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54 comments to "Eleven Days Awake"

gert
October 24th, 2007 at 4:16 am
Awesome article, thanks for posting it! It’s obvious from this article and most people’s experience that we need sleep, but I haven’t found any answers as to *why* we need sleep. What makes us go tired (and a bit loopy) when we’re sleep-deprived? As far as I can see (with a quick google for research papers) biologists don’t know yet.
Retrokatze
October 24th, 2007 at 5:40 am
@ gert:
There’re a few hypotheses: regeneration of organs, “recalibration” of organs, preservation of ecological balances and the processing of everything we experienced that day and discarding unimportant memories.

The loopiness, hallucinations and inability to remember things could be explained by that last point.
Kiera
October 24th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Didn’t Gardner technically stay awake for 268 hours if he spent 4 hours talking to the press? Not that it matters in the long run, but he would’ve beaten the kid from Fresno.
Geekazoid
October 24th, 2007 at 7:53 am
Small nitpick, but Marie de Manaceine’s experiment ocurred in 1894, not 1984, correct?
l'elk!
October 24th, 2007 at 8:56 am
ummm… what about Thai Ngoc, the Vietnamese man who hasn’t slept since 1976? (though i am not sure this claim has been validated)
Anita
October 24th, 2007 at 9:21 am
So I guess the moral of the story is that it’s fine to stay awake for days as long as you aren’t playing WOW.
Jerse
October 24th, 2007 at 9:32 am
Right now I have been awake for 28 hours. I feel like shit.
Alex
October 24th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
You’re right Geekazoid - thanks! I’ve corrected the post.

@Jerse: 236 hours more to go! Good luck!

@l’elk! - I’ve heard about Thai Ngoc. If that were true, that’s crazy! Here’s what Wikipedia wrote:

He is best known for his claim of being awake for 33 years (or 11,700 nights), according to Vietnamese news organization Thanh Nien.[1] At the time of the report, Ngoc suffered from no apparent ill effect (other than the fact that he cannot sleep). He was mentally sound and was able to carry 100kg of pig feed down a 4km road. It was said that Ngoc acquired the ability to go without sleep after a bout of fever in 1973. In April, 2007, however, Ngoc reported that he was beginning to feel grumpy due to the lack of sleep.[2]

@Kiera - good point. I don’t know the answer to that. He probably dozed off for a little bit right before talking to the press and what not.
Erik with k
October 24th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Anybody knows “Pete & Pete” ?
Alex B
October 24th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Kiera, the celebration occurred at 260 hours, when Gardner matched Tom Rounds’ record. Four hours later he was taken to the hospital. Making the total time awake 264 hours.
Bryan
October 24th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
I’ve worked for 35 hours straight getting a set constructed. It sucked.
backie
October 24th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
I was awake for 53 hours once at a LAN-party, if you know what that is.. playing games, watching movies and stuff like that.. the last couple of hours i had no short term memory whatsoever, forgetting what I or my friends just said. I could’nt hear the music playing in the background. I spoke and i walked like i was drunk..

That was just 53 hours..

however.. I slept for 23 hours afterwards
virtualtom
October 24th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Thai Ngoc, the Vietnamese man who hasn’t slept since 1976? This is true and he has been checked out by doctors and he is well known in his village for working through the night, because he gets bored. He requires physical rest, but can not actually sleep. This began to happen to him after a brief illness with a fever.
Izabael
October 24th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
I’d be awful if this were a contest!! I need a lot sleep. I’d be better in waking-deprivation tests. I wonder how many days I can do without waking?
Nemo
October 24th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
I can’t stop thinking of that puppy experiment. How cruel! Keeping them awake until they died.
Bill Bobaggins
October 24th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
The most I’ve ever done is 56 hours. I was already slurring my speech and hallucinating at that point. I also had a hard time comprehending things.
Brian K
October 24th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
I performed an 80 hour sleep deprivation experiment in 1984 for a high school science class with 7 or 8 close friends. I can attest that the hallucinations are very real, typically between 2 and 4 AM, and that you lose the ability to hold conversations or even recite the alphabet (I still have the recordings). Endless hours were spent in conversations like “Did a hand just wave in front of my face?”, “No, is there a monkey outside in that tree?”…
Onym
October 24th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
9.9

