Sleep Deprivation.

[Escapefromwhatever]

Well, Escapist, I'm in a bit of a pickle.

Having procrastinated far too much, I ended up staying up a bit late to finish all of my schoolwork. The problem is, I stayed up so late now that I am confident that, should I go to sleep, I would accidentally sleep through my alarm clock and all of my classes. My roommates being who they are, they would just turn off the alarm and, for some reason, let me sleep (it's happened before). So now I am forced to pull an all-nighter and play unholy amounts of TF2 just to keep myself awake (I think it gives me adrenaline bursts, which help to reduce my sleepiness). I would also get some coffee, but all nearby coffee shops are closed. While this is an annoyance, I can power through the evening and get an early start at sleeping tomorrow. The only thing is that this is not the first time I've done this. I've pulled off numerous all-nighters like this before, and am starting to do so with more frequency as the end of the semester arrives. I normally have no problem with seizing the night, but it is starting to get worrying. I need to work towards getting myself back onto a normal sleeping schedule.

So, fellow Escapists, after reading my whining, what do you have to say concerning all-nighters? How often do you pull them off? For fun or for work? What are ways you stay awake during them? And what effects, if any, do they have on you, mentally or physically?

Basically this is just a thread for all of the night owls out there who sometimes face the dark side of their lifestyles.

Kinda Off-topic: Good news, though. As a result of the aforementioned procrastination, I now have both Entei and Raikou in Soul Silver.

 

[delet]

Last summer I decided upon an increasingly erratic sleep schedule. I decided I would sleep only every other day so that I could spend all night power leveling in Disgaea. It made each day longer and I got so much done. As a side effect however, I got the Hub World music burned into my head and would hear it even when no where near my PSP.

Aside from that, I tend to stay up very late regardless. DSPS keeps me from having a 'normal' sleep schedule so I don't tend to get much sleep. Now that I'm finally on Spring Break (Delayed break, yea!) I can get back into my normal sleep schedule and finally return to my post as a child of the night. I sleep till 3-ish, I stay up till 6-ish. Fun, fun.

Edit: I just remembered something pokemon related!

Not once, but twice I spent an entire night undertaking the insane task of unlocking and capturing the 3 Regi's in Ruby. You have to find Relicanth(I think that's his name), an incredibly hard to find pokemon, capture him, find a secret underwater tunnel, decipher Morse code, and that's only to unlock the ability to fight the Regi's! Afterwards you have to find the three areas where they reside, decipher more Morse code, and then you have to capture the bastards...

And then I would undertake the task of capturing Rayquaza. Prick...

Again, I pulled all-nighters to do this, not once, but twice! Bah, the curse of boredom-caused game resets...

 

[Hippobatman]

Well, my sleeping schedule goes to shit at every major and minor holiday, so I've familiar with staying up late, but I've only once or twice gone through the entire night. 5 am - 6 am are frequent occurances during the given times, but I love my sleep.

Kinda Off-topic: Good news, though. As a result of the aforementioned procrastination, I now have both Entei and Raikou and Soul Silver.

Totally F*CKING worth it!

Lately, during Easter holiday, I've played SoulSilver far into the twilight hours in the morning. And it's awesome!

 

[NezumiiroKitsune]

Just stayed up all night because when I'm tired my hypochondria sometimes awakens at full volume and I get a shot of adrenaline because of the fear so end up watching QI all night and listening to metal.

Effects can range from the feeling your going in slow motion (like I have now), not being able to recall terms and words (like I have now) to hallucinations and temporary psychosis. No evidence sleep deprivation kills you, but does lead to a shorter life (increases risk of cardiovascular complications).

I stay up late all the time, I sleep until late afternoon most days, and regularly stay up all night once a week or fortnight either to game, read or because of some other manifestation of my broken psyche.

It gets easier after the 3rd day awake but then you crash around day 7 or 8. Longest I've gone is 7 anyway.

 

[hittite]

It's currently 4 AM here, I'm sporadically finishing a paper due at 2 in the afternoon. This happens all the time. I hate it.

