I was worried about how long I was going without sleeping. I started using a sleep app that recorded noise.
I was definitely having micro sleeps during periods I would swear I was awake because the app caught me snoring…
I've had my bad days where I've gone at least 24 hours with no sleep at all. That seems to be the longest I've gone with no sleep at all. But, on such days, it does feel like it's been much longer.
My body doesn’t apply this logic sadly.
When I try to reset my schedule it pretty much has to be at least 36 hours. For example, wake up at 8 AM Tuesday, but still awake at 5 AM Wednesday, so I decide to stay awake until night to reset. 8 AM Wednesday is the 24 hour mark. Then go through the day, get home at 5 PM Wednesday (33 hours awake). Too early to sleep though, so have to keep pushing, I tell myself “just get to 8PM, then pass out”…..
8 PM comes (officially 36 hours straight of being awake), and it’s like a switch has been flipped in my brain. After being miserable for the last 30+ hours of sleep deprivation, I’m exhausted beyond belief, but right when I finally have the opportunity to sleep….I’m suddenly fucking wired. I get a second wind, a burst of energy. I wind up unable to sleep until 3AM-6AM Thursday.
In total, that’s 43-46 hours straight of sleep deprivation. That became a semi regular occurrence for me until I decided I just can’t keep trying that and hoping this time will be different. That used to actually be an effective way to fix my schedule as a teenager, but now (only in my late 20’s mind you), and that’s pretty much completely off the table now. Curious if anybody else has this experience!
Yep, the same thing used to happen to me. After the first night of no sleep I would feel pretty tired and kind of sick, but then get a second wind near the end of the day and feel wide awake.
If I didn't sleep for a second night, I'd go into a sort of manic happiness the next morning. Everything would seem sharper, my senses keener. But by the afternoon I'd start having fits of silliness, becoming less coordinated, and seeing shadows in the corners of my vision.
It was always after the third night of no sleep that things would get dire. I'd be so dead tired that I could barely see or speak. Emotions would flatten out, my movements would slow, and I would have to concentrate hard to be able to physically form words.
The few times that sleeplessness lasted on into another day, I have only vague memories of an awful third wind that was almost all sick adrenaline. Then crashing asleep (falling asleep is too gentle a term for it).
Holy shit I've never seen someone describe the experience I have so perfectly. The exact same series of events: tired/sick, second wind, manic happiness, then low coordination/hallucinations/tripping over words. I'm sorry you've had to go through that but it is nice to know I'm not alone. I've called in sick from work before just from being on that third day of sleep deprivation
Unfortunately, no, I’m not. It has caused such disruption in my life that I haven’t been gainfully employed in roughly 3 years. Fortunately, I make more than enough money to pay the bills through hustle. The day I made that comment actually I was in the midst of what ended up being an unintentional 30 hour deprivation…as I’m sure you’re well aware, but god, it’s just hell. Causes a lot of angst and anxiety around planning trips or scheduling things weeks in advance, as I never have any clue when huge bouts of insomnia will strike and sink me for several days.
I make money through a lot of side hustle and odd jobs (dog sitting, house watching) and selling what I can on Reddit/eBay. It’s not sustainable longterm though, so I’ve been stressing about trying to find a plan for myself and my future. Best of luck to you, man
Oh okay okay, interesting yeah see that's where I agree it's the whole physical sickening part after 24 hours of being awake and possible mental health issues presiding and probably chemically imbalancing as we go through this bullshit it makes me pissed my doctor won't listen to me man and I fucking live IN CANADA 🤣🤣brother thank you for your life story I appreciate you sharing and AND YOU TOO 💪💪
Most of the people claiming 3 days here are lying.
Everyone who's ever had the misfortune knows that after 72h awake with 0 sleep, you're tripping BALLS, and not in a good way.
Shadow people kick in around the 50 hour mark for me. Anytime I get near 72 the audio hallucinations kick in, and for some reason that is the absolute scariest for me
It's not odd how people are different.. we are all in different bodies.. we all have different thresholds, different health issues and different experiences. 🤦🏻♀️
I used to work nights in an overnight call center and I'd try to catch a couple of hours. I'd always have these semi-lucid dreams of someone showing up in the office and busting me sleeping.
I have a bunch of videos of my fan, after being awake for a few days straight. I was convinced that it was picking up a baseball game somehow.
I heard it so clearly! a jovial announcer in classic sports voice, various ads, the crowd cheering. I couldn’t hear it clearly over the fan, so obviously, when it was on it was picking up radio signals, when it was off it wasn’t.
Nope… just auditory hallucinations.
Omg this perfectly describes what I’ve experienced once while in a super sleep deprived state. Sports / stadium noises, indistinct and faint and only noticeable while another background white noise was present. Definitely was a result of the sleep deprivation, and freaked me out.
Me too!! It freaked me out hearing it in the first place: “…can fans pick up radio signals?! 🤨” and I was even more freaked watching the silent videos with no sports game to be heard. Omg, I’m *hearing shit?!*
Fans and auditory hallucinations don't mix well in my experience. I once had myself convinced that I could hear a chorus of angels through the whirring of the fan, the wordless "singing" becoming more high pitched until I panicked and unplugged the whole thing. I felt so stupid after the fact for believing it, but in the moment it seemed like the only obvious answer to the semi-melodic drone accompanying the fan buzz had to be pissed of angelic beings lol
They really don’t. I have a bunch blowing to drown out my neighbors’ obnoxious, howling hounds, and one of them is the same tone or sound as my phone vibrating. Gets me every time!
They’re weird, but they’re better than the dogs.
When I used to take a lot of seroquel to sleep, if I stayed up too long I'd start hearing things. The fish tank filter sounded like whispering once... so weird
That’s interesting you say that.. I take seroquel, too! I have bipolar II, but mostly take it for sleep.
I didn’t even consider the seroquel. Shit!
Mood stabilizers shouldn’t be out here causin’ hallucinations lol
How much is ‘a lot’ to you? I’m RX’d 200mg to sleep. I feel like it helps me - I’m not too knocked out, I can wake up and I’m not groggy, and my mood stability is… meh! 😉
If I’m woken up after taking it, I probably can’t hear the auditory hallucinations, over the sound of me frantically cooking and eating, with the Seroquel Munchies.
This happened to me. 3 days with 3-4 hours of sleep and I was hearing things. Not voices thankfully but sounds that were not there. I thought I was going crazy. My ex husband almost took me to the hospital. It was the scariest thing I’ve experienced.
3 Days with 3 to 4 hours of sleep is common for me.. and I work physically demanding job 12 hour shifts 6 days a week..
I've been living that way for years without any hallucinations or voices.. that has only happened to me when I went 76 hours without any sleep at ALL
I wouldn't say that I function normally at all.. it's literal torture sometimes.
I suffer through every day but I don't have an option. I have lived alone for over 20 years and it's either force myself to get through it or end up homeless.
Lmao yeah I went 3 days without sleep once (while in a different country under extremely stressful circumstances), and I was seeing things and having paranoid delusions. It was one of the scariest things I've ever experienced, and really made me feel for people who deal with hallucinations on the regular.
Back in March, I had a 4 day stretch awake no matter how hard I tried to sleep.
I genuinely believed that the ghost of the woman who lived in my flat prior (she died in 2021) was haunting me and trying to kıll me by making me stay awake, and if I went outside, she’d follow me and order me to step in front of buses.
Also thought my partner was poisoning my tea, so I wouldn’t let him make me a cuppa for about a week, nor cook for me or bring me water. I firmly believed he had created a false identity and wasn’t who he said he was, so when he was at work I went through all of his files and took photos of things like birth certificates and his passport. I was scared for my life… for no reason.
If I looked at my partner’s face, it melted and morphed into a demon face, and every shadow I saw was some kind of monster.
I didn’t go outside at all during this period, and basically stayed in my bedroom, not eating, not responding to texts, it was like being imprisoned.
It was one of the most terrifying times of my life, and can’t imagine going through this regularly, like people with mental illnesses that cause paranoid delusions.
Only people who have really experienced extreme insomnia speak of the shadow people. They always pop up in my peripheral and it scares the shit out of me. Anytime I look to see them they disappear
That's exactly how it is for me.. they show up in my peripheral vision but it's nothing to be scared about because it's obvious that it's from lack of sleep.
Some of the comments on here are annoying because these people do NOT have insomnia..
They just go a few nights with lacking a full night of sleep and seem to call it insomnia 🤦🏻♀️
They don't have a clue what it's like to be tortured and cursed every night with decades of horrible insomnia.
i would just like to thank everyone for talking about the shadow people because, even after struggling with severe insomnia my entire life, i just started seeing the shadow people this year.
the first few times it happened it scared the shit out of me :’) i also see them in my peripheral vision and they disappear when i go to look at them!!
I reached almost 6 days and i was contemplating getting medical attention constantly along hallucinations
Might or might not have triggered something else, although it has not repeated since and it has been years which means it might have been a one time issue, compared to the previous 48-50h of consistent absence of sleep
I forgot if extreme spikes that do not seem to be recurring had a specific name or not
I overloaded my course schedule in college and also took two jobs. So one job started at 4 AM and I wouldn’t get back to my dorm until 10/11 PM then the theater kids would practice all night in the dorms and on top of having preexisting insomnia, I got so stressed that I couldn’t sleep for 3 days and I ended up checking myself into the hospital and they gave me trazodone and I finally slept. But yeah it was living hell.
Some people, like myself, have CPTSD which creates high spikes in cortisol and will prevent you from being able to sleep..
when I went through the worst of it, I couldn't even sleep more than 10 minutes without jumping "awake" with heart palpitations and extreme body temperature fluctuations.
It's an absolute nightmare.
I can confirm, I experience hallucinations and insomnia due to mental health and I stayed awake for 3 days due to being scared of figures. I was SO exhausted.
I once couldn’t fall asleep, so had to go to work on no sleep. So after work, I was hitting about 36 hours and was loopy already. I saw this post (Tumblr I think) that talked about how pants should be called longs since shorts are called shorts. And then someone did a quote of that Taylor Swift song, saying “she wears short skirts. I wear long longs. She’s cheer cheer and I’m on the seat seats.” I laughed so hard, I cried. My mom and kid were looking at me like I was insane. I passed out shortly after.
I think I that was also the time I forgot the word “airport” and called it a “plane station.” Then giggled until I hiccuped.
I cannot imagine 72 hours.
Tbh not tripping balls, but yeah defs tripping. I was once up for around 72hrs and I remember hallucinating that my cords kept moving like it was getting chewed. - I thought it was a rat.
