[otherusername2]

I once, involuntary, went without sleep for around 72 hours. I was at a music festival and we were either pulling through the night or I couldn't sleep because of the noise. When the time came to go home, I really felt pretty good. At that time I had been awake for around 60 hours. My body was tired and my thinking was a bit sluggish, but nothing too bad...

Until I got home and tried to sleep. By then I was feeling dead-tired, but I simply couldn't sleep. This wasn't your average "Oh I can't sleep, guess I'll do something else and try again later" case of 'insomnia'. I was so extremely tired; all I wanted was to sleep. I started having hallucinations much like the early stages of a mushroom trip (minus the fun). My eyes couldn't focus, I couldn't think.

Finally I managed to fall asleep (while constantly suppressing panic attacks; something I've suffered from in the past and know how to deal with now). I had lucid dream after lucid dream during that sleep. It was very unsettling as I got the feeling (during lucid dreaming) that I wasn't getting any "real" sleep and I'd go insane.

All in all the lucid dreaming aspect was pretty cool, and in retrospect perhaps worth the unsettling experience of being awake so long. But I'll never ever want to repeat that experience.

[PuffinBlue]

I had sort of an 'opposite' experience following 86 hours of no sleep and lots of physical labour.

Military training, 3 1/2 days of digging ad building trenches by hand. Middle of high summer and digging through stony clay.

Interspersed between the digging were numerous patrols and mental tests.

I experienced the hallucinations whilst fully awake from about hour 76 particularly throughout the night and early morning. I vividly remember stopping so talk to a Colour Sergeant I knew and shook his hand, only to find it extremely prickly. Trying again the pain brought me to my senses and I realised I was shaking hands with a Holy bush.

During a dawn attack the following morning I frequently fell into micro-sleeps whilst 'standing to', resulting in bashed knees and a couple of trips to the bottom of the trench flat on my face.

Come an enforced rest period at hour 86 I lay down and experienced the kind of unconsciousness I've only experienced under an anaesthetic. I was utterly gone.

3 hours later I felt amazingly refreshed, just as well as there were 48 more hours to go without sleep until the exercise finished.

[scott_karana]

What possible benefit was there to be ordered to work without sleep for 86 hours?

Was this in a possible combat situation? Or a test of your mettle? I hope? :P

[oskarth]

It's common in the military to train for extreme scenarios, because sooner or later you might encounter them in reality (i.e. war) where you are forced to do it whether you have trained for it or not.

[Fritsdehacker]

I had a similar experience when my child was born. The birth took about two full days, the last 36 hours of which I didn't sleep. And the first week I slept about 3 hours a night with maybe a few naps during the day.

The strange thing was, I could still function. I couldn't do anything complex, but basic tasks where not much of a problem. However, when I finally had a moment to really sleep. I couldn't. It felt like every time I had to get up to do something, I got an adrenalin rush to be able to do it and all that excitement prevented me from falling a sleep.

I fortunately didn't have any hallucinations, but I can relate to the lucid dreaming. Aside from lack of sleep, I also seem to have this after a very stressful day. I wonder if it is stress related.

[dm03514]

We just had our first child 4 weeks ago. Relationship with sleep has completely changed. Before I'd need ~8hour of straight sleep to feel completely rested, anything less I felt like my brain was very sluggish.

4 weeks later that number is 5-6 hours.

Also relationship with coffee has completely changed. 4 weeks ago drinking a strong ~16 oz of coffee in the morning would keep me up all night. Now I drink multiple cups throughout the day and can pretty much sleep at will :)

Sleep has been very light and dreams not super vivid, every now and then will fall into a vivid dream but not lucid

Falling asleep is instantanous

[globuous]

That's a crazy story, I could never imagine myself not sleeping for 72 hours!! When I mess up my sleeping schedule pretty bad (which happened a lot back in college), I usually do sleep paralysis when falling asleep (as opposed to when waking up). And I can do it 6 or 7 times in a row, it's a nightmare. Usually though, I realize what's going on (it's happened to me so. many. times.) after the second or third 'paralysis' and sleep on my stomach, which for some reason, allows me to fall asleep without the whole paralysis thing going on. You can actually turn sleep paralysis into a lucid dream if you 'control' it properly. I usually just wake up thinking 'thank god I'm alive' though.

For those interested in sleep paralysis, wikipedia's got a pretty good page about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

Sleep is truely fascinating.