puppiiiiiies…
Docidu
October 25th, 2007 at 12:22 am
Hrmm.. i pulled close to 200 in ‘03 ….but that was when i lived a ‘faster’ lifestyle… my brain is probally worse for the wear, but the hallucinations were amazing and terrifying at the same time… it was just the voices that got rather draining and disturbing…. i think sleep keeps the frequency of conciousness slightly offset from the absolute frequency of this reality, too long awake and you start to synch up with things you dont want to know are there…
Anonymous
October 25th, 2007 at 5:16 am
Consult any local speedfreak and watch him/her laugh at this “record”.
vinod
October 25th, 2007 at 5:51 am
Some one in the world some or the other time, his circumstances may lead him not to sleep for hours…pertaining to that if he knew, not sleep for hours wud place him in World record he wud certainly try for being awake for few hours more…its not tat impossible…in this regard 11days is not a big deal
Josh W
October 25th, 2007 at 6:03 am
The city in Cambridgeshire is Peterborough, not Petersborough.
Don S, from Kansas
October 25th, 2007 at 6:16 am
Heads up for all would be record setters, lack of sleep can be dangerous. I went for 190 hours with only four hours of sleep grabbed intermittently, and I ended up on the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital. It does not happen to everyone, but just because these folks did not suffer harm does not mean it is safe. Who knows exactly why, but your body needs sleep and going without can mess you up big time.
Shimmy
October 25th, 2007 at 6:19 am
Interesting read, thanks for the article
toprank
October 25th, 2007 at 6:19 am
I can’t stop thinking of that puppy experiment. How cruel! Keeping them awake until they died.
Imsomniac
October 25th, 2007 at 7:25 am
Well, I’ve been without any sleep for 4 years. Just lying in bed with my eyes wide open. Does that count? Plus, I’ve managed to go to work and back, going to the gym and living a relatively normal life.

I win.
sydd
October 25th, 2007 at 7:48 am
Neuroscientist say that humans and animals need to sleep for two reasons:
the 1st one is simply logical: Vegetarian animals would be more in danger if they walked around at night, and predators would be much more inefficient during daytime. So its something like a hiding-enegry conserving mode.
The second reason is the two “modes” that parts of the brain works during awakeness and sleep. That means that parts of the brain (especially hippocampus, a part which is used for deciding what memory is important and storing it) work differently during awakeness and sleep. The hippocampus is during the awake phase in a “exploration” mode, where it focuses on retrieving new data, and storing it temporary. If you fall asleep it goes into “storing” mode where the hippocampus decides what data to throw away, and what should be kept.(for example order the TV ads that you have seen between two films yesterday is is not really important.)These two modes have even been obresved in experiments, different regions and inputs are active in the hippocampus. It has been shown by researchers that when you learn something youll be better in remembeing it in the next day.(better means more organized, youll see more coherences in what you learned).
PS sorry for my english im not from the usa.
PS2 im a hippocampus researcher
Skitzo
October 25th, 2007 at 8:26 am
@Brian K:

Pleeease put those recordings up somewhere!

I’ve become very interested in the effects of sleep deprivation for a while now… I started working two jobs and I had to quit my previous job as a grave shift security guard, since I’d constantly hear noises that just weren’t there.
photo sharing
October 25th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Really interesting.
Thanks a lot
Geoffrey Blass
October 25th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Interesting story, I have stayed awake before once for 13 days and once for 17 days.
john
October 25th, 2007 at 11:35 am
The most I’ve ever stayed asleep was 36 hours.

I stayed a whole day awake, then went to school the next day without sleeping. I wasn’t really sleepy, just tired. I could understand what people were saying, but I was slow on my comprehension and reflexes.

I wanna be a medical doll. To see how far I could go awake. Since I never got high or got drunk. I wanna know how a hallucination is like and feeling “outside of yourself” and not being fully yourself.
john
October 25th, 2007 at 11:35 am
rofl .. I meant awake*, not asleep.

sowwy
D
October 25th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
John,

Find someone reliable and take some psilocybin mushrooms. It’s poison but that’s why you trip, and it passes through your body the next day.

You’ll know what it’s like.
Connie
October 25th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
I don’t sleep much at night, but I have an office where I take cat naps to catch up on my restless nights. Also, a friend pointed me to Sleep.FM website which helps lull me to sleep and wakes me up, so my boss doesn’t catch on.

THough one time he almost caught me, but my admin stalled him..thank goodness.