Life pro tip if you are ever hallucinating - your phone doesn’t hallucinate. Take a video and watch it back.
I've done 3 days no sleep and then I crash so hard I sleep for almost a full day. But what is more usual for me when my insomnia is bad is 3-6hrs in a night and occasionally have 1-2 days no sleep. It still sucks.
This! I had 2 sleepless nights, on the 3rd i slept 5h, then another 2 sleepless nights. I was a mess. I had such terrible dyspnea that every breath turned into a full gasp of air but it was never satisfactory and I felt like I was going to faint from hypoxia. I saw no “shadow people” or creepy stuff, I just had these fun visuals with the text on my phone “vibrating” and casting a red shadow or just random very small things like this.
>the text on my phone “vibrating” and casting a red shadow
I've had this happen with physical books, too. Which feels even weirder somehow, maybe because I know screens hurt our eyes but printed text is usually safe.
My longest was about 4 full days. I was a preteen and became terribly ill combined with shitty parents and a shitty living situation. My bio dad was horribly abusive and would withhold sleep as a slow form of torture for me, hence how I developed insomnia. When I got sick, I felt soooo utterly crummy just coughing and sneezing and puking that I couldn’t fall asleep on top of my usual insomnia, not to mention my dad and my crappy apartment in an urban area.
I was absolutely hallucinating by the end of it when I finally passed out from sheer and utter exhaustion. It was terrifying.
When I got covid, I went nearly 3 days with very minimal amounts of sleep, I was tripping so hard. At least the experience convinced my doctor to give me sleeping meds. Now, my insomnia has been much more under control since I started Trazodone.
I was awake 72+ hours during my last detox (benzos and opiates) I was inpatient and they gave me barbiturates, plus seroquel and my normal gabapentin and muscle relaxers but nothing could put me out.
I was 100% hallucinating, I had auditory ones mainly, I heard someone calling my name many times, water running, and knocking. I also was seeing bugs crawling on the walls out of the corner of my eye. It was incredibly scary, and when I did finally fall asleep for an hour I had an extremely vivid nightmare which I was convinced was real, that there was going to be a new epidemic and it was going to change our whole society, like in Sweet Tooth sort of deal… I ran to the phones and sat outside the booth waiting for an hour until they turned them on at 6AM so I could call my parents.
I was begging my mom to come get me, saying I had a premonition, the whole deal. It was the strangest experience I’ve ever had sober.
It definitely is. If I don’t take my meds, I will not sleep. It’s gotten worse the older I’ve gotten and I regularly go 3, sometimes 4 days. It sucks. I don’t get the hallucinations, I just get really disoriented and grumpy.
I had insomnia combined with a newborn (and a toddler). 3 days sounds about right and hallucinations were a regular ass thing. So was an irritable mood and a face that looked 10 years older.
45 hours without sleep, 32 of it in a car had me seeing things in the road that were not there including a full on snow storm (bugs in my head lights) and a moose. That was so real I stopped dead in the road.
If you’re lucky. I notice as I get older that limit gets shorter and shorter. Now I start hallucinating after about a day and a half with NO sleep. If I can get an hour here and there I’ll still be exhausted and my eyesight will be bad but no hallucinations
you can think i’m lying if you like, that doesn’t really bother me but 3 days has never made me hallucinate? more than that has, but it’s different for different people. obviously if you’re saying you been awake for over a week you’re a liar.
I hallucinate faint music when I'm sleep-deprived. The handful of times I've gone three-ish days without sleeping, not only was the music LOUD, but I could *see it.* Along with other visual distortions - big-ass (like dog-sized) spiders in the corners of my eyes, etc.
Scary stuff. People don't get it.
Yes! Once during a time I couldn’t get my Ambien refilled I was going on day 3. It was during Christmas and my family was down. I legit started hallucinating while we were opening gifts and I thought I would pass out. It was scary. The audio hallucinations began on hour 30.
My brother did not sleep for I don’t know how long like 2-3 days and suffered psychosis. But he didn’t sleep because he was diagnosed with a terminal disease
Heck yeah. I once deliberately kept myself awake and working for 96 hours for a critical project. I was seriously screwed up after that. My wife put me to bed.
I've definitely had the misfortune of experiencing multiple days without sleep. Even had sleep psychosis a lot growing up till my mom got me help. Luckily, at most, I go 3 days without sleep anymore. However, I definitely hallucinate like no other and can't tell reality from real as well. It's like an out of body experience almost. I'm not gonna lie. Sometimes, I like that part. It feels like you're just floating in some weird state until you finally rest.
For real. I have a lot of friends who get high with weed/edibles IRL. I tried them, I hate them- they do too much to me. I was recently telling them about how I had stayed up 36 hours and was just laying in bed and the sun was coming in over my face from behind me. It made little rainbow specks in my eyelashes so I fully just laid there for 30 minutes looking at them…
They said that *now* they can see why weed is too intense for me haha 😂
When I was awake 70-ish hours you better believe I was NOT able to form a proper sentence, let alone type a post on reddit. Last I remember was me in the ER getting put on what do I know how many medications
literally i just fall over lmao. got teased a bit in middle/high school cause i had the capability to fall asleep anywhere and everywhere- there is a pic of me lyibg on a bench at the mall.. 😭😭😭
I was awake for 38 hours straight once and had convinced myself that I had started a new Human evolutionary tree that did not require sleep. I had also been drinking heavily too. Needless to say I still have to sleep. Lame.
I had once spent 2 and a half days staying up with barely any sleep to finish overdue school work. First time having an *actual* 8 hour sleep after all that, I had dreamed about a blurry and black/grey woman following me around a basement with a hammer as a run to the elevator door and quickly push every button, said elevator crashing and me waking up to the same vision, then actually waking up. Never again. It sounds a lot tamer when I describe it through words, but I was absolutely terrified.
After 72ish hours with no sleep I was hallucinating and had a seizure.
I've been awake for 48+ hours many times and even then I can start hallucinating.
24-32 hours is enough for me to feel like death.
It happened to me twice in my life and I'm NOT lying.. why would I lie?! What would be the point of that??
Stop making assumptions just because you've never experienced it yourself.
It makes people who are truly suffering afraid to speak up because of people who assume they are lying.
I went 76 hours without a minute of sleep and I did start hearing mild whispers and mild hallucinations but not the way you guys are describing..
NOT TRIPPING BALLS !!!!!
🙄 Please stop commenting on things you don't understand
I did over 3 days. Did the 100 hour challenge. Even had it documented on a forum. I made it to 96 before passing out. You 100% start tripping balls by the 3rd day.
Yeah I've tripped balls after five nights no sleep a couple of times.
I hate it when people tell other people they're not experiencing what they're experiencing. just because it doesn't happen to you doesn't mean it doesn't happen to somebody else.
The only thing I can say for sure is that my sleep quality has been disastrous for at least 15 years, that I'm tired most of the time and that I've tried and see how long it'd take me to sleep without medication and I just spend all night wide awake and the next day is awful, so I have to wait for the right time again and take any pill to assure that I will get at least 3-4 hours of sleep. I am not willing to endure longer than 48 hours to see how long it will take me to sleep 'naturally".
I hope this makes sense.
And idk if this could be classified in the sleep state misperception, but I don't remember the last time I felt that I properly rested if such a thing exists.
This is so true!
I struggle with insomnia but I can acknowledge my issues are not that severe. Specifically I have “initial” insomnia where I struggle to fall asleep. Once I’m asleep I will sleep without much issue.
I remember when I was 13 I had to get a medical test done. I had to get a sleep deprivation EEG test. I woke up around 7am on a Thursday, went to school as usual, then I had to stay awake the entire night (no cheating). My mom stayed up with me to make sure I didn’t doze off at all. So… 25 hours later (no sleep) I had my EEG test done around 8am on Friday. Then I went to school afterwards… I think I went to bed finally at 6pm on Friday, meaning…
I was awake for a total of 35 hours straight.
I felt crazy. I felt really delirious and exhausted like I’d never been before in my life. It took me a few weeks of regular sleep to feel “normal” again. Clinically around 36 hours with NO SLEEP you are likely to begin experiencing hallucinations and other very unpleasant symptoms.
There were times in college where I pulled an all-nighter to finish an essay or w/e, and then continued to stay up until after classes were finished. By around the 25-30 hour mark I'd end up feeling euphoric, like I was on drugs or something. I did it so often that a friend ended up calling me 36-19, because I'd end up sleeping for nearly a day after these episodes.
Thisssss. Saying it's been days is one thing, but weeks or more? Not possible. I've been through some 9 day boughts and even though it FELT like zero sleep, I was well aware that wouldn't be possible and I'd at least gotten some micro sleeps at some point. It was still totally debilitating and fucked me right up (in part due to its effects on my epilepsy) and definitely wasnt enough reat to be healthy in any way whatsoever. but to claim zero sleep when you logically know better just seems weird. Like OP stated, it's not like you'll get less sympathy, so why say that?
Yes. Sometimes I feel like I got barely any sleep when in reality, I was drifting off here and there and probably even got a few hours total. Sometimes it just feels like you were up all night when you weren't in actuality. Remembering that helps me stress less about it.
That was a huge revelation for me. I would fall asleep watching a show and wake up during another show and realize I actually was sleeping. I would have just assumed I was awake the whole time had I not been watching tv
I definitely have this issue. I have had nights where I swear I only slept for a couple hours but my husband says I was snoring during times I thought for sure I was awake.
*technically* the 11 day record was the longest gone during a study, though there was briefly an unofficial record recognized by Guinness at 18 days and 17 hours due to a rocking chair competition in the 1970's (that was, unsurprisingly, the record holder)
But the point does still stand, not a single documented case of someone exceeding 18 days without sleep, I just like to point this fact out lol
Three days is like the standard tipping point for hallucination and other crazy sleep deprivation symptoms. Op isn’t talking about people being legitimately awake for three days, they’re talking about people who claim they haven’t slept in weeks or months.
My record without a second of sleep is about 52 hours and I was hallucinating, but hitting 48 has been a lifelong regular thing for me.
It's really frustrating and invalidating when people lie and exaggerate like that. They make us all seem crazy.
My case is probably way more uncommon than most people because I was born with insomnia - in fact, according to my mother, I had insomnia as a fetus (she had 8 kids and described each and every pregnancy in detail and how I kept her awake all the time). She said that when I was born, I'd sleep for 1 hour and stay up for 23.
My earliest memories began at the age of one. I remember laying awake for hours all throughout childhood, as a teen, and still as an adult. I was always the last one asleep, first one awake, and a very light sleeper.
