, 2016 at 1:58 PM ^

88 hours if I can ignore 45 minutes on the last night. It was definitely not by choice. Our (pregnant wife and 1 year old) home flooded last week and the stressful combination of trying to plan the necessary repairs and living in Drury Suites kept me awake. Melatonin and scotch finally knocked me out. Word to the wise: install steel braided supply lines on anything in your house that uses water. Just do it!

Seth

June 24th, 2016 at 2:16 PM ^

3 1/2 days in college.

Awoke Wednesday 8 a.m. with my usual 6 hours of sleep: History classes tended to have two semi-term papers and a big term paper, so the second half-term papers and the term papers were all due the same week, the week before finals. And I'd fallen behind in a French class and had some of the papers from that to make up to finish the class. I spent the week before putting together one big term paper, then did all the French ones boom-boom-boom-boom-boom from my last class (1pm) through the night.

24 hours awake: French class was 9-10. I chugged down cigarettes then accompanied my smoking friend to the top floor of the Union. She was the leader of a Native American group on campus that was occupying Michigamua's secret rooms that week and since I was curious to see the rooms (and yes of course I had a crush on her) I did that.

So I didn't get back to my place until about 4pm, kicking myself for wasting precious paper hours. It took me a few hours to get caffeinated and settled in, and I spent too long on one of the mini-papers. It was already 10pm and now I had two big papers and one little one still left to go. I gave myself an hour to do the other small one. It took me until 2 a.m.

48 hours awake: The first crack of sunlight gave me a second wind, so from 6am to 8am I had made up all the ground I'd lost staring at the screen and reading too much of the coursepack for quotes overnight, and finished one of the big papers at precisely 8 a.m.

That was due at 10, the other one at 4, but I didn't have it in me to start the last paper. I emailed the professor to say it would be late and attached/alluded to some research with an explanation that we'd only covered the period I was writing about at the very end of the course. Shit excuse, beating myself up.

I went to the Union, bought a rice bowl from the really crappy chinese food place that used to be down there, tried to get upstairs, couldn't get in, and then I dropped the contents of the rice bowl on the Angell steps. I went to class, and found there was no class--just a note to put the paper in the professor's mailbox.

This was a miracle--between that class and the section I didn't have to go to, I'd gotten back 3 hours to finish the last paper. I went home, downed another 2-liter of Coke, and typed the shittiest paper I'd ever written. My professor responded to my email around 2:30 that he wouldn't take it late so that free 3 hours saved my college career. I was still 20 minutes late to class, but I had the paper (it got a very undeserved C).

That class session was a Final review. I zoned out, and either dreamed or hallucinated a polar bear walking in and eating a Klondike bar. That ended around 6pm. I hadn't ingested anything but pop for all this time so I broke my No-Wendy's rule and ate Wendy's, incidentally meeting Shantee Orr in line (you'd have no idea he played DE; he was shorter than I am, and built more like a running back). Then I walked home planning to crash, but at this point i was so wired up with caffeine and cigarettes I couldn't sleep--just stare at the TV for hours with a blanket on.

Around 11pm my friends made me get up because they were having an epic awesome drinking time one floor above me, so I kind of sat on the floor in there like a rag doll. Drinking while that tired gave me a weird high and the night descended into one of those nights we still talk about: a sermon on the evils of Swedish fish and "flippin' fornication material" (futon chairs). One friend lost his poli sci girlfriend when she got fed up trying to argue politics with the one guy you shouldn't do that with. We broke into and ran around Michigan Stadium, which had a section torn up for repairs. We wore beer boxes on our heads. We mixed RC Cola and Richard's Wild Irish Rose. NEVER DO THIS!

36 hours awake: The sun rose on us as we were on the train tracks. I kept thinking various dark spots in the wood chips were good places to lie down. My cargo shorts were weighed down with something heavy I'd found that was cutting my leg with every step. Then one of the guys mentioned Fleetwood. We had two hard and fast rules: You can't bring up Fleetwood before 4 a.m., and if you bring up Fleetwood we all have to go. That morning, sitting outside at Fleetwood, was the day I became a coffee drinker.

I still have the bit of Michigan Stadium concrete though.