 

[Chrissyluky]

As far as staying up late comes I hate myself for doing it on a work day as i like at least an hour before work just to screw around with. And honestly I hate all nighters I hate the drowzy feeling you get.

 

[Shockolate]

I am the opposite. My problem is I sleep too much. I'm awake for 16 hours and then I sleep for 12. Unless you're bad at maths, you can probably tell that isn't 24 hours. As you might be able to guess, this fucks up my week often. The reason I sleep for 12 hours is that my mind often say's "Go back to fucking sleep Colin" (to which I readily reply "Sir, yes, sir! Zzzzzz") until I reach the point (12 hours) that my body decides "Enough of this shit" forces me to get up. I'm constantly switching between being a "Normal" sleeping schedule and being Nocturnal.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

So, fellow Escapists, after reading my whining, what do you have to say concerning all-nighters? How often do you pull them off? For fun or for work? What are ways you stay awake during them? And what effects, if any, do they have on you, mentally or physically?

Well, they're not kidding when they say that it makes you perform worse than if you'd gotten some sleep like you're supposed to. It also has the wonderful side effect for a lot of people of making them think they're doing just as well at whatever they're doing (school, work, playing games, etc.) as they do normally, even though they're measurably not (hooray for Science determining this several times). I think I remember one study showing that people who were sleep deprived like that performed about as well as people who were drunk.

That said, I've been known to do it, too. Screw DSPS [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome]. I'm straight up Non-24 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep-wake_syndrome] at this point (officially diagnosed and in the middle of an extended sleep study right this minute, actually), so trying to cram me into a normal schedule results in stuff like that happening on a regular basis. It wasn't too bad when I was younger, and I could keep it up for at least a few weeks at a time, but now that I'm almost 30 and epileptic (head injuries are awesome; get you one!), I try to avoid it if at all possible, because sleep deprivation is a pretty effective way to cause seizures. At this point, I just spontaneously fall asleep in the middle of whatever I'm doing if I've been awake too long (I've woken up an hour later still sitting up holding the book I was reading), as if my brain shuts down automatically out of self-preservation. Heh.

 

[Bat Vader]

I love staying up at night. It is much more peaceful and quiet. For the last four years I have been staying up all night. It does affect you after awhile though. The days where I sleep for 12 hours I still feel tired even after being up for less than 2 hours.

I have had to pull a couple of all-nighters due to my procrastination. I would advise drinking a lot of caffeine to help you stay up. What time does your classes start?

 

[YouCallMeNighthawk]

Well, Escapist, I'm in a bit of a pickle.

Having procrastinated far too much, I ended up staying up a bit late to finish all of my schoolwork. The problem is, I stayed up so late now that I am confident that, should I go to sleep, I would accidentally sleep through my alarm clock and all of my classes. My roommates being who they are, they would just turn off the alarm and, for some reason, let me sleep (it's happened before). So now I am forced to pull an all-nighter and play unholy amounts of TF2 just to keep myself awake (I think it gives me adrenaline bursts, which help to reduce my sleepiness). I would also get some coffee, but all nearby coffee shops are closed. While this is an annoyance, I can power through the evening and get an early start at sleeping tomorrow. The only thing is that this is not the first time I've done this. I've pulled off numerous all-nighters like this before, and am starting to do so with more frequency as the end of the semester arrives. I normally have no problem with seizing the night, but it is starting to get worrying. I need to work towards getting myself back onto a normal sleeping schedule.

So, fellow Escapists, after reading my whining, what do you have to say concerning all-nighters? How often do you pull them off? For fun or for work? What are ways you stay awake during them? And what effects, if any, do they have on you, mentally or physically?

Basically this is just a thread for all of the night owls out there who sometimes face the dark side of their lifestyles.

Kinda Off-topic: Good news, though. As a result of the aforementioned procrastination, I now have both Entei and Raikou and Soul Silver.

try being awake for about 23 hours work 10 hours then stay up for another 3 hours because you got on the wrong train home! I honestly thought i was going to die! LOL!

 

[sephiroth1991]

Well i get up for work at 6:10 so i'm pritty tired

 

[Snork Maiden]

Well, Escapist, I'm in a bit of a pickle.Kinda Off-topic: Good news, though. As a result of the aforementioned procrastination, I now have both Entei and Raikou in Soul Silver.