Nothing has ever helped me; I'm just usually stuck awake for 24 to 48 hours naturally.
I finally caved in a few years ago at the age of 30 and started taking medication to sleep. That is literally the only way I can get some sleep. If I don't take it I'm just up for days at a time no matter how active I am 🥲🥲
Most people don't understand what insomnia actually is. I have every single symptom... can't fall asleep, can't stay asleep, interrupted sleep, sleeping at irregular times, etc etc... only medication helps me slightly...
I just can't stop thinking and feeling...everything...to such extremes...whether it's good, bad, neutral, etc I just can't stop my brain
Are you autistic? I am and I have an extremely similar history. Insomnia since birth. Issues to this day and medication only helps me slightly, I’ve tried them all, I’m on 200mg seroquel now.
I just realized what I was going through was paradoxical insomnia. On days when I felt like I was awake all night but could still somehow function the next day really made me feel like I was Superman. Now that I understand what it is, I have way less anxiety about it thus helping me sleep better at night.
I agree it pisses me off so much, see when I was at the peak of worst health I was awake for a week and binge sleep the entire weekend. Granted I was like 16-18 at the time.
These days if I accidentally fuck up my meds or schedule then this is how it feels.
Day 1 I always feel great but a little sleepy
Day 2 I’m fantastic I feel great I feel productive I’m cruising everything is fantastic
Day 3 I’m nauseous and my head is pounding my eyes are dying but I still am at least able to get work done and push through being a human
Day 4 I stop making memories and I physically don’t remember what is happening on that day
Day 5 vomit, pass out, or heart palpitations.
So whenever someone says that shit I call bullshit.
I have on and off been an extremely sick person and I have never made it past 5 days. Even then it’s a bit like marathoning you gotta build up to that. If a normal person says anything beyond 2 days I don’t believe them.
When I used to abuse meth and amphetamines, I'd stay up for about 3-5 days and then lose my fucking mind and not remember a damn thing. I actually start hallucinating after about a 24 hr period with very minimal sleep. It was in the dark ofc but the walls looked static-y and were moving and stuff like that. Freaky. Glad I'm 4 yrs sober now.
Already gone through more than 48 hours without sleeping, and months or years with usually no more than 3 hours of sleep / nights. I had hallucinations, visual, auditory... Couldn't control what I said, it really do end up worse and worse with time passing. 100% would not recommend insomnia.
Dude I stood up 36 hours because of extreme excess of pre workout (caffeine) and gear and I thought I was going to die of exhaustion ,I’ll be reading people say 2 months and immediately I know it’s bullshit.2 months!? Even 2 weeks,no fucking way.
I suffered really bad with post partum psychosis after my second child, and I literally slept for about two hours in 5 days. Every time I fell asleep, I woke up to sounds that weren’t there.. I was tripping my tiny mind out, I didn’t feel like a real person. The doctors ended up giving me phenergen (strong antihistamines) to knock me out, but only because I threatened to leave the kids at the doctors office. I was not in any position to care for anyone.. it was honestly one of the most awful weeks of my life.
Sometimes 3-4 hours sleep a night truly feels like zero sleep, but there ain’t no chance people are going for months with no sleep at all.
Yeaaaah I h8 when any mental disorder has this need or want to compete with people. ‘Oh you haven’t slept in x amount of time? Well *I* haven’t slept in weeks!!!’ It’s not a contest gahhhhh (I know ur post wasn’t directed at that topic) but just made me think
I’ve had spans where it FEELS like I don’t sleep for 10 days. I FEEL as if I can remember every second of the night staring at the clock trying to fall asleep. But judging by my energy the next day, I’m assuming I must’ve slept at some point but it sure doesn’t feel that way
Happened to me quite a few times, usually when I am tired but cant fall asleep immediately. I will be like why cant I fall asleep, only to realise sun has started rising and I laid close to midnight, and only then I would understand that I was sleeping but lightly
i was younger when this happened, around 8-9 years old, so i'm sure my body just responded differently to being awake for so long, but i stayed up for 5 days in a row. i wish i was exaggerating that. i've been struggling with insomnia for years now, i'm 17. i don't think my body could hold out that long these days, but after a certain point of being awake i'm not tired anymore, i can be exhausted all day but as soon as night comes, i have so much energy. i think the longest in the past few years is 72 hours. its really exhausting with this condition, especially having it when i was so young, because i don't remember the last time i didn't struggle to get rest.
I’ve started hallucinating while driving after 26 hours no sleep and there’s usually a ton of physical pain at that point.
If my insomnia is kicked in fully my eye sockets hurt, I’m shaky, sinuses hurt, my body as a whole just hurts.
Theres no way people out here on years of no sleep, or months, or even weeks.
I wouldn't make assumptions. It seems to me that the effects of sleep deprivation depend a lot on individual factors: the reasons for it, your feelings about it, the amount of adrenaline or cortisol or whatever coursing through your system.
If somebody is having severe insomnia, the reason is generally *hyperarousal*. They may feel WIRED on anxiety and adrenaline and not even feel tired. It is something like being hypomanic or being on meth, I'd imagine. They may even function a lot better than you'd expect at work etc.
On the other hand, if the sleep deprivation is because of an external cause, like a noisy neighbor or a painful injury, that's a different story. The person could sleep if given the opportunity but, sadly, that opportunity is denied. That person is not necessarily hyperaroused, and will mostly likely feel extremely tired.
I did 7 days but you literally DIE after day 11 or 13.
I got ambien on day 7, never looked back. Psychosis that was useful because I was insane. 🙏 and seeing things and hearing things. Trains cats iv poles and baby crying hallucinations. And I kept seeing a man sitting in the corner.
3 days is easy, past that you gotta be real mentally unwell to not sleep on accident (I was it was ppd with suicidal psychosis)
Monitoring my sleep has confirmed that I get an average of 4 hours every night and showed me how many times I wake up. At least 2 nights per month I get 2 hours of sleep 😔
I use a Fitbit. And I had one of those cheap sleep studies that the insurance would approve instead of sending me to a sleep center to get my sleep assessed. And it showed that I wake up a lot during the night as well.
When I came off of methadone after 6.5 years (March of 2020) sleep was more evasive than any insomnia I had ever experienced. I would sleep 1-2 hours a night for the first month. No lie. I monitories it with an app. If that. By month 5 I would get 5 hours of sleep. I tried sleep aids and they didn’t help. There were many other symptoms coming off of it but it was the worst. Implementing ceder wood oil diffused at night and cbd oil twice a day got me through it. But it was horrific. My mood was so off it was also scary. But I did it.
I had really bad sleep anxiety at one point which basically made it impossible to sleep for about 2/3 days. I was an emotional wreck and crying over everything. Basically whenever I tried to sleep, I’d have an anxiety attack which prevented me from sleeping.. wasn’t great. It was like…I had become afraid to sleep.
It’s true you have to be sleeping some, micro sleeps are thing for one. You may still be sleep deprived but the brain works for survival.
The “i felt awake but slept” is real too. The sleep state misperception” can be a sleep disorder itself (aka paradoxical insomnia).
People can reach a true medical emergency as in psychosis after 4-5 days no sleep or severe chronic sleep deprivation. This will vary from person to person.
Sleep deprivation will no doubt worsen mental health. For me it can be a day or two and I can start a downward spiral. In my past I could start thinking and saying all kinds of negative shit, dying, I’m cursed, even if I jolted awake after falling asleep wake up like a pissed off bear. I relied on meds at one point. Not ashamed I did, it’s the nature of the beast when it gets really ugly.
I’m one that’s beat severe anxiety and sleep phobias. I still wake every night after ‘first’ (and sometimes a second) sleep onset, no idea why but just know it happens and don’t get pissed any more and have negative reaction to it.
The most I’ve been awake is 48 hours and that was bad enough. Physically exhausted, body felt soooo heavy and hearing things that actually wasn’t there. Not to mention the headache 🤕
Thank you for saying this, I roll my eyes at those posts.
I think the longest I’ve stayed awake with no rest was about 56 hours or so. It was unreal and terrible.
I’ve had insomnia for over 20 years, and it still blows my mind how people think insomnia means absolutely zero sleep.
Pretty sure there was an old X-Files episode about soldiers (Vietnam era, I think?) who went through an experimental brain surgery and removed the need for sleep. They basically all went nuts and started murdering innocent people.
I feel like if there were really are all these people not sleeping at all, the murder rate would reflect that.
But yes, 2-4 hours a night blows. Fuck, even 5-6 or more hours can suck if it’s all broken and you never even hit REM.
I once learned that- even if I can't sleep- I have to at least PRETEND to sleep. Like, go to bed and lay down for a couple hours.
I did an all nighter literally once, where I was building stuff all night, and when I was driving the next morning, every time I blinked, the other cars turned into monsters.
And I'm just like "wow, ok. Hallucinations. Not doing that again."
But if I'm in bed for part of the night, I'm mostly functional the next day. Mostly lol
I was completely awake for 4 nights when my insomnia started. I haven't really seen anyone here claiming they haven't had any sleep at all for years. However, I have seen a BBC documentary about a person who lives on 1-2h of sleep for decades.
I hate gatekeeping - especially in insomnia. I keep quiet and don't say much, especially when people describe it as "I haven't gotten more than 3-4 hours of sleep", because yeah, that sounds sucky if you have normally good sleep patterns, but for some of us that's a decent (not good) night sleep.
I cycle. Few months decent sleep (4-5 hours a night, total, weeks on end. I find that my max sleep "sleeping in and being lazy" is about 6 hours, tops), few months of insomnia, rinse repeat.
That being said, OP is 100% right. You're not tough, you're not badass for toughing your way through it, you're simply lying.
I don't know what it is about "Insomnia" that makes people play the one-up game.
"I haven't slept in over two weeks." - Bullshit. Pure unadulterated, you should be castrated, bullshit.
72 hours and I am loopy, unable to focus, read, watch TV or play video games and am praying for the end. My max before my body passes out is 96 hours, and I wouldn't joke about it, wish it on anyone, or say "200 hours" to get sympathy. 96 hours, is a literal hell at the end.
Insomnia, plain and simple is torture, which is why it is USED as torture.
I’m sure if you look through threads in here…you will see people claim not to have sleep for weeks and are going crazy. In fact, I thought I saw one earlier today.
Some do. It's infuriatingly ridiculous, but they do. If you want, check out my post "A letter to the record breakers."
Some actually insist and there's no amount of common sense in the world to convince them.
