| When I was younger, I somewhat involuntarily got 4 hours of sleep a night for about 2-3 months. I remember the first month was fine, but by the second month I'd started to hallucinate in the day time. The reason this happened was that I took a night job suddenly (midnight til 8am, but sometimes as late as noon because the overtime was good). I couldn't get used to the schedule and seem to get more than four hours of sleep during daylight. The job was a truck driving job, delivering huge pallets of newspapers out in time for the paperboys/girls at 5am-7am across a few cities from the printing press. I remember it was a sweet job, relatively high pay compared to what I'd had recently and very low stress since the factory was empty, you grab the clipboard with your route, forklift the pallets onto the truck and listen to music the rest of the night. I started to get extremely tired while driving sometime in the second month. I fought it hard and would stare straight ahead jerking myself awake every couple of minutes eventually. Not long after that the lines in the road would insidiously become snakes and I'd be following a river in a half dream sort of zone. By the end of the second month I knew I had to quit or I'd end up getting myself killed on the road, no matter how good the job was. I forced myself to stay on the extra two weeks because two weeks notice is something my parents instilled upon me that you always have to do. I kind of agree but feel like I should have made an exception then. I was probably 20 at the time. Some points I'd like to raise:
1. I don't believe two weeks is long enough to feel anything. Particularly not if you're young.
2. Loss of cognition is really really obvious if you're operating a large metal box that can kill you. The ability to play video games seems like it could easily fool you into thinking you're coherent.
3. Lack of sleep amplifies stress. If you don't have much stress, it's going to be way easier. Someone falling behind on their loan payments, working overtime, and taking care of dependents would likely see a much bigger effect on their life, even with smaller margins of sleep lost. |