I spent a good twenty minutes chasing down Entei under some bizarre impression I still had Mean Look and could stop it leaving. I didn't and it did, which was totally disappointing.

In respect to all nighters I haven't gamed through the night in a long long time. I *do* normally have a jam on SoulSilver just before bed though, and generally that just means I end up getting 2 hours less sleep than I should and feel like death at work the next day. I've done a couple of all-nighters when I've had a new book recently though, and failure to plan meant I did an 8pm-8am coursework piece last year.

 

[TankCopter]

I've never had to pull all-nighters to finish things, although I do sometimes pull one for the hell of it. I usually wind up acting a bit odd, although my creative writing skills are usually at their best at around 1 in the morning. I might do that tonight, I think.

 

[King of the Sandbox]

Well, I've always been kind of a night person. Always having to be kicked out of bed in the morning for whatever blasted daytime activity my parents had planned for me. I heard mention of something called school a couple of times, but luckily, I think I slept through that.

Now, as an adult, I stay up all night for work. I like to think I knew what my career path was gonna be from a early age, so my body was training me for it's odd schedule since youth.

So, to pull an all day'er? I rely on sweetened, iced tea and video games to keep me awake.

 

[LogieBear]

I live in the night, ever since i was a kid playing MMORPG's all night with barrels of energy drinks and CAKE, my internal clock has just switched to night time.
But i have a life in the day so my sleep is barely any more than 4 hours on a work night =/

 

[Escapefromwhatever]

I love staying up at night. It is much more peaceful and quiet. For the last four years I have been staying up all night. It does affect you after awhile though. The days where I sleep for 12 hours I still feel tired even after being up for less than 2 hours.

I have had to pull a couple of all-nighters due to my procrastination. I would advise drinking a lot of caffeine to help you stay up. What time does your classes start?

8:30 a.m. But I get out of class at noon (certainly does make me feel lazy, having such a short period of actual classes), so I can just zonk out then, if necessary.

For now, I'd focus on your current predicament (i.e, handing in your project, trying not to sleep through your classes etc.) then focus on fixing your sleeping pattern.

The assignment's actually done. I just can't go to sleep because then I'd sleep through class.

 

[stok3r]

Well, Escapist, I'm in a bit of a pickle.

Having procrastinated far too much, I ended up staying up a bit late to finish all of my schoolwork. The problem is, I stayed up so late now that I am confident that, should I go to sleep, I would accidentally sleep through my alarm clock and all of my classes. My roommates being who they are, they would just turn off the alarm and, for some reason, let me sleep (it's happened before). So now I am forced to pull an all-nighter and play unholy amounts of TF2 just to keep myself awake (I think it gives me adrenaline bursts, which help to reduce my sleepiness). I would also get some coffee, but all nearby coffee shops are closed. While this is an annoyance, I can power through the evening and get an early start at sleeping tomorrow. The only thing is that this is not the first time I've done this. I've pulled off numerous all-nighters like this before, and am starting to do so with more frequency as the end of the semester arrives. I normally have no problem with seizing the night, but it is starting to get worrying. I need to work towards getting myself back onto a normal sleeping schedule.

So, fellow Escapists, after reading my whining, what do you have to say concerning all-nighters? How often do you pull them off? For fun or for work? What are ways you stay awake during them? And what effects, if any, do they have on you, mentally or physically?

Basically this is just a thread for all of the night owls out there who sometimes face the dark side of their lifestyles.

Kinda Off-topic: Good news, though. As a result of the aforementioned procrastination, I now have both Entei and Raikou in Soul Silver.

Personally I make a point of not staying up past 5 in the morning. I don't have the issue of doing homework or whatever, just I enjoy being alone and in the early hours of the morning is practically the only time I get that.

 

[Vaccine]

I do this a lot.

Just don't get bored or do something that requires you to not concentrate, good options are games that have fast movements, lots of game time(don't play Final Fantasy or something with lots and lots of cutscenes).
RPGs are generally are bad idea, go for FPS/Action games.