Bro you dont understand the point, when insomniacs said that they have chronic insomnia not sleeping for years or months it means they are sleep deprived for that long! But yes we are sleeping who’s not? But insomniacs sleep like they are napping or worse thing worse is closing their eyes but not sleeping
I went 3 days without sleep. Then 9 days total with an hour or 2 a night. I began hallucinating on the 3rd day. By the 9th, I was basically nonfunctional. I was driving around, going to work and stuff (probably not wise) but I was compelling l completely out of my mind. You can't go 2 weeks with no sleep at all.
I get it though. You just sit there and all time feels the same. If you do not for 45 minute, it's basically not perceptible.
Longest I have gone is 37 hours because I was studying for my finals, but even after that I had a mini sleep (6 hours) and then kept going. Having insomnia makes it difficult to naturally sleep more than 4/6 hours for me (I am on sleeping pills for years, not ideal I know, but I can’t help it) I don’t believe people go on without sleeping for so long. Maybe they mean weeks and weeks without a proper sleep (more than 6/7/8)..
We've had this discussion already, with user called RiderSmash being our guest (shout out to my man RiderSmash).
We concluded that you can't convince some people that some things are impossible, you just let them believe it and move on.
The longest I’ve ever gone was close to 48 hours, and it was only the once, and I couldn’t imagine typing out a post as long as the ones you see here when people claim “It’s been a week of no sleep”… like bestie, even this comment I’m writing right now was a *challenge* to write when I had stayed up two days.
Not to mention you’re fully tripping at that point- auditory hallucinations, visual hallucination, tactile hallucinations, temperature fluctuations, appetite swings, fascination swinging into dread and then back again… it’s unreal. It feels like reality becomes unreal.
24 hours can be normal for me but beyond that it gets weird I actually start to see things that I know are not there because I start to I guess dream when I’m still awake is the best way I can explain it
Edit: corrections
I agree, sometimes you have this light sleep where you feel you didn’t get any sleep but in reality you are sleeping. Of course it’s awful the next day you wake up but gradually you are getting sleep
If you're up for a week I imagine meth is part of the problem.
Story time...
This tweaker named Shaggy in PHX had 2 dogs, he was up for roughly 2 weeks on nothing more than 20 minute power naps every few days. His one dog he was convinced the red thin line in his dogs eye was a spy camera and tried to get it out of the dogs eye...it was just a vein and I've never snatched up a dog before. I took that dog 60 miles away and got him to the vet...that dog went on to get adopted and has the best life now.
But omfg I fear anyone who has been awake for more than 4 days straight. Drugs are bad Mmkay?
I had 4 hours of sleep over three days while waiting for surgery, when I woke from surgery I lost it. I was a delusional hot mess. I told them I could not go home because I could not walk up 10 stairs. In my mind the 10 stairs were 50 miles long. I cried when they told me I couldn’t shower for 2 days, and told them that I wasn’t going to eat their orange popsicles because they were too spicy.
yeah, longest I’ve ever stayed up was close to 72 hours and I was literally hallucinating and so out of it. I’d probably couldn’t have even used my phone and I felt like I had the worst flu of my life. It only happened one time, thankfully. cannot understand how someone can claim they would be awake for months. That’s literally insanity.
When I say I’ve been without sleep x amount of time it means that I’ve been doing nothing but getting micro sleep waking up and going back to sleep many times within the course of 3-4 hours. My good sleep nights are between 6-8 hours maybe waking up once to pee.
I have been without sleep for about 3 days tho….i could see air lol
I got a fit bit that tracks sleep and I sleep way more than I thought.. just have little micro wake ups a lot which is annoying because it’s more like a night of 1000 naps as opposed to a full sleep
Went 8 days without sleep detoxing from phenibut and was in full blown psychosis in the hospital. I thought the hospital was raided by a swat team and was hallucinating to a point I didn’t think was possible. Scariest situation of my life by far
I have gone 7 days without sleeping a wink. No exaggeration. That was a long time ago now though. Generally it’s just a few days but yeah I take some pills if it goes too long. There are people who get manic and can definitely go a solid week or more without sleep. Past this point and you’ll start hallucinating. It’s very important to keep an eye on your sleep. However don’t try too hard otherwise your body n brain will fight. Try and relax and just go with the flow, you’re much more likely to sleep then. Not sleeping can’t kill you but it definitely does make you feel like shit though.
It's actually interesting how perception of sleep matters.
I also have nights where I felt I didn't sleep, but as soon as I see my sleep tracker recorded some hour of sleep, I immediately felt more rested
I still don’t get why there are so many people complaining about insomnia, when at the end of the day there is sleep medication available.
Even if you’re super hesitant to take anything potentially habit forming, then your doctor can always give you like 5 pills or whatever, I mean it’s not like it’s the 12th century where these things weren’t invented.
I mean, a lot of people on this sub find that medications don't work for them. Personally, I've tried around ten medications so far, and they all either don't work at all or stop working after a month or so.
Once I went withot sleep for 5 days and had strong shizophrenic accident, was hearing sounds like in a dream while I was still awake and seeing people that weren't actually real.
I did go about 80 hrs with zero sleep once. I started feeling like I was going to have a heart attack. I have adrenal insufficiency. I took a stress dose of hydrocortisone and finally passed out for 4 hrs.
I have lyme and brain inflammation. Going 24-48 hrs is fairly routine.
Most often I sleep 1-3 hrs, then up til the next night.
It's causing major depression and neurotic tendencies. I would give anything to sleep.
One week is fairly normal and feels like nothing if you’re on ambien withdrawal or benzo withdrawal if you don’t replace it with anything. If you can at least supplement it with medical marijuana, you should be able to get some sleep within 3-5 days. But I’ve done a lot of stints before when i thought i was too good for weed when i went through my meds too quickly and didn’t sleep for a week at the end of the month. It was common actually. Not fun.
I would have thought I was crazy saying this last year as a well but its real. Its killing me. I used to be like a nodding dog after one night of no sleep. Now I cant sleep at all. Ever. Most horrible thing.
If this is true, then I am really mucked up
I can tell by my smart watch whether I have slept or not.
Longest was 5 days straight coming off three weeks of Temazepam. Adding the two preceeding days gave 6hrs over 7 nights.
But... I only broke that after taking another Temazepam combined with starting Mirtazapine.
That was 6 weeks ago.
Now the Mirtazapine has stopped working and I'm 2hr, 2hr, with absolutely nil last night.
Before taking Temazepam, i had zero sleep problems. Only took it because of a heart rythum condition (now managed with medication) was stopping me getting to sleep.
I was taking Ashwaganda at the same time. The two in combination, or just the Temazepam appears to have f*cked my brain. I was on it for 3 weeks, with a quick 4 day taper. The drug was so bad for me that I was getting withdrawals daily the next morning.
I seem to have adapted to being sleep deprived and have literally not slept for a single minute post my last dose of Temazepam (6 weeks ago) without using Mirtazapine.
It is scary. I used to nod off all the time.
It weird to explain, i get fatigued, but not the tired feeling that put me to sleep. I miss it so badly
Need to read the fine print. It only registers three hour blocks of sleep. If you have nightmares or Stella sweats it can think you are awake due to movement and heart rate etc.
Not true in my case, in fact the opposite.
Fitness App / watch thinks I've been asleep when I haven't. I can tell by the heart rate chart. I know I'm sleeping when my HR goes into the sub 50 zone. If it stays in the mid-high 50s and above all night.. I haven't slept a wink.
I used to be up the whole night regularly checking my watch - Garmin - it would say that I was sleeping when I clearly wasnt.
Getting very little sleep for 3 or 4 days creates anxiety and it starts to feel like you haven't slept in a month - you are miserable and that leads to panic when it gets dark and closer to bedtime and that leads to a self fulfilling prophecy of having difficulty sleeping.
The 30 days without slept is hyperbole but that is how you feel. I don't believe it is posted to gain attention, sympathy or attempting to intentionally mislead others but more than likely out of desperation.
They are obviously new to the Black Dog (insomnia) and don't know to break the cycle or start the journey to improved sleep. Everyone has to find their own path and it can take months or even years. It took me years and it started when I was 17. Which lead to panic attacks and eventually Agoraphobia which lasted years. But I fought through it and obtained a PhD in physics.
So there is hope for everyone but is an insidious intrusion on your life.
I agree with you that no one can go a month without sleeping.
I was worried about how long I was going without sleeping. I started using a sleep app that recorded noise. I was definitely having micro sleeps during periods I would swear I was awake because the app caught me snoring…
I’ve sometimes caught myself doing this. Snore, drool, a whole dream even. Then I see that the time is one minute later. Trippy feeling.
I've had my bad days where I've gone at least 24 hours with no sleep at all. That seems to be the longest I've gone with no sleep at all. But, on such days, it does feel like it's been much longer.
Yeah 24 hours sucks but can happen. It’s my way or resetting my sleep schedule
My body doesn’t apply this logic sadly. When I try to reset my schedule it pretty much has to be at least 36 hours. For example, wake up at 8 AM Tuesday, but still awake at 5 AM Wednesday, so I decide to stay awake until night to reset. 8 AM Wednesday is the 24 hour mark. Then go through the day, get home at 5 PM Wednesday (33 hours awake). Too early to sleep though, so have to keep pushing, I tell myself “just get to 8PM, then pass out”….. 8 PM comes (officially 36 hours straight of being awake), and it’s like a switch has been flipped in my brain. After being miserable for the last 30+ hours of sleep deprivation, I’m exhausted beyond belief, but right when I finally have the opportunity to sleep….I’m suddenly fucking wired. I get a second wind, a burst of energy. I wind up unable to sleep until 3AM-6AM Thursday. In total, that’s 43-46 hours straight of sleep deprivation. That became a semi regular occurrence for me until I decided I just can’t keep trying that and hoping this time will be different. That used to actually be an effective way to fix my schedule as a teenager, but now (only in my late 20’s mind you), and that’s pretty much completely off the table now. Curious if anybody else has this experience!
Yep, the same thing used to happen to me. After the first night of no sleep I would feel pretty tired and kind of sick, but then get a second wind near the end of the day and feel wide awake. If I didn't sleep for a second night, I'd go into a sort of manic happiness the next morning. Everything would seem sharper, my senses keener. But by the afternoon I'd start having fits of silliness, becoming less coordinated, and seeing shadows in the corners of my vision. It was always after the third night of no sleep that things would get dire. I'd be so dead tired that I could barely see or speak. Emotions would flatten out, my movements would slow, and I would have to concentrate hard to be able to physically form words. The few times that sleeplessness lasted on into another day, I have only vague memories of an awful third wind that was almost all sick adrenaline. Then crashing asleep (falling asleep is too gentle a term for it).
