How many days of missed sleep do you think you could hide from people?
0 I burned all my capacity for that by the end of college.
Back in high school and early in college I’d have at least one night a month where I was to anxious to sleep. Then engineering school got hard and I got sleepless nights to do schoolwork.
These days I’m visibly off if my wife has nightmares or I snored too much (she kicks me when I snore)
Less than a full day
0.3.
If I miss 2 hours of sleep I’ll be a zombie a couple off hours after lunch.
My brain starts breaking about 4 hours after I was supposed to go to bed.
I start getting loopy at about 36 hours awake
I stayed awake for 8 days but there was no hiding it.
i’m sorry
what was it like?
It was a manic episode and much of it took place in a hospital. But it was pretty magical, despite the adverse conditions. The most difficult thing was memory, especially around 24-48 hours. After that it was easier. But the worst thing was wanting to sleep but not being able to turn down the intensity of the experience.
One, like most people.
But the more interesting question is: how long can you go with too little sleep? Like, with 3-4h naps? Or a few 30 min naps?
Obviously much longer, as anyone with little children or a tight thesis deadline can tell you. But I catch myself making mistakes and generally saying and doing things I shouldn’t, quite similarly to mild alcohol intoxication. I would describe 2-3 days with too little sleep as maybe 3-4 beers, you can still force yourself to focus, but you really shouldn’t drive or write that important letter any more.
I get massive screaming headaches that usually start mid-late afternoon and don’t go away until I sleep, but sometimes start up again first thing the next morning if I sleep poorly. If the person knows me well enough to know that, and knows what it looks like when I have such a headache, maybe 2 days? Only because theres a lot you can hide behind the fog of pain and saying “yep, this is the same headache I’ve had for two days, I’m very tired of it”
Everyone else thinks I’m in dire need of sleep basically always, because I’ve become fairly low-energy (other than my stims, which are often not obvious anyway), have very thin skin around my eyes, plus often foggy and slow from headaches. And nod off whenever I’m slightly bored. But they aren’t wrong, as such, I could seriously sleep 15+ hours a day if I didn’t have shit to do.
I have had a handful of “status migraines” in my life and that is by far the worst pain. I am so sorry, and hope you can figure out a way to end them. Mine always came while I was sleeping - would wake up with them, but once started even a drop of water would make me puke, and no real sleep just sort of hallucinations. 5 days is the longest, I used to be able to go get them broken with injections of some opiate mixed with an anti nausea drug, it didn’t make it stop just put me so far away from the pain I could really sleep and I would wake up without the headache. Alas, that is disallowed now. Last (and hopefully the last ever) time that happened it was $1500 in the emergency room and a cold IV of some hopped up advil (doesn’t work AND doesn’t get you high enough not to care) with an antihistamine. The IV liquid does help so not dehydrated but it did nothing for the pain.
Sorry long rant but I feel you - those long severe headaches are the worst pain. Worse than childbirth, worse than broken bone.
The most I’ve gone is 36 hours, basically a day-night-day missing 1 night of sleep, I don’t recommend it. The second day I was limited enough in functionality that I didn’t do anything I’d planned to that day but I was able to function on a basic level, though in terms of “hiding” it I think I succeeded since I still had normal interactions with people and nobody seemed to suspect anything. I was a lot younger then.
My misspent youth included methamphetamines. I spelled it out because “meth” seems worse somehow.
Anyway, about 3 days without sleep comes with debilitating brain fog, hallucinations, and wild mood problems. You could probably pass for the fist day, because meth intoxication isn’t as obvious as others, but people will notice that you lost your mind.
Similar story here, and I have a lot of regrets centering around the crazy stuff I did while out of my mind.
In retrospect, I’ve come to believe that long periods of little or poor quality sleep led to much more insanity than any specific substance.
It didn’t necessarily have to be stimulants. Anything that kept me up all night getting high or prevented “real” sleep, even computers or video games to a lesser degree, could lead to this state.
Sleep is important.
I usually don’t sleep during the days :)
But seriously: Not even one night. It was easier when I was younger ofc.
Depends on who’s observing. I dose off regularly when bored regardless of how rested i am, some will already assume it’s from tiredness.
Cognitive effects start to appear after 24h, but with short power naps i can remain functional up to 5 days.
0
One. If I have access to drugs and I don’t have to go to work, two.
I’m the opposite, with drugs I get between 5 and 10 hours of sleep, without drugs I stay awake for days (10 days is my record).Though we may be on different drugs, mine are mood stabilizers and seditives.
Depends on the amount of stimulants used.
Without any, 2.5 at the most.
