A question about staying up for long periods of time

mp3guy

Me and a couple of friends are off down to his mobile home for a week in august, and were gonna see who can stay awake the most days. Of course the losers will have to pay up some amount of cash. Things like red bull and coffee will be allowed, but i'm just wondering about the effects this would have on our health? Whats the longest anyones stayed up, whats it like, and should i go the red bull route?

Sarky

Are you serious?

Sleep deprivation is not good for you.

If you don't actually go far enough to die from exhaustion, expect headaches, (occasionally painful) muscle spasms, shivers, loss of any coherence whatsoever,, memory loss, and the next month or so of your life to be really wierd and inconvenient regarding your sleep patterns. Oh, and hallucinations. Not the nice kind.

Wertz

Wouldn't it be more fun to see who can get the drunkest and the winners get to have their eyebrows shaved?
Cheating sleep should only be done after copious amounts of illegal stimulants have been ingested...

Lump

You start seeing things. And being in a mobile home with nothing to do (Like save lives in the case of a doctor) will be very very hard to stay awake. Your body will put you to sleep when it looses energy.... IE, before you die.

John

AdMMM

Some links:

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro01/web3/Ledoux.html
http://www.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/09/20/sleep.deprivation/
http://sleepdisorders.about.com/od/dangersofsleeploss/index_a.htm

Longest I've gone is 3 and a half days and never again. For 2 of those days I was walking around like I was drunk, my mind wasn't functioning properly and my body wouldnt do what I wanted to do with it because my brain was so tired. I managed to do that without the help of any excess caffeine (i.e not more than usual) but you can overdose on caffeine. Excessive ingestion of caffeine can result in increased blood pressure and pulse, increased urine production, tightening or constricting of superficial blood vessels (sometimes resulting in cold hands or fingers), increased amounts of fatty acids in the blood, increased production of stomach acid.

AdMMM

And I found this article humourous, it lists the symptoms of caffeine overdose:

Symptoms:
Adults

* body as a whole
o difficulty sleeping
o muscle twitching
o confusion
o in and out of consciousness
o increased urination
o increased thirst
o death
o fever
* respiratory
o difficulty breathing
* gastrointestinal
o vomiting
o diarrhea
* heart and blood vessels
o irregular heartbeat
o rapid heart beat
* nervous system
o hallucinations
o dizziness
o convulsions

I like how "death" is a symptom of it

SpAcEd OuT

ive done this before after 2 days I was getting audio and visual hallucinations its not fukin fun

mp3guy

|.Murderer.| wrote:

And I found this article humourous, it lists the symptoms of caffeine overdose:



I like how "death" is a symptom of it

right, i'll stay away from caffiene, just go the natural way.

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

Sparky

longest i went without sleep was 36 hrs, id never do it again. For a whole week, my brain was lazy, i was lazy it was like extreme jet lag, if i tried to type i made small silly mistakes and never noticed untill i read it again. drinking coffee or red bull gave me a worser headache than i allready had
not to mention my sleep pattern was upset for about 3 weeks

experience it once then thats it, never again.

SoupyNorman

SpAcEd OuT wrote:

ive done this before after 2 days I was getting audio and visual hallucinations its not fukin fun

The hallucinating is actually you dreaming while you are awake, the brain needs to dream in order to sort out all its neurons and tings. Think of it like if you dont eat for days and days the body will start to use up the reserves of fat and muscle, all you can do to stop that is by eating, likewise by sleeping you will stop the real kind of day dreaming!

Sarky

I thought that was just a crappy Star Trek plot device...

Naos

What type of hallucinations are these exactly.. Be fun to try out despite the other negatives.

To the OP, go for it and let us know how you get on.

mp3guy

Mear wrote:

What type of hallucinations are these exactly.. Be fun to try out despite the other negatives.

To the OP, go for it and let us know how you get on.

Will do, we'll only be there for 6 days, so thats the longest i could theoretically stay up

monkeyfudge

I went 3 nights without sleep back when I was in college.

The college screwed me over and allocated me all my studio time the 3 days before the deadline for the end of year project. So I'd record during the day and edit at home by night.

As was said previously it feels alot like being drunk. Halucinations do occur after a time... I seem to remember I kept catching climpses of white rabbits.

But I got my project finished in the end... it possibly turned out even more abstract than I'd originally intended.

Oh.. and depriving yourself of sleep for no reason does sound like a bad idea... Although if you're drinking booze at the same time I doubt you'll last that long at all.

mp3guy

monkeyfudge wrote:

Oh.. and depriving yourself of sleep for no reason does sound like a bad idea... Although if you're drinking booze at the same time I doubt you'll last that long at all.

Well, theres money involved. And, no, won't be drinking

monkeyfudge

mp3guy wrote:

Well, theres money involved. And, no, won't be drinking

Sounds like a waste of a perfectly good week to me...

Sparky

monkeyfudge wrote:

Sounds like a waste of a perfectly good week to me...

yeah it really does 6 days FFS, could'nt you find something better to do.

mp3guy

Sparky_S wrote:

yeah it really does 6 days FFS, could'nt you find something better to do.

well, come on, its wexford. what am i supposed to do there?

Sparky

mp3guy wrote:

well, come on, its wexford. what am i supposed to do there?

Ask Le Rack she lives there

mp3guy

alright, lets hope she reads this topic

kjt

Go for a nap?

I stayed up there last week for 52hours no probs. Me and a mate were having fun till about 4/5am and didnt see the point in heading to bed cuz it was so early. I had a nice 13hr sleep that night though.