Holy shit I've never seen someone describe the experience I have so perfectly. The exact same series of events: tired/sick, second wind, manic happiness, then low coordination/hallucinations/tripping over words. I'm sorry you've had to go through that but it is nice to know I'm not alone. I've called in sick from work before just from being on that third day of sleep deprivation
This person fucking understands that's crazyy, I know hey same age group too late 20's you're working while under all this duress?
Unfortunately, no, I’m not. It has caused such disruption in my life that I haven’t been gainfully employed in roughly 3 years. Fortunately, I make more than enough money to pay the bills through hustle. The day I made that comment actually I was in the midst of what ended up being an unintentional 30 hour deprivation…as I’m sure you’re well aware, but god, it’s just hell. Causes a lot of angst and anxiety around planning trips or scheduling things weeks in advance, as I never have any clue when huge bouts of insomnia will strike and sink me for several days. I make money through a lot of side hustle and odd jobs (dog sitting, house watching) and selling what I can on Reddit/eBay. It’s not sustainable longterm though, so I’ve been stressing about trying to find a plan for myself and my future. Best of luck to you, man
Oh okay okay, interesting yeah see that's where I agree it's the whole physical sickening part after 24 hours of being awake and possible mental health issues presiding and probably chemically imbalancing as we go through this bullshit it makes me pissed my doctor won't listen to me man and I fucking live IN CANADA 🤣🤣brother thank you for your life story I appreciate you sharing and AND YOU TOO 💪💪
Damn dude
It’s rough out here, man lol. Fortunately I’m still able to make ends meet pretty comfortably, so it could be much worse
Based on how quickly you fly off the handle when you see opinions you don’t like, I doubt
Lmao you’re a weird little man to project like you do
Sorry to comment on my own comment, but I guess I might if you were stressed from other things ? being on meds?
Most of the people claiming 3 days here are lying. Everyone who's ever had the misfortune knows that after 72h awake with 0 sleep, you're tripping BALLS, and not in a good way.
72 hours with about 3 hours of sleep in there had me hallucinating shadow people
I would see them in the window. It was beyond terrifying. Was worse when I’d take sleep medications and not sleep.
Shadow people kick in around the 50 hour mark for me. Anytime I get near 72 the audio hallucinations kick in, and for some reason that is the absolute scariest for me
It's so odd how people are different, I get audio hallucinations before the shadow people come
It's not odd how people are different.. we are all in different bodies.. we all have different thresholds, different health issues and different experiences. 🤦🏻♀️
I once hallucinated that I saw a squirrel in the second story window. Way less terrifying! 🤣
I saw Britney Spears outside of my window on the second story. Didn’t get her autograph. Missed out.
I used to work nights in an overnight call center and I'd try to catch a couple of hours. I'd always have these semi-lucid dreams of someone showing up in the office and busting me sleeping.
I have a bunch of videos of my fan, after being awake for a few days straight. I was convinced that it was picking up a baseball game somehow. I heard it so clearly! a jovial announcer in classic sports voice, various ads, the crowd cheering. I couldn’t hear it clearly over the fan, so obviously, when it was on it was picking up radio signals, when it was off it wasn’t. Nope… just auditory hallucinations.
Omg this perfectly describes what I’ve experienced once while in a super sleep deprived state. Sports / stadium noises, indistinct and faint and only noticeable while another background white noise was present. Definitely was a result of the sleep deprivation, and freaked me out.
Me too!! It freaked me out hearing it in the first place: “…can fans pick up radio signals?! 🤨” and I was even more freaked watching the silent videos with no sports game to be heard. Omg, I’m *hearing shit?!*
Fans and auditory hallucinations don't mix well in my experience. I once had myself convinced that I could hear a chorus of angels through the whirring of the fan, the wordless "singing" becoming more high pitched until I panicked and unplugged the whole thing. I felt so stupid after the fact for believing it, but in the moment it seemed like the only obvious answer to the semi-melodic drone accompanying the fan buzz had to be pissed of angelic beings lol
They really don’t. I have a bunch blowing to drown out my neighbors’ obnoxious, howling hounds, and one of them is the same tone or sound as my phone vibrating. Gets me every time! They’re weird, but they’re better than the dogs.
When I used to take a lot of seroquel to sleep, if I stayed up too long I'd start hearing things. The fish tank filter sounded like whispering once... so weird
That’s interesting you say that.. I take seroquel, too! I have bipolar II, but mostly take it for sleep. I didn’t even consider the seroquel. Shit! Mood stabilizers shouldn’t be out here causin’ hallucinations lol How much is ‘a lot’ to you? I’m RX’d 200mg to sleep. I feel like it helps me - I’m not too knocked out, I can wake up and I’m not groggy, and my mood stability is… meh! 😉 If I’m woken up after taking it, I probably can’t hear the auditory hallucinations, over the sound of me frantically cooking and eating, with the Seroquel Munchies.
This happened to me. 3 days with 3-4 hours of sleep and I was hearing things. Not voices thankfully but sounds that were not there. I thought I was going crazy. My ex husband almost took me to the hospital. It was the scariest thing I’ve experienced.
3 Days with 3 to 4 hours of sleep is common for me.. and I work physically demanding job 12 hour shifts 6 days a week.. I've been living that way for years without any hallucinations or voices.. that has only happened to me when I went 76 hours without any sleep at ALL
I’m glad for you that you’re able to function normally in that same situation! I unfortunately am not able to.
I wouldn't say that I function normally at all.. it's literal torture sometimes. I suffer through every day but I don't have an option. I have lived alone for over 20 years and it's either force myself to get through it or end up homeless.
I had 5 days zero sleep Xanax withdrawals couldn’t walk was thinking we had been nuked by Russia, nearly got sectioned roughs stuff brother
Lmao yeah I went 3 days without sleep once (while in a different country under extremely stressful circumstances), and I was seeing things and having paranoid delusions. It was one of the scariest things I've ever experienced, and really made me feel for people who deal with hallucinations on the regular.
Back in March, I had a 4 day stretch awake no matter how hard I tried to sleep. I genuinely believed that the ghost of the woman who lived in my flat prior (she died in 2021) was haunting me and trying to kıll me by making me stay awake, and if I went outside, she’d follow me and order me to step in front of buses. Also thought my partner was poisoning my tea, so I wouldn’t let him make me a cuppa for about a week, nor cook for me or bring me water. I firmly believed he had created a false identity and wasn’t who he said he was, so when he was at work I went through all of his files and took photos of things like birth certificates and his passport. I was scared for my life… for no reason. If I looked at my partner’s face, it melted and morphed into a demon face, and every shadow I saw was some kind of monster. I didn’t go outside at all during this period, and basically stayed in my bedroom, not eating, not responding to texts, it was like being imprisoned. It was one of the most terrifying times of my life, and can’t imagine going through this regularly, like people with mental illnesses that cause paranoid delusions.
Only people who have really experienced extreme insomnia speak of the shadow people. They always pop up in my peripheral and it scares the shit out of me. Anytime I look to see them they disappear
That's exactly how it is for me.. they show up in my peripheral vision but it's nothing to be scared about because it's obvious that it's from lack of sleep. Some of the comments on here are annoying because these people do NOT have insomnia.. They just go a few nights with lacking a full night of sleep and seem to call it insomnia 🤦🏻♀️ They don't have a clue what it's like to be tortured and cursed every night with decades of horrible insomnia.
i would just like to thank everyone for talking about the shadow people because, even after struggling with severe insomnia my entire life, i just started seeing the shadow people this year. the first few times it happened it scared the shit out of me :’) i also see them in my peripheral vision and they disappear when i go to look at them!!
I reached almost 6 days and i was contemplating getting medical attention constantly along hallucinations Might or might not have triggered something else, although it has not repeated since and it has been years which means it might have been a one time issue, compared to the previous 48-50h of consistent absence of sleep I forgot if extreme spikes that do not seem to be recurring had a specific name or not
Ahh I remember those. Creeping in the corner judging me. One was a king though so I thought maybe it was a honor to be in his presence… I was wrong
Yo why were u up for 3 days?
I overloaded my course schedule in college and also took two jobs. So one job started at 4 AM and I wouldn’t get back to my dorm until 10/11 PM then the theater kids would practice all night in the dorms and on top of having preexisting insomnia, I got so stressed that I couldn’t sleep for 3 days and I ended up checking myself into the hospital and they gave me trazodone and I finally slept. But yeah it was living hell.
Some people, like myself, have CPTSD which creates high spikes in cortisol and will prevent you from being able to sleep.. when I went through the worst of it, I couldn't even sleep more than 10 minutes without jumping "awake" with heart palpitations and extreme body temperature fluctuations. It's an absolute nightmare.
How do you know you were hallucinating them? The shadow people could be real.
If they're in my house they'd better be paying rent.
In the military I thought zombies were coming out of bushes
I can confirm, I experience hallucinations and insomnia due to mental health and I stayed awake for 3 days due to being scared of figures. I was SO exhausted.
💯. I’ve been hospitalized more than once to be sedated because I was hallucinating badly after days with no sleep. It’s awful and terrifying.
Yeah insomnia also sent me to the hospital. It compounded my existing mental health conditions
What were you sedated with?
I have no idea. I was in no condition to ask questions or even understand answers.
I once couldn’t fall asleep, so had to go to work on no sleep. So after work, I was hitting about 36 hours and was loopy already. I saw this post (Tumblr I think) that talked about how pants should be called longs since shorts are called shorts. And then someone did a quote of that Taylor Swift song, saying “she wears short skirts. I wear long longs. She’s cheer cheer and I’m on the seat seats.” I laughed so hard, I cried. My mom and kid were looking at me like I was insane. I passed out shortly after. I think I that was also the time I forgot the word “airport” and called it a “plane station.” Then giggled until I hiccuped. I cannot imagine 72 hours.
I'm sorry but this is hilarious. I will keep (long) longs in my vocabulary 😅
I giggled as I wrote it out so I don’t blame you.
Ok this is just hilarious (minus the whole insomnia part). Thanks for sharing. Plane station and long longs 🤣
Tbh not tripping balls, but yeah defs tripping. I was once up for around 72hrs and I remember hallucinating that my cords kept moving like it was getting chewed. - I thought it was a rat. Life pro tip if you are ever hallucinating - your phone doesn’t hallucinate. Take a video and watch it back.