[ogreveins]

Ah I get that too. I figured out why sleep paralysis happens and here's how to fix it. When you sleep on your back your pillow is compressing your brain stem at the base of your skull. Get the pillow further up on your head so as much as possible it doesn't touch your neck or the fleshy part just below the back of your skull. It'll feel a bit different (weird?) but you should be able to sleep without issue.

Tell as many people as you can after you see for yourself.

edit: As an additional tip, the way I get out of the paralysis is by trying to rock my body as if I'm building up momentum to jump or at least jerk a limb. Once I twitch a limb it feels easy enough to break everything else out. That rocking feeling is probably imaginary so I don't know how transferable the technique is to other people.

[StavrosK]

Oh man, sleep paralysis is scary. After I had it happen to me a few times, these days I either go "ugh, not this again" and go back to sleep, or just panic and try to fight it, in which case I wake with a jolt after what feels like a minute (an eternity, when you're paralyzed).

[jules]

I tried polyphasic sleep where you sleep 10 minutes every 3 hours, except I couldn't fall asleep quickly enough so I didn't sleep at all for >72 hours. The strange thing is that I got the idea that I was somehow more awake, more focused. All the background thoughts in your brain disappear, and it makes you think you have laser focus on what you are doing. Except that you objectively suck at what you are doing...

A few weeks after that experiment I found out that some of my memories were missing. I was in high school at the time and I took a university course in classical mechanics with a few friends. This meant going with the train to a different city several times per week, but I had totally forgotten that I did that. I only realized this when my fiends kept talking about it as if I was there too. The memories did come back later; the lack of sleep only only broke the reference to that memory and when the reference was restored the memory itself was still in tact.

[JupiterMoon]

Truly horrible. I've once been trapped in a cycle of this for what seemed like dozens of times before I finally broke out of it drenched in sweat.

How to you get out of it?

[stordoff]

I once worked for 100 hours solid (only breaks were to use the loo or fetch food; total waking time was about 110 hours) and once I got past the hours 24-40 I felt fine most of the time - no hallucinations or similar, didn't feel particularly sleepy or experience micro-sleeps, and the quality of the work was OK (not my best by any stretch, but passable).

The wierd part came when I hit the deadline for the project (10am) and had to submit it - pretty much as soon as I stopped working, I felt _awful_, barely coherent, and had to take a friend with me to submission as I wasn't sure I could find the venue despite going there five plus times a week for a couple of years. It was a pretty shocking experience to go from working OK to barely functional in a matter of minutes. Not an experience I'm in any rush to repeat either! Despite that, I ended up staying awake for the rest of the day and played Risk with friends that evening, because I just couldn't get to sleep.

[perfTerm]

Hmm, I went to a festival and stayed up at least two nights in a row plus the three days. On the third day we got on this little tiny plane to get back to the main airport and everyone and I just conked out. Same thing in the taxi on the way there. People shaking me said I wasn't waking up. Landing, taking off, nothing. Although I'm a very comfortable flyer anyways and never really have any of the anxieties some people have with flying.

I'm not sure which is preferable, without friends I may have missed all my flights, but that sleep was desperately needed.

[Ramsus88]

That's actually not that weird (minus the dreams). There are times during your circadian rhythm when you will have trouble falling asleep no matter how tired you are. You probably just were in one of those periods when you tried to sleep.

[jamongkad]

Your experience really resonates with me. I too suffer from occasional panic attacks. What techniques do you use to suppress them?

[dm03514]

Mindful deliberate diaphragmatic breathing has allowed me to completely overcome panic attacks.

A simple exercise to learn diaphragmatic breathing is to lay down on your back and put a textbook on your stomach. Place your hand on your chest. Focus on each inhalation only moving the book, your hand/chest should not move at all :)

[otherusername2]

A little late, but anyway..

I've had panic attacks in two locations: while falling asleep in bed and in crowded trains.

I guess I just kinda got used to them. Since I know what's coming I don't feel the 'panic' part of the attack anymore. I just breathe slowly, deeply and deliberately, focus on my breathing. If I get the adrenaline rush you might be familiar with, I sometimes get up and walk a bit.

They key for me is to recognize when I'm having or starting to have one and not focusing on it too much. I don't know if it helped, but I used to meditate quite often. That tought me a lot about keeping my mind in check. This helps with many things, amongst which falling asleep (I just clear my mind and I'm gone in under 10 minutes) and panic attacks.

[marincounty]

I have panic attacks too. How do you deal with them?

[otherusername2]

See my reply to jamongkad.