Skip to main content

Discuss Amongst Yourselves - December 12th, 2005

What's the longest you've ever stayed awake for? Not precisely sure what my whopping record is, but I think it's in and around twenty-one hours.

Bow before my unfathomable period of wakefulness!
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
I once stayed awake for about 41 hours, because of a long-ass xmas-related journey (planes, trains and buses were used) from HK to the T Dot:

I got up at 7:30 am (HKT) on a Friday, caught the afternoon flight (2:15 pm, HKT) to Vancouver, got to Vancouver earlier than when the flight left HK (9:30 am, PST, same day); then got bumped a bunch of times from the connecting flight to Toronto (this is when Canada 3000 went bust and AC had to pick up the slack)...then I wisely caught a late afternoon flight to Ottawa (close enough, I figured), because there was no way of getting onto a T Dot flight...then could only get back to the T Dot at that point via Greyhound (as the airport was closed)...then my dad picked me up at 6:30 am Sat. morning at the Bay St. bus depot (keep in mind that it was 7:30 pm Saturday HKT at this point) ...then I went to sleep a few hours after that. My eyes were hurting, I was all dizzy and confused, a total mess, believe you me!
3:27 pm
Beth said…
Don't know the exact amount of time, but definitely more than 24 hrs (but not 41! holy crap, Jen!) I remember this one Friday in first year university where I had an assignment due for each of my 5 courses -- had a day full of classes on Thurs, pulled an all-nighter and then had another day full of classes on Friday. Damn, first year sucked.

I do know someone who stayed up for 120 hrs straight and got into the Guiness Book of World Records for the longest consecutive stretch of bowling...
4:27 pm
kris said…
Holy crow, people! I think I stayed up for 20 hours one time before a psych 101 exam. Then a few of us split a 1 lb bag of M&Ms and I truthfully thought I would die.

I bow down to the rest of you.
6:04 pm
Anonymous said…
The longest I've stayed awake was about 73 hours or so. IT was during frosh week. I was one of the frosh leaders, and I was taking care of some abandoned squirrels. It was poretty insane.

The head committee was pretty incompetant, so I would end up making sure a lot of people got home safe. This would stretch into the wee hours of the morning.

I'd get home, have time for a quick shower, feed the squirrels, and then back to Uni for a meeting, followed by a day of events.

I started hallucinating a LOT.
12:48 am
Anonymous said…
I once went without sleeping for six days, tweaking on crystal in a second-storey motel room in Coral Gables with a Cuban, two Azerbaijani whores who didn't speak English, and a one-eared dog named Torpedo. Teofilo, the Cuban, punched one of the whores in the eye, and then spent the next two days locked in the bathroom. We had to pee in a big plastic bowl in the closet. The girls made me go outside in the blinding sunlight when they used the commode, because the closet door wouldn't shut with someone squatting in there. They didn't like me; they liked Teofilo, and they spent hours sitting on the floor beside the bathroom door, hugging their knees and rocking and cooing to him in Azerbaijani. I built a castle with a twenty-four-inch keep out of no-name saltine crackers, and later became convinced that I could see the dust mites in the carpet, that they were working together in an organized and concerted fashion, and that deciphering their advanced but wholly alien culture could respresent the key to solving mankind's most besetting problems.
5:23 pm
Rebecca said…
I think my record is in the 36 hour range. It was the end of the semester, I had two essays due in two days, plus a major web project due later in the week. I managed two two-hour naps, but that was it. At the end, the fatigue made my web partner and I a little punchy - we spent a good half hour arguing about font colours while his wife looked on a laughed herself silly at us.
8:29 pm
Jay said…
As an insomniac, I have often been awake for 40-60 hour stretches while still being functional, but I think my longest was probably when i dislocated my knee this one time and I couldn't get it to pop back into its socket, so for 3 days I couldn't move, and I certainly couldn't sleep because I was in so much pain. On the 4th day my friend took me to the ER, where they admitted me but couldn't give me any pain meds because I have a history of blood clots and am on a strange brand of blood thinners...anyway, long story short, I finally fell unconscious on the 5th day (and believe me, as someone who has lost consciousness several timse now, it is NOT restful) and then on the 6th day when they finally reinserted my knee, I slept for almost 24 hours straight. Phew.
5:53 am
Anonymous said…
like most of the commenters here, when I was in University, it was pretty common practice to just skip a night's sleep, which I think comes out to about 36 hours of wakefulness, give or take. Typically the scenario would involve writing something, or an out of town day of action against Mike Harris, or cramming for an exam or planning some troublemaking the next day.

It's nice to be able to work undisturbed, and as a night owl, I enjoy the secret world the unsleeping inhabit. Gary Buesey's done a good job of describing it, and there's a poem called the Unsleeping that kind of touches on a part of how fun it is to be awake all night.

Physical symptoms emerging on the second day are itchiness, hallucinations (especially shadows/movement just in my periphreal vision) halitosis, irritability, giddiness, giggles, and mood swings. Also my vision would seem brighter and sharper and somehow more intense. (I imagine my irises are too sleepy to expand) resulting in the art photo/overexposed look of too much light being bounced off the snow and reflected into my eyeballs. This was Ottawa, so of course there was snow.

It's kind of a thrill, and a cheap high, to go without sleep. But it can't be done just for fun, because that isn't enough impetus to keep you awake... it's got to be the result of a last-minute essay or a journey or the like. It is satisfying to feel tough and able to resist the lure of zzzzs. I'm not especially happy to be celebrating my mind's victory over my body (it sounds kind of like anorexia, eh?) but - whatever. I hope my life is exciting enough that I have to do it again.

Getting to go to sleep the next night was a real treat, and I always did so early, eagerley and with an honest gratitude that is missing from my normal bedtimes.
10:24 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I should add...

... that two people were instrumental in my joining Twitter. First, Isha . She sent out an article on it when the application was still brand new. (And I remember thinking, "Screw that noise. Like I need more online commitments.) Second was Rebecca . She joined up just a short while ago, claiming she hadn't met a bandwidth she didn't like . (And then she disappeared entirely from the internets .) It looked nice and pretty over there on her sidebar, and then I got a little jealous. The rest: history. And for those unobservant among you ( Jorge ), the Twitter feed is right there on my sidebar, replacing the old Radio 3 player that I loved, but that I think scared the bejezus out of a lot of people. Also, everyone should join Twitter. I'm needing some diversions , people.
7 comments
Read more
Change Two: Drink More Water Such a simple thing, yet something I just can't seem to find the time to do. About the only water I drink in your average day is whatever sweat happens to trickle off my mustache. Hydration (so the smart people tell me) is a good thing. I'm less fatigued when I drink water. I'm less hungry when I drink water. I'm even less grumpy when I drink water. I promise you nothing especially impressive. Eight glass a day ain't gonna happen. I'm shooting for two on average; two trendy, metallic, not gonna bleed Bisphenol A into my system bottles of water. I know were off to a rip-roaring start, what with the list-making and the hydration, but I'll try to get crazier with future changes. Stuff like: go to work drunk more, and buy a pair of leather pants. For now, let me ease into it.
4 comments
Read more