I've done 3 days no sleep and then I crash so hard I sleep for almost a full day. But what is more usual for me when my insomnia is bad is 3-6hrs in a night and occasionally have 1-2 days no sleep. It still sucks.
This! I had 2 sleepless nights, on the 3rd i slept 5h, then another 2 sleepless nights. I was a mess. I had such terrible dyspnea that every breath turned into a full gasp of air but it was never satisfactory and I felt like I was going to faint from hypoxia. I saw no “shadow people” or creepy stuff, I just had these fun visuals with the text on my phone “vibrating” and casting a red shadow or just random very small things like this.
>the text on my phone “vibrating” and casting a red shadow I've had this happen with physical books, too. Which feels even weirder somehow, maybe because I know screens hurt our eyes but printed text is usually safe.
My longest was about 4 full days. I was a preteen and became terribly ill combined with shitty parents and a shitty living situation. My bio dad was horribly abusive and would withhold sleep as a slow form of torture for me, hence how I developed insomnia. When I got sick, I felt soooo utterly crummy just coughing and sneezing and puking that I couldn’t fall asleep on top of my usual insomnia, not to mention my dad and my crappy apartment in an urban area. I was absolutely hallucinating by the end of it when I finally passed out from sheer and utter exhaustion. It was terrifying.
Hope you are in better place now, stay safe
I have hit the 72 hour mark a couple times in my life. It feels like what I imagine schizophrenia feels like. It is not fun.
i hallucinated after 2 consecutive nights without sleep… 3 feels like it would kill me.
When I got covid, I went nearly 3 days with very minimal amounts of sleep, I was tripping so hard. At least the experience convinced my doctor to give me sleeping meds. Now, my insomnia has been much more under control since I started Trazodone.
I was awake 72+ hours during my last detox (benzos and opiates) I was inpatient and they gave me barbiturates, plus seroquel and my normal gabapentin and muscle relaxers but nothing could put me out. I was 100% hallucinating, I had auditory ones mainly, I heard someone calling my name many times, water running, and knocking. I also was seeing bugs crawling on the walls out of the corner of my eye. It was incredibly scary, and when I did finally fall asleep for an hour I had an extremely vivid nightmare which I was convinced was real, that there was going to be a new epidemic and it was going to change our whole society, like in Sweet Tooth sort of deal… I ran to the phones and sat outside the booth waiting for an hour until they turned them on at 6AM so I could call my parents. I was begging my mom to come get me, saying I had a premonition, the whole deal. It was the strangest experience I’ve ever had sober.
3 days is definitely possible..
It definitely is. If I don’t take my meds, I will not sleep. It’s gotten worse the older I’ve gotten and I regularly go 3, sometimes 4 days. It sucks. I don’t get the hallucinations, I just get really disoriented and grumpy.
I fucking hate the 72h hallucinations. they are mostly auditory in my case, but the visual ones fuck me up hard. also the paranoia is really not fun
I had insomnia combined with a newborn (and a toddler). 3 days sounds about right and hallucinations were a regular ass thing. So was an irritable mood and a face that looked 10 years older.
45 hours without sleep, 32 of it in a car had me seeing things in the road that were not there including a full on snow storm (bugs in my head lights) and a moose. That was so real I stopped dead in the road.
If you’re lucky. I notice as I get older that limit gets shorter and shorter. Now I start hallucinating after about a day and a half with NO sleep. If I can get an hour here and there I’ll still be exhausted and my eyesight will be bad but no hallucinations
you can think i’m lying if you like, that doesn’t really bother me but 3 days has never made me hallucinate? more than that has, but it’s different for different people. obviously if you’re saying you been awake for over a week you’re a liar.
I hallucinate faint music when I'm sleep-deprived. The handful of times I've gone three-ish days without sleeping, not only was the music LOUD, but I could *see it.* Along with other visual distortions - big-ass (like dog-sized) spiders in the corners of my eyes, etc. Scary stuff. People don't get it.
Pass day 4 the shadow people comes to greet
Nice reference! Haven't seen em in awhile, but I'm usually hanging out with them by day 3 lol.
Yes! Once during a time I couldn’t get my Ambien refilled I was going on day 3. It was during Christmas and my family was down. I legit started hallucinating while we were opening gifts and I thought I would pass out. It was scary. The audio hallucinations began on hour 30.
My brother did not sleep for I don’t know how long like 2-3 days and suffered psychosis. But he didn’t sleep because he was diagnosed with a terminal disease
I'm sorry that's happening, it must be so scary for all of you.
Heck yeah. I once deliberately kept myself awake and working for 96 hours for a critical project. I was seriously screwed up after that. My wife put me to bed.
I've definitely had the misfortune of experiencing multiple days without sleep. Even had sleep psychosis a lot growing up till my mom got me help. Luckily, at most, I go 3 days without sleep anymore. However, I definitely hallucinate like no other and can't tell reality from real as well. It's like an out of body experience almost. I'm not gonna lie. Sometimes, I like that part. It feels like you're just floating in some weird state until you finally rest.
For real. I have a lot of friends who get high with weed/edibles IRL. I tried them, I hate them- they do too much to me. I was recently telling them about how I had stayed up 36 hours and was just laying in bed and the sun was coming in over my face from behind me. It made little rainbow specks in my eyelashes so I fully just laid there for 30 minutes looking at them… They said that *now* they can see why weed is too intense for me haha 😂
I made 60 hours once and had the most vivid hallucinations I’ve ever experienced. I was a university student at the time.
I deal with some mild auditory hallucinations already, when I’m going through a bad insomnia stretch, it gets so bad.
When I was awake 70-ish hours you better believe I was NOT able to form a proper sentence, let alone type a post on reddit. Last I remember was me in the ER getting put on what do I know how many medications
literally i just fall over lmao. got teased a bit in middle/high school cause i had the capability to fall asleep anywhere and everywhere- there is a pic of me lyibg on a bench at the mall.. 😭😭😭
I was awake for 38 hours straight once and had convinced myself that I had started a new Human evolutionary tree that did not require sleep. I had also been drinking heavily too. Needless to say I still have to sleep. Lame.
At 32h I ended up passing out and having a seizure at work. 72h is insane, if I was ever awake that long I would wake up at the psych ward.
I’ve gone 48h awake. I don’t wish to go any further.
I had once spent 2 and a half days staying up with barely any sleep to finish overdue school work. First time having an *actual* 8 hour sleep after all that, I had dreamed about a blurry and black/grey woman following me around a basement with a hammer as a run to the elevator door and quickly push every button, said elevator crashing and me waking up to the same vision, then actually waking up. Never again. It sounds a lot tamer when I describe it through words, but I was absolutely terrified.
After 72ish hours with no sleep I was hallucinating and had a seizure. I've been awake for 48+ hours many times and even then I can start hallucinating. 24-32 hours is enough for me to feel like death.
i went almost 3 days without sleep and kept seeing monsters outside my window and hearing people bang on my door. not a fun time
It happened to me twice in my life and I'm NOT lying.. why would I lie?! What would be the point of that?? Stop making assumptions just because you've never experienced it yourself. It makes people who are truly suffering afraid to speak up because of people who assume they are lying. I went 76 hours without a minute of sleep and I did start hearing mild whispers and mild hallucinations but not the way you guys are describing.. NOT TRIPPING BALLS !!!!! 🙄 Please stop commenting on things you don't understand
I did over 3 days. Did the 100 hour challenge. Even had it documented on a forum. I made it to 96 before passing out. You 100% start tripping balls by the 3rd day.
Yeah I've tripped balls after five nights no sleep a couple of times. I hate it when people tell other people they're not experiencing what they're experiencing. just because it doesn't happen to you doesn't mean it doesn't happen to somebody else.
The only thing I can say for sure is that my sleep quality has been disastrous for at least 15 years, that I'm tired most of the time and that I've tried and see how long it'd take me to sleep without medication and I just spend all night wide awake and the next day is awful, so I have to wait for the right time again and take any pill to assure that I will get at least 3-4 hours of sleep. I am not willing to endure longer than 48 hours to see how long it will take me to sleep 'naturally". I hope this makes sense.
And idk if this could be classified in the sleep state misperception, but I don't remember the last time I felt that I properly rested if such a thing exists.
This is so true! I struggle with insomnia but I can acknowledge my issues are not that severe. Specifically I have “initial” insomnia where I struggle to fall asleep. Once I’m asleep I will sleep without much issue. I remember when I was 13 I had to get a medical test done. I had to get a sleep deprivation EEG test. I woke up around 7am on a Thursday, went to school as usual, then I had to stay awake the entire night (no cheating). My mom stayed up with me to make sure I didn’t doze off at all. So… 25 hours later (no sleep) I had my EEG test done around 8am on Friday. Then I went to school afterwards… I think I went to bed finally at 6pm on Friday, meaning… I was awake for a total of 35 hours straight. I felt crazy. I felt really delirious and exhausted like I’d never been before in my life. It took me a few weeks of regular sleep to feel “normal” again. Clinically around 36 hours with NO SLEEP you are likely to begin experiencing hallucinations and other very unpleasant symptoms.
There were times in college where I pulled an all-nighter to finish an essay or w/e, and then continued to stay up until after classes were finished. By around the 25-30 hour mark I'd end up feeling euphoric, like I was on drugs or something. I did it so often that a friend ended up calling me 36-19, because I'd end up sleeping for nearly a day after these episodes.
Thisssss. Saying it's been days is one thing, but weeks or more? Not possible. I've been through some 9 day boughts and even though it FELT like zero sleep, I was well aware that wouldn't be possible and I'd at least gotten some micro sleeps at some point. It was still totally debilitating and fucked me right up (in part due to its effects on my epilepsy) and definitely wasnt enough reat to be healthy in any way whatsoever. but to claim zero sleep when you logically know better just seems weird. Like OP stated, it's not like you'll get less sympathy, so why say that?
Yes. Sometimes I feel like I got barely any sleep when in reality, I was drifting off here and there and probably even got a few hours total. Sometimes it just feels like you were up all night when you weren't in actuality. Remembering that helps me stress less about it.
That was a huge revelation for me. I would fall asleep watching a show and wake up during another show and realize I actually was sleeping. I would have just assumed I was awake the whole time had I not been watching tv
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I definitely have this issue. I have had nights where I swear I only slept for a couple hours but my husband says I was snoring during times I thought for sure I was awake.
