So I kinda just realized I didn’t sleep for the past 24 hours. Noy sure if it’s the longest I’ve been awake, but probably of the top 5 longest. I’m dealing with depression so my sleep cycle have been fucked up. Got coffee I think around the 12th hour mark.
I’ve basically just been watching youtube videos, browsing lemmy. Googled random things.
Idk why, I guess I just wanted some dopamine boost from coffee and now I can’t sleep lmao. Maybe a bit of anxiety around certain recent political events.
I honestly am not sure if I’m actually awake or dreaming.
Anyways, what is the longest time you’ve been awake without sleep? When did it happen and why?
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.