What's the longest amount of time you've stayed awake for?

[General Vodka]

About 40 hours, I think. Sadly, it was not due to fun gaming experiences, but more due to some coursework that I hadn't done. It was midweek, so I spent one day in my usual routine; then I stayed up all night desperately trying to finish my work, was forced into school by my mother the next day, and managed to stay awake until about 10pm that night.

Strangely enough, I was a bit twitchy and jumpy at first, during the second day, but after a while I began to feel normal again. Still, it's not an experience I would like to repeat. Or, more correctly, I may like to repeat it while doing recreational activities, but most favourably not while analysing the local economy.

 

[aruseusx]

2 days.

 

[Clirck]

About 3 days, at the end I was like a zombie and I threw a party at my house, I was too zombified to understand what was going on so I drank something and fell asleep almost instantly.

 

[Xanadeas]

It was either 32 or 42 hours... Or was it 38 or 48?. I was incredibly sick at the time. There were actually moments when I would black out for 2-5 minutes at a time. Whenever I would wake up from these black outs I couldn't really focus on anything and would eventually pass back out. It was all a very unpleasant experience.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

From thursday afternoon to sunday around noon of a four day weekend. Slept it off until Monday, 8am. No naps, but a few 20-min walks around the neighborhood, every now and then. Earthbound, Mother 3, Super Mario RPG, and the first two Paper Mario games in a weekend.

 

[Borrowed Time]

Hrm, well 4 days and 5 nights. So that's approximately 108 hours or so. I was delusional by the end of it and my friends had to force me to go to bed.

 

[Valiance]

40something, I remember an 'almost' 2 days thing.

 

[Soxafloppin]

I believe it was around 35. I then slept for 17.

 

[Daedalus1942]

Around four days. For a job. I was supposed to get sleep between shifts, but I couldn't.
(And I can't tell you the job I worked on.)

 

[Unholykrumpet]

...Truthfully, I don't know. More than 35 hours is what we believe. See, my friends and I decided to "lose a week" last year. One of us has a home theatre room that's in the middle of his house with an additional room attached to it that has pinball machines, arcade games, pool table/ping pong table/hockey table, and a fully operational bar. We turned off our cell phones, removed all time telling devices from our persons, and had an external person (one who didn't partake in the festivities...she had to work five shifts that week) hide an alarm clock set for sometime after 7 days. Since the rooms are in the middle of his house, we had no windows to tell the time.

We watched a ton of good movies and played videogames (both 360 and pc, though we put electric tape on the screens that showed the time) in the two rooms and locked ourselves in until the time that alarm clock went off (which she set to 4:00 A.M. in the morning...which messed up our circadian rhythm even more). There were six of us, and four of us got sick from this adventure. It was really fun though. Sleeping when you want to, waking up when you want to, eating when you were hungry..without the constraints of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, waking up without knowing how long you slept and what time of day it was outside was really an awesome experience. Too bad the friend who had the house with the awesome set up got married this year...or we'd probably have done it again this summer.

 

[Heatstroke3045]

the most I stayed up was for 5 days....I only did that for a few games: Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2, NInja Gaiden Black, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Ninja Gaiden 2, Street Fighter alpha 3, Street Fighter 4, Tekken Tag, Guitar Hero World Tour, Guitar Hero Metallica, Guitar Hero Smash Hits, Guitar Hero 2, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy 9, Kingdom Hearts 2, Dragonball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3, Bullet Witch, and Beowulf...and some for the older systems...^^" I guess that is more than a few games I stayed up that long for

 

[raankh]

I did some experiments on sleep deprivation when I was 15.

I stayed awake for about 70 h, wanted to see if it was true that you start to hallucinate. A group (about 8) of us got together and made it into a lab project. Two slept in shifts and acted observers. I started hearing things around hour 50. Waking dreams towards the end before I fell asleep. Very, very weird, like a lucid dream where you know you're dreaming, but instead I knew I was awake. Slept horribly for several days.

The result of the experiment was that you need to be relaxed an alert but not too active to start dreaming while awake from sleep deprivation (at least within 70 hours). And that you really can't make up for lost sleep by sleeping more.

We also did some cognitive tests (we played Memory, flashed cards with a colour but the wrong colour word printed). Not surprisingly it became near enough impossible to complete the tests after 36 hours or so. Test subjects wouldn't even react to the cards ("What? I didn't see it, you were too quick, dude"). Initially we included a Rorschach test but none of us knew who to interpret that anyway. We had read somewhere that sleep deprivation can cause temporary borderline-like personality changes and being teens we of course assumed that a Rorschach test couldn't be that hard to do.

The observers noted that people started acting "stoned" (giggly, short term memory loss, spaced-out, emotional, paranoia) after only 30 hours or so, except the people who were playing Magic: The Gathering. We figured that game, being rather complex, required so much attention it kept you fully awake. The rest of us were mostly goofing around and playing simple non-collectible card games.

Later in my life I've had some experience with hallucinogenic drugs, but to my experience there is no relation between the two. Very different things.

 

[Mardy]

A little over two days for no apparent reason.

 

[Scrythe]

Last year of high school, I was staying up for up to four days at a time just to pass, with little 4 hour sleep breaks to pass the time. This was also the point in my life where I felt a deep spiritual connection with the chemical known as taurine.

 

[Fairee]

About 24 hours.

What can I say, I love sleeping too much.

Same here, and I didn't do the 24 hours out of choice. I had a cold and was taking some kinda flu remedy which had caffeine in it.... I never have any form of caffeine on a regular basis so by the evening sleep was impossible. I think I eventually dozed off in a chair about 8am.

 

[Woem]

Only 36hrs

The same for me, and only because it was for work: doing a data warehouse migration in the middle of the night and making sure everything was up, running and stable.

 

[The Infamous Scamola]

About 24 hours.

What can I say, I love sleeping too much.

Same here, and I didn't do the 24 hours out of choice. I had a cold and was taking some kinda flu remedy which had caffeine in it.... I never have any form of caffeine on a regular basis so by the evening sleep was impossible. I think I eventually dozed off in a chair about 8am.

Mine was mildly intentional, but it isn't like I said "Today I am not going to sleep!", it just happened, naturaly.

You get a couple of roudy teenagers in a room, penalty for falling asleep is toothpaste to the face, and suddenly falling asleep doesn't sound like an appealing prospect.

It ended up with me and a couple of buds watching Evil Dead 2 half-stoned at 4 AM in a hotel room in Milan.

Good times.

 

[Calmine]

Stayed up for good couple of day's to rewatch the entire Red Dwarf just in time for the new Back to Earth. Which in all honsty left me in state of disapointment and nausea then again that could of been the sleeplessness.

 

[The Zango]

I once stayed up for 48 hours, when Guitar Hero 3 came out, to have a huge marathon with my friends.

Lol my best is 35ish when i was staying round my friends for a weekend and i brought coffee. WOOO

 

[Azraellod]

27 hours i believe, about a week ago.

just when i thought my insomnia had gone, it comes back stronger...