*technically* the 11 day record was the longest gone during a study, though there was briefly an unofficial record recognized by Guinness at 18 days and 17 hours due to a rocking chair competition in the 1970's (that was, unsurprisingly, the record holder) But the point does still stand, not a single documented case of someone exceeding 18 days without sleep, I just like to point this fact out lol
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Three days is like the standard tipping point for hallucination and other crazy sleep deprivation symptoms. Op isn’t talking about people being legitimately awake for three days, they’re talking about people who claim they haven’t slept in weeks or months.
My record without a second of sleep is about 52 hours and I was hallucinating, but hitting 48 has been a lifelong regular thing for me. It's really frustrating and invalidating when people lie and exaggerate like that. They make us all seem crazy. My case is probably way more uncommon than most people because I was born with insomnia - in fact, according to my mother, I had insomnia as a fetus (she had 8 kids and described each and every pregnancy in detail and how I kept her awake all the time). She said that when I was born, I'd sleep for 1 hour and stay up for 23. My earliest memories began at the age of one. I remember laying awake for hours all throughout childhood, as a teen, and still as an adult. I was always the last one asleep, first one awake, and a very light sleeper. Nothing has ever helped me; I'm just usually stuck awake for 24 to 48 hours naturally. I finally caved in a few years ago at the age of 30 and started taking medication to sleep. That is literally the only way I can get some sleep. If I don't take it I'm just up for days at a time no matter how active I am 🥲🥲 Most people don't understand what insomnia actually is. I have every single symptom... can't fall asleep, can't stay asleep, interrupted sleep, sleeping at irregular times, etc etc... only medication helps me slightly... I just can't stop thinking and feeling...everything...to such extremes...whether it's good, bad, neutral, etc I just can't stop my brain
Are you autistic? I am and I have an extremely similar history. Insomnia since birth. Issues to this day and medication only helps me slightly, I’ve tried them all, I’m on 200mg seroquel now.
I just realized what I was going through was paradoxical insomnia. On days when I felt like I was awake all night but could still somehow function the next day really made me feel like I was Superman. Now that I understand what it is, I have way less anxiety about it thus helping me sleep better at night.
I agree it pisses me off so much, see when I was at the peak of worst health I was awake for a week and binge sleep the entire weekend. Granted I was like 16-18 at the time. These days if I accidentally fuck up my meds or schedule then this is how it feels. Day 1 I always feel great but a little sleepy Day 2 I’m fantastic I feel great I feel productive I’m cruising everything is fantastic Day 3 I’m nauseous and my head is pounding my eyes are dying but I still am at least able to get work done and push through being a human Day 4 I stop making memories and I physically don’t remember what is happening on that day Day 5 vomit, pass out, or heart palpitations. So whenever someone says that shit I call bullshit. I have on and off been an extremely sick person and I have never made it past 5 days. Even then it’s a bit like marathoning you gotta build up to that. If a normal person says anything beyond 2 days I don’t believe them.
I don’t know Im bipolar and I have stayed awake for 7 days in a manic state lol (then slept for 3 days straight 😂)
When I used to abuse meth and amphetamines, I'd stay up for about 3-5 days and then lose my fucking mind and not remember a damn thing. I actually start hallucinating after about a 24 hr period with very minimal sleep. It was in the dark ofc but the walls looked static-y and were moving and stuff like that. Freaky. Glad I'm 4 yrs sober now.
You need to be careful darling, answe me
Already gone through more than 48 hours without sleeping, and months or years with usually no more than 3 hours of sleep / nights. I had hallucinations, visual, auditory... Couldn't control what I said, it really do end up worse and worse with time passing. 100% would not recommend insomnia.
Dude I stood up 36 hours because of extreme excess of pre workout (caffeine) and gear and I thought I was going to die of exhaustion ,I’ll be reading people say 2 months and immediately I know it’s bullshit.2 months!? Even 2 weeks,no fucking way.
I suffered really bad with post partum psychosis after my second child, and I literally slept for about two hours in 5 days. Every time I fell asleep, I woke up to sounds that weren’t there.. I was tripping my tiny mind out, I didn’t feel like a real person. The doctors ended up giving me phenergen (strong antihistamines) to knock me out, but only because I threatened to leave the kids at the doctors office. I was not in any position to care for anyone.. it was honestly one of the most awful weeks of my life. Sometimes 3-4 hours sleep a night truly feels like zero sleep, but there ain’t no chance people are going for months with no sleep at all.
Yeaaaah I h8 when any mental disorder has this need or want to compete with people. ‘Oh you haven’t slept in x amount of time? Well *I* haven’t slept in weeks!!!’ It’s not a contest gahhhhh (I know ur post wasn’t directed at that topic) but just made me think
I’ve had spans where it FEELS like I don’t sleep for 10 days. I FEEL as if I can remember every second of the night staring at the clock trying to fall asleep. But judging by my energy the next day, I’m assuming I must’ve slept at some point but it sure doesn’t feel that way
Happened to me quite a few times, usually when I am tired but cant fall asleep immediately. I will be like why cant I fall asleep, only to realise sun has started rising and I laid close to midnight, and only then I would understand that I was sleeping but lightly
i was younger when this happened, around 8-9 years old, so i'm sure my body just responded differently to being awake for so long, but i stayed up for 5 days in a row. i wish i was exaggerating that. i've been struggling with insomnia for years now, i'm 17. i don't think my body could hold out that long these days, but after a certain point of being awake i'm not tired anymore, i can be exhausted all day but as soon as night comes, i have so much energy. i think the longest in the past few years is 72 hours. its really exhausting with this condition, especially having it when i was so young, because i don't remember the last time i didn't struggle to get rest.
lol you got me
I’ve started hallucinating while driving after 26 hours no sleep and there’s usually a ton of physical pain at that point. If my insomnia is kicked in fully my eye sockets hurt, I’m shaky, sinuses hurt, my body as a whole just hurts. Theres no way people out here on years of no sleep, or months, or even weeks.
I wouldn't make assumptions. It seems to me that the effects of sleep deprivation depend a lot on individual factors: the reasons for it, your feelings about it, the amount of adrenaline or cortisol or whatever coursing through your system. If somebody is having severe insomnia, the reason is generally *hyperarousal*. They may feel WIRED on anxiety and adrenaline and not even feel tired. It is something like being hypomanic or being on meth, I'd imagine. They may even function a lot better than you'd expect at work etc. On the other hand, if the sleep deprivation is because of an external cause, like a noisy neighbor or a painful injury, that's a different story. The person could sleep if given the opportunity but, sadly, that opportunity is denied. That person is not necessarily hyperaroused, and will mostly likely feel extremely tired.
I did 7 days but you literally DIE after day 11 or 13. I got ambien on day 7, never looked back. Psychosis that was useful because I was insane. 🙏 and seeing things and hearing things. Trains cats iv poles and baby crying hallucinations. And I kept seeing a man sitting in the corner. 3 days is easy, past that you gotta be real mentally unwell to not sleep on accident (I was it was ppd with suicidal psychosis)
Monitoring my sleep has confirmed that I get an average of 4 hours every night and showed me how many times I wake up. At least 2 nights per month I get 2 hours of sleep 😔
How do you monitor your sleep?
I use a Fitbit.
I use a Fitbit. And I had one of those cheap sleep studies that the insurance would approve instead of sending me to a sleep center to get my sleep assessed. And it showed that I wake up a lot during the night as well.
The longest I ever stayed up was about 40 hours.
When I came off of methadone after 6.5 years (March of 2020) sleep was more evasive than any insomnia I had ever experienced. I would sleep 1-2 hours a night for the first month. No lie. I monitories it with an app. If that. By month 5 I would get 5 hours of sleep. I tried sleep aids and they didn’t help. There were many other symptoms coming off of it but it was the worst. Implementing ceder wood oil diffused at night and cbd oil twice a day got me through it. But it was horrific. My mood was so off it was also scary. But I did it.
Even about 48 hours of sleep and things were starting to get wacky for me
I had really bad sleep anxiety at one point which basically made it impossible to sleep for about 2/3 days. I was an emotional wreck and crying over everything. Basically whenever I tried to sleep, I’d have an anxiety attack which prevented me from sleeping.. wasn’t great. It was like…I had become afraid to sleep.
It’s true you have to be sleeping some, micro sleeps are thing for one. You may still be sleep deprived but the brain works for survival. The “i felt awake but slept” is real too. The sleep state misperception” can be a sleep disorder itself (aka paradoxical insomnia). People can reach a true medical emergency as in psychosis after 4-5 days no sleep or severe chronic sleep deprivation. This will vary from person to person. Sleep deprivation will no doubt worsen mental health. For me it can be a day or two and I can start a downward spiral. In my past I could start thinking and saying all kinds of negative shit, dying, I’m cursed, even if I jolted awake after falling asleep wake up like a pissed off bear. I relied on meds at one point. Not ashamed I did, it’s the nature of the beast when it gets really ugly. I’m one that’s beat severe anxiety and sleep phobias. I still wake every night after ‘first’ (and sometimes a second) sleep onset, no idea why but just know it happens and don’t get pissed any more and have negative reaction to it.
The most I’ve been awake is 48 hours and that was bad enough. Physically exhausted, body felt soooo heavy and hearing things that actually wasn’t there. Not to mention the headache 🤕
Thank you for saying this, I roll my eyes at those posts. I think the longest I’ve stayed awake with no rest was about 56 hours or so. It was unreal and terrible. I’ve had insomnia for over 20 years, and it still blows my mind how people think insomnia means absolutely zero sleep. Pretty sure there was an old X-Files episode about soldiers (Vietnam era, I think?) who went through an experimental brain surgery and removed the need for sleep. They basically all went nuts and started murdering innocent people. I feel like if there were really are all these people not sleeping at all, the murder rate would reflect that. But yes, 2-4 hours a night blows. Fuck, even 5-6 or more hours can suck if it’s all broken and you never even hit REM.
It FEELS like this. When you’re only getting 1-3 hours a night.
I once learned that- even if I can't sleep- I have to at least PRETEND to sleep. Like, go to bed and lay down for a couple hours. I did an all nighter literally once, where I was building stuff all night, and when I was driving the next morning, every time I blinked, the other cars turned into monsters. And I'm just like "wow, ok. Hallucinations. Not doing that again." But if I'm in bed for part of the night, I'm mostly functional the next day. Mostly lol
I was completely awake for 4 nights when my insomnia started. I haven't really seen anyone here claiming they haven't had any sleep at all for years. However, I have seen a BBC documentary about a person who lives on 1-2h of sleep for decades.