Interesting article!
Eric
October 25th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
I have been up for over 5 days and 4 nights back when I used speed. I now have frequent tension headaches from damage caused to my eye muscles.
Amanda
October 25th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Has anyone else ever watched this guy on Ripley’s Believe it or Not?

http://www.thanhniennews.com/features/?catid=10&newsid=12673

He hasn’t gone to sleep for the last 33 years!
Jokes
October 25th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Respect to people who can go to extremes for the research
eye surgery scottsdale
October 25th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Really cool article, classic science is great. Man, 11 days must be insane, I’ve done a maximum of 3 days straight without sleep and still been fully functioning, but I was out like a light as soon as I let my mind get distracted.
lol
October 25th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Ever heard of insomnia ? Ever heard of ww2 and nazi experiments? What is so special about 11 days ? Person will not die from a lack of sleep EVER its easy to confirm this (use google). So this whole affair is a joke.
Alex R
October 25th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Isnt there a guy who hasnt slept for 30 years or something? He works out to stay away.. I think I heard about that..
max
October 26th, 2007 at 3:36 am
I have a hard time concentrating after just a few hours asleep?..cant remember doing a choir from just a few second earlier…can’t a person die from lack of sleep??..
troy
October 27th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
@Jerse

You forgot to take baths..
breathless
October 28th, 2007 at 1:07 am
Well I come from an interesting past and have stayed awake for over five days continously, suffered severe paranoi, hallucinations, blacked out constantly and had periods of extreme aggresiveness. On the other hand, other people I know have stayed awake for as long as a month at a time. An eighteen day run ended in a trip to a psych ward where my friend encountered another acquaintance, carried on a long meaningful conversation until his friend tipped his head back and was sucked down into the floor (he explained this as water going down a drain) and still didn’t realize that his friend had never been there in the first place. Sleep deprivation is most certainley a drug in itself, a dangerous one at that and should not be attempted regularly (unfortunatley I did so, resulting in some not so great states of mental health) Eleven days is a long time for someone to be awake, that must have been tough for him but the sleep afterwards is so worth it
Russ @ bombay potatoes
October 28th, 2007 at 7:14 am
I would imagine some people can manage better without sleep than others, and that there are a few individuals in this world that need no sleep whatsoever.
Dan
November 8th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
When I saw ostriches every 1/10 mile with their heads in the concrete along side a nightime highway in IOWA, after not sleeping for 3 days, I knew it was time to pull over on the side of the road and get some winks. Things would have been fine except for the corn stalk praying manis that left by morning.
RecoveredSpeedFreak
November 26th, 2007 at 1:33 am
As a NOW clean ‘n sober meth head my longest ‘run was 17 days without sleep. It as definitely interesting. The delusions were the most interesting part of the experience. I had many friends who imagined helicopters following them and ‘tree people’ spying on them altho I never spotted either. My favorite experience was imagining songs were following me around from store to store magically. “This is your brain, this is your brain on drugs.” It wasn’t pretty. Thank God for sobreity.
chris
November 29th, 2007 at 4:15 am
ive been awake 40 hours here, just because i have a dead line in university, im functioning fine just wen i re-read my work, it doesnt make alot of sence and looking at a computer screen doesnt help either.
Tim Yates
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:58 pm
I’ve been a speedfreeak since 1969, although the last 20 years or so have been pathetic, quality-wise. The hallucinations were always my favorite part. They really kick in around day 11 or 12. One of my sweethearts of the past once stayed up for a couple of years, but she was really crazy to begin with.
sfmac
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:39 am
I went to an art college that was pretty demanding and I pulled many all nighters, my longest being over 72 hours. The worst I experienced was loss of concentration, I would start a sentence and totally forget what I was talking about, lots of ums. When it came time to present my project I fell asleep standing up in front of the class. I’m glad those days are over and I get paid for overtime now.
sara
December 7th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
@kiera
he beat Rounds’ record of 260 hrs and then stayed up the extra four, meeting his goal of 264, not 268.
republiccommando
January 6th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
i feel this way when im in class or daydreaming. its actually kind of fun for a little while. i remember when i was 2-3 i used to hear little voices and i turned around it was halarious. lol. around that time i didnt sleep very well :S. i now often forget what i just said 2 secs ago and have to ask sum1.
republiccommando
January 6th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
i think the computer wears my brain…
republiccommando
January 6th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
wait… do u throw up if u dont get sleep for a long time?
Chris
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:58 am
The longest I’ve stayed awake was on a cocaine and drink fueled binge of 5 days and 4 nights. I frequently go for 2-3 days without sleep and although I do lose concentration and forget things easily, I have never hallucinated.

On the other side of the coin, when I was 12 years old I got Beijing Flu and slept for 13 days without waking up. My mum was a junkie and didn’t take me to the doctor until afterwards. The doc said I should be dead! lol.

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