Who needs sleep?

[Slife]

Actually, sleep needs to vary quite a bit from person to person. Some lucky people only have to sleep four hours a night. Quite understandibly, other people often seem lazy to them. Why complain about a ten hour shift when it means you get half your day off?

 

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

I really wish I was one of those people-- if I don't get my full 8 hours I become a totally different--totally undesirable--person.

 

[knitnerd]

Well... at this moment, I am not really lacking in the department of sleep. Really, I rarely am.

See, I suffer from a little disease I like to refer to as "old woman-ism"--it's a technical term. Symptoms are as such: I generally go to bed at ridiculously early hours and, if I don't, I simply fall asleep in whatever strange place I happen to be in at the time. This also means that I spend a lot of game time not really knowing what I'm rolling for... just picking up my trusty d20 and sleepily tossing it onto the table, at the same time handing my character sheet to someone to add whatever modifier is appropriate.

Despite being terribly annoying, it has made me the center of some interesting stories even if I wasn't awake to experience them!

But, I am curious about those of you that actually can go more than 18 hours without collapsing...

What's the longest you've gone without sleep? Did you notice any freaky reactions of the mind or body (aside from extreme tiredness)?

I am also an "old woman" who sometimes falls asleep at the game table but I blamed it on a 40 year habit of getting up before 6 A.M. When games last until 3 or 4 in the morning, people who sleep till noon are fine but we early birds are worn out.

 

[Black Omega]

I once did 62 hours straight in with no worse effects than mild paranoia and seeing the shadows move out of the corners of my eyes. More recently at Gencon I was up at 8 A.M., stayed over that night to catch some things in the 24 hour anime rooms, then the next day didn't get to sleep until midnight. so about 40 hours then. but saw some cool anime.

 

[Dakkareth]

Well, I stayed up for about 36-40 hours a few times, mostly just for the heck of it, but I don't do it often - unless well provided with caffeine, etc I tend to be far below my usual mental capabilities and as I don't like overusing caffeine, I usually don't do it. Hell, if I don't get 8-9 hours of sleep I need to get it back on the weekend. I wish, I was one of those lucky people, who only need like 4 hours of sleep - I like working, when everybody else is asleep, but usually it means being whacked the other day :s

As for symptoms - after staying up 24 hours my mental faculties decline and after 36 hours I just can't concentrate anymore - bad enough, that reading or even watching TV is hardly possible or likely to have me understand a thing.

 

[BOZ]

i'm certainly not as young as i once was... i get sleepy after 11... sometimes even after 10! if the game goes past midnight, i sometimes have to go home early.

 

[Duncan Haldane]

Once, many years ago, I was nodding off during a Traveller game.
I looked at a (digital) clock and saw time. The party were trying to figure out how to block a hatch to stop the alien monster from consuming the party.
I had my eyes closed as the conversation continued.
They talked about it for a while, and finally I said something constructive.
The DM said "oh, you're awake!"
I said "I was never asleep. "
I looked at the clock. It was exactly one hour after I'd last looked at it. I accused the DM of having put it forward to trick me. I asked how could an hour have passed while they were still talking about blocking a hatch. They told me this was the second one - the alien had gotten through the first they'd tried to block.

It was odd. I never realised that I'd slept, but for exactly an hour I had.

Duncan

 

[Ao the Overkitty]

I've gone about 48 hours without sleep a couple of times. I've gone 24-36 hours without sleep a LOT more often. Most of those can be attributed to either long car rides while in my teens or paper writing & gaming sessions in my college days. For the car rides, we'd often have long trips where we'd rotate drivers. I used to have problems sleeping in cars and didn't have a license yet, so it was my job to keep the driver awake. We'd get pretty loopy by the 20th hour of a 24-26 hour trip.

Typically, I'm an 8-9 hour sleep kinda guy. Anything more or less leaves me sleepy. Caffeine perks me up for a very short amount of time (hour max). Then it just leaves me very sluggish, but awake for another 6 or 7. S'why I avoid it if at all possible.

Additionally, there is nothing weirder than going to work one day and getting off the next: it messes with your brain.

Oh yeah. I have no clue what day of the week it is, most of the time. I set my alarm this morning cause I had to be somewhere this afternoon and 'didn't want to deal with rush hour traffic.' It wasn't until after I had gotten up that I realized there was no such traffic on a sunday.

Also, there is the whole thing of understanding the printed schedule for the week. At work, the schedule shows the days you're working as the days that most of your hours fall upon (ie the day you'll be clocking out on). Messes with me, cause I don't consider it the next day until I have slept (I don't care if the sun is out, it is still monday, damnit!). Led to some weird conversations with coworkers trying to figure out just what day of the week we were talking about.

 

[Stone Angel]

While in College I was taking 16 credit hours worked 40 hours at a grocery store 20 hours at a gas station on the weekends and I had a paper route for a while and bounced at a strip club. Not to mention I had time to study, do homework, and go out drinking with my pals. Plus game every once in a while.

Two weird things happened. One time early in the morning after my paper route, I started to study. I had a wierd little occuring dream about I beams in a circle in a building. Anyway after I gave up trying to study I noticed that I had bordered most of my notes and outlines in 3-D cubes and cylinders. I don't remember doing this at all

Then once I had just went a couple days without sleep at all and driving home from a friends after gaming. I kept seeing what looked like a little tri-cycle out of the corner of my eye. After a while I was down right freaked out! I all could think of was how I really needed sleep, how I really needed sleep. Then the damn trike again!!!


The Seraph of Earth and Stone

 

[Piratecat]

See, I suffer from a little disease I like to refer to as "old woman-ism"--it's a technical term. Symptoms are as such: I generally go to bed at ridiculously early hours and, if I don't, I simply fall asleep in whatever strange place I happen to be in at the time.

If you naturally wake up early and have trouble sleeping late, you're probably phase-shifted by a few hours. You're most likely a natural "early bird," and folks who are naturally morning types generally have a circadian rhythm that is more rigid then people who are naturally evening types. That means that it's harder for you to break out of the "early to rise, early to sleep" routine. As you get older, you may continue to slide earlier and earlier.

To help mitigate this, here's some coping techniques when you want to stay up later:

- Exposure to bright light. Sit close to a lamp, the brighter the better; even bright artificial illumination will forestall microsleeps.

- Nap in the early afternoon and before the game. Just close your eyes for twenty minutes (no longer) and rest. Even if you don't fall asleep, it'll help to significantly stave off sleep for several hours.

- Exercise in the evening. It's hard to fall asleep for several hours after exercising.

- Make sure that your sleep is sound. If you have sleep apnea (usually characterized by loud irrergular snoring) or a lot of caffeine in your system, even ten hours of sleep is still going to leave you feeling tired. Chat with your doctor about it.