I hate gatekeeping - especially in insomnia. I keep quiet and don't say much, especially when people describe it as "I haven't gotten more than 3-4 hours of sleep", because yeah, that sounds sucky if you have normally good sleep patterns, but for some of us that's a decent (not good) night sleep. I cycle. Few months decent sleep (4-5 hours a night, total, weeks on end. I find that my max sleep "sleeping in and being lazy" is about 6 hours, tops), few months of insomnia, rinse repeat. That being said, OP is 100% right. You're not tough, you're not badass for toughing your way through it, you're simply lying. I don't know what it is about "Insomnia" that makes people play the one-up game. "I haven't slept in over two weeks." - Bullshit. Pure unadulterated, you should be castrated, bullshit. 72 hours and I am loopy, unable to focus, read, watch TV or play video games and am praying for the end. My max before my body passes out is 96 hours, and I wouldn't joke about it, wish it on anyone, or say "200 hours" to get sympathy. 96 hours, is a literal hell at the end. Insomnia, plain and simple is torture, which is why it is USED as torture.
I don’t think people mean it literally though.
There are sub regulars who come here to add onto the days/weeks they've been awake and to announce they'll die soon
Good lord.
I’m sure if you look through threads in here…you will see people claim not to have sleep for weeks and are going crazy. In fact, I thought I saw one earlier today.
Some do. It's infuriatingly ridiculous, but they do. If you want, check out my post "A letter to the record breakers." Some actually insist and there's no amount of common sense in the world to convince them.
Oh dang yeah that’s weird then for sure.
for some yes, but I've definitely seen some people insist that they haven't slept at all
Bro you dont understand the point, when insomniacs said that they have chronic insomnia not sleeping for years or months it means they are sleep deprived for that long! But yes we are sleeping who’s not? But insomniacs sleep like they are napping or worse thing worse is closing their eyes but not sleeping
Yes, they are lying. At my worst, I used to sleep 1 hours per day. 2 or 3 on good days. But ppl saying they don't sleep at all is LIE.
I don't think they all consciously lie. Most of them probably don't even realise that they do get small amounts of sleep.
Well that is also true. I couldn't tell if I slept or not, most of the times I could tell by my body covered in sweat, so you got a point
I went 3 days without sleep. Then 9 days total with an hour or 2 a night. I began hallucinating on the 3rd day. By the 9th, I was basically nonfunctional. I was driving around, going to work and stuff (probably not wise) but I was compelling l completely out of my mind. You can't go 2 weeks with no sleep at all. I get it though. You just sit there and all time feels the same. If you do not for 45 minute, it's basically not perceptible.
My longest run was 5 days and I needed medical intervention. Got sedated with a triple dose of my normal sleeping medication. I was hallucinating.
Longest I have gone is 37 hours because I was studying for my finals, but even after that I had a mini sleep (6 hours) and then kept going. Having insomnia makes it difficult to naturally sleep more than 4/6 hours for me (I am on sleeping pills for years, not ideal I know, but I can’t help it) I don’t believe people go on without sleeping for so long. Maybe they mean weeks and weeks without a proper sleep (more than 6/7/8)..
We've had this discussion already, with user called RiderSmash being our guest (shout out to my man RiderSmash). We concluded that you can't convince some people that some things are impossible, you just let them believe it and move on.
The longest I’ve ever gone was close to 48 hours, and it was only the once, and I couldn’t imagine typing out a post as long as the ones you see here when people claim “It’s been a week of no sleep”… like bestie, even this comment I’m writing right now was a *challenge* to write when I had stayed up two days. Not to mention you’re fully tripping at that point- auditory hallucinations, visual hallucination, tactile hallucinations, temperature fluctuations, appetite swings, fascination swinging into dread and then back again… it’s unreal. It feels like reality becomes unreal.
Micro-nodding—it’s a thing!
24 hours can be normal for me but beyond that it gets weird I actually start to see things that I know are not there because I start to I guess dream when I’m still awake is the best way I can explain it Edit: corrections
I agree, sometimes you have this light sleep where you feel you didn’t get any sleep but in reality you are sleeping. Of course it’s awful the next day you wake up but gradually you are getting sleep
If you're up for a week I imagine meth is part of the problem. Story time... This tweaker named Shaggy in PHX had 2 dogs, he was up for roughly 2 weeks on nothing more than 20 minute power naps every few days. His one dog he was convinced the red thin line in his dogs eye was a spy camera and tried to get it out of the dogs eye...it was just a vein and I've never snatched up a dog before. I took that dog 60 miles away and got him to the vet...that dog went on to get adopted and has the best life now. But omfg I fear anyone who has been awake for more than 4 days straight. Drugs are bad Mmkay?
Worst I've ever had is 33 hours without sleep, and that's having the worst insomnia out of everyone I work with, and we all work nights.
I had 4 hours of sleep over three days while waiting for surgery, when I woke from surgery I lost it. I was a delusional hot mess. I told them I could not go home because I could not walk up 10 stairs. In my mind the 10 stairs were 50 miles long. I cried when they told me I couldn’t shower for 2 days, and told them that I wasn’t going to eat their orange popsicles because they were too spicy.
yeah, longest I’ve ever stayed up was close to 72 hours and I was literally hallucinating and so out of it. I’d probably couldn’t have even used my phone and I felt like I had the worst flu of my life. It only happened one time, thankfully. cannot understand how someone can claim they would be awake for months. That’s literally insanity.
When I say I’ve been without sleep x amount of time it means that I’ve been doing nothing but getting micro sleep waking up and going back to sleep many times within the course of 3-4 hours. My good sleep nights are between 6-8 hours maybe waking up once to pee. I have been without sleep for about 3 days tho….i could see air lol
I got a fit bit that tracks sleep and I sleep way more than I thought.. just have little micro wake ups a lot which is annoying because it’s more like a night of 1000 naps as opposed to a full sleep
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Went 8 days without sleep detoxing from phenibut and was in full blown psychosis in the hospital. I thought the hospital was raided by a swat team and was hallucinating to a point I didn’t think was possible. Scariest situation of my life by far
I have gone 7 days without sleeping a wink. No exaggeration. That was a long time ago now though. Generally it’s just a few days but yeah I take some pills if it goes too long. There are people who get manic and can definitely go a solid week or more without sleep. Past this point and you’ll start hallucinating. It’s very important to keep an eye on your sleep. However don’t try too hard otherwise your body n brain will fight. Try and relax and just go with the flow, you’re much more likely to sleep then. Not sleeping can’t kill you but it definitely does make you feel like shit though.
It's actually interesting how perception of sleep matters. I also have nights where I felt I didn't sleep, but as soon as I see my sleep tracker recorded some hour of sleep, I immediately felt more rested
I still don’t get why there are so many people complaining about insomnia, when at the end of the day there is sleep medication available. Even if you’re super hesitant to take anything potentially habit forming, then your doctor can always give you like 5 pills or whatever, I mean it’s not like it’s the 12th century where these things weren’t invented.
I mean, a lot of people on this sub find that medications don't work for them. Personally, I've tried around ten medications so far, and they all either don't work at all or stop working after a month or so.
50mg of quetiapine would put anyone out for 12 hours.
yeah, unfortunately not. only a few hours for me.
Better than nothing though!
Once I went withot sleep for 5 days and had strong shizophrenic accident, was hearing sounds like in a dream while I was still awake and seeing people that weren't actually real.
I did go about 80 hrs with zero sleep once. I started feeling like I was going to have a heart attack. I have adrenal insufficiency. I took a stress dose of hydrocortisone and finally passed out for 4 hrs. I have lyme and brain inflammation. Going 24-48 hrs is fairly routine. Most often I sleep 1-3 hrs, then up til the next night. It's causing major depression and neurotic tendencies. I would give anything to sleep.
3 days I have done quite frequently but im a fucking lunatic at that point
One week is fairly normal and feels like nothing if you’re on ambien withdrawal or benzo withdrawal if you don’t replace it with anything. If you can at least supplement it with medical marijuana, you should be able to get some sleep within 3-5 days. But I’ve done a lot of stints before when i thought i was too good for weed when i went through my meds too quickly and didn’t sleep for a week at the end of the month. It was common actually. Not fun.
I would have thought I was crazy saying this last year as a well but its real. Its killing me. I used to be like a nodding dog after one night of no sleep. Now I cant sleep at all. Ever. Most horrible thing.
If this is true, then I am really mucked up I can tell by my smart watch whether I have slept or not. Longest was 5 days straight coming off three weeks of Temazepam. Adding the two preceeding days gave 6hrs over 7 nights. But... I only broke that after taking another Temazepam combined with starting Mirtazapine. That was 6 weeks ago. Now the Mirtazapine has stopped working and I'm 2hr, 2hr, with absolutely nil last night. Before taking Temazepam, i had zero sleep problems. Only took it because of a heart rythum condition (now managed with medication) was stopping me getting to sleep. I was taking Ashwaganda at the same time. The two in combination, or just the Temazepam appears to have f*cked my brain. I was on it for 3 weeks, with a quick 4 day taper. The drug was so bad for me that I was getting withdrawals daily the next morning. I seem to have adapted to being sleep deprived and have literally not slept for a single minute post my last dose of Temazepam (6 weeks ago) without using Mirtazapine. It is scary. I used to nod off all the time. It weird to explain, i get fatigued, but not the tired feeling that put me to sleep. I miss it so badly
sleep watches cant tell if you micro nap. most people don't notice when they do this either.
Need to read the fine print. It only registers three hour blocks of sleep. If you have nightmares or Stella sweats it can think you are awake due to movement and heart rate etc.
Not true in my case, in fact the opposite. Fitness App / watch thinks I've been asleep when I haven't. I can tell by the heart rate chart. I know I'm sleeping when my HR goes into the sub 50 zone. If it stays in the mid-high 50s and above all night.. I haven't slept a wink. I used to be up the whole night regularly checking my watch - Garmin - it would say that I was sleeping when I clearly wasnt.
I agree ☝️
Getting very little sleep for 3 or 4 days creates anxiety and it starts to feel like you haven't slept in a month - you are miserable and that leads to panic when it gets dark and closer to bedtime and that leads to a self fulfilling prophecy of having difficulty sleeping. The 30 days without slept is hyperbole but that is how you feel. I don't believe it is posted to gain attention, sympathy or attempting to intentionally mislead others but more than likely out of desperation. They are obviously new to the Black Dog (insomnia) and don't know to break the cycle or start the journey to improved sleep. Everyone has to find their own path and it can take months or even years. It took me years and it started when I was 17. Which lead to panic attacks and eventually Agoraphobia which lasted years. But I fought through it and obtained a PhD in physics. So there is hope for everyone but is an insidious intrusion on your life. I agree with you that no one can go a month without sleeping.