36 hours and no sleep
Sadly, I am no stranger to insomnia but recently it has gotten so bad that I was willing to give a little thing I have been avoiding a try. It is not healthy, and I am not the biggest fan of the idea, but the scientific part of my mind was curious.
The little thing I am trying is to simply go two whole days with no sleep in between. The logic behind that idea is to simply hit reset on your sleep schedule while allowing the body to tire out over 36 hours.
Again, sadly I am no stranger to staying awake for over 24h but this time I thought it would be cool if I document everything as well. To be fair, this time feels so much worse than the last time since this time I was having a sleepless streak.
Ever since, I don’t know when exactly, I couldn’t sleep as well as I usually do. Not saying that I normally would sleep well but at least I could sleep. These times I was incapable to fall asleep until 2 am and considering that I need to get up at 8 am, it is practically useless to go to sleep but I did try.
Therefore, I thought since there is going to be a long weekend coming up, I thought it would be a great idea to not sleep and hope that I would be tired enough to sleep according to my sleep schedule.
The night prior to this experiment of mine, I tried to go to sleep early since I felt sleepy but as soon as my head hit the pillow my mind was wide awake. That night I managed to fall asleep at around 2 am and I needed to get up at 8 am.
Even though that night has the recommended 7 hours of sleep time, I woke up drowsy and completely unwilling to start the day. My problem was that I could not get 8 hours and wake up naturally anymore, which is bad, to say the least.
During the whole day, I was tired and constantly yawning. Throughout the day, I also wondered if my plan was achievable but then I remember I cannot sleep on command so I should be fine for the next 36 hours.
In the evening, I decided to exercise a little since today was a training session and I would have felt guilty for missing it. During training, everything seemed normal but the idea of staying awake for the night was lingering in the back of my mind.
On my ride home, I planned how I was going to spend my waking hours. The articles I needed to write and the assignments I needed to do. Since I know that working 24h is bad for one´s health, I did plan some breaks.
At roughly 10 pm, the sleepiness started setting in. This is roughly when speech becomes less comprehensive than usual, but it is also when people, in general, become more open since at night one tends to be more relaxed and receptive.
When 11 pm came around, I took a warm shower since oddly enough warm showers make me feel more active most of the time. The reason I am surprised that warm showers make me feel more energetic is that after taking a warm shower, the body is supposed to cool down which is a step in the right direction if one wants to go to sleep.
Then came midnight, when I started to get to work but just as quickly, I noticed that I am more prone to mistakes and would take a longer time to process everything. Luckily, I didn’t have to converse with anyone otherwise that would have been awkward.
After that, the hours just melted together and passed dreadingly slow. I made more mistakes. It felt as if it took aeons for me to process the simplest piece of information. During those hours all I can think about was sleep and how much I needed it.
To the best of my ability, I fought the urge to turn in for the night… or morning in this case and even though I was surprised, I was able to witness the sunrise at 4 am which felt strange and sanguine at the same time because most of the time I don’t get the pleasure to witness the sunrise in the morning.
Then came 5 am when I felt the urge to go out in my favourite summer dress but considering my state of mind, I, to my surprise, rationally decided to stay home even though I always wanted to capture the sunrise at this beautiful spot I had in mind.
When 6 am finally came around, I desperately wanted something to eat. Therefore, I made some popcorn and turned on a movie so I can give myself a break and distract myself from the hours I still have ahead of me.
Since that movie was part of a trilogy and I got enough time to watch all three movies, I did just that but during the last movie, I could barely keep my eyes open anymore. I believe I even dozed off for a bit before waking up to notice that the movie finished, and I missed the last part.
If we are going to get technical, what I did at the end of the movie is something called micro sleeping. Microsleeps or brief periods of sleep normally happen without the person going through sleep deprivation realizing it.
As more time passes, my head feels more weighted while my eyelids feel heavier with every passing minute. There is also a sense of drowsiness filling my mind whenever I move my head. My muscles also feel incredibly tense for unexplainable reasons. It is a really uncomfortable situation to be in if one likes to fill every waking minute with productive activities.
From my complexion, it is obvious that I am sleep deprived since my eyes are puffy and there are dark circles underneath my eyes becoming more apparent with each passing second. My movements have significantly slowed down as well.
I have no idea why, but I am also feeling tipsy despite the fact that I didn’t even drink at all. In other words, I feel loose-lipped and a bit out of control. Both my concentration and my coordination are also slowly failing me.
To be honest, that felt terrible since I didn’t like the feeling of not being in control, especially of my own body. I couldn’t control what I felt, or what I am doing, and I couldn’t plan ahead as I am so accustomed to at this point.
At this point, I believe that I should just give in and go to sleep but since my bedtime was only 8 hours away, I am still trying my best to push through.
Every symptom of sleep deprivation I felt, I could fully comprehend to a certain extent but the only symptom I could not fully comprehend was my increased appetite. I understand that one will feel hungry after not eating for six hours (from 12 am to 5 am) but I did not anticipate that I would be this hungry.
Fun fact, when I am singing along to my favourite songs, I suddenly lacked all skills necessary to make the sound coming out of my mouth bearable. My voice sounded off, I completely forgot the lyrics and the beat were missing to the fullest extent.
And still, I am not close to getting this over with. I still have to deal with the symptoms of sleep deprivation, stay awake for the next few hours and manage to fall asleep afterwards. Yet I still can´t get myself to regret this little experiment for multiple reasons.
For one, I was curious how the times I was sleep-deprived differed from one another because I can recall one time when it was close to bedtime again after being awake for 36 hours I felt, against popular belief, energetic.
Another reason is that I am a scientist, and I am generally curious about these things. Sure, one can read the studies instead of putting oneself through this hell, but this way one can get first-hand experience without having to rely on external sources and maybe things will become more comprehensible when one has experienced them.
Of course, this experiment was a bit uncontrolled when it comes to potential influential factors, but this was just for fun since I wanted to know if this sleep-schedule-rest-method works and most importantly if it is worth doing, since now from experience I can tell you that it was not fun.
During the whole day, I had to take small 30 min naps, so I don’t pass out completely. Whenever the 30 min nap was over, I just wanted to sleep through it but that would mess up my sleep schedule again, so I watched another movie to stay awake.
After the 36 hours have passed and it is finally bedtime again, I felt suddenly very awake where a pang of anxiety hits since I don’t want to stay up longer than I have to and mess up my sleep schedule again.
Nevertheless, as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out cold for the next 14 hours. Technically, I did wake up multiple times in the evening (or at least so I believe) but I went right back to sleep again because I was just that tired.
Since I tried the not-sleeping-to-reset-sleep-schedule-method, I was curious if my experiment brought some promising results. If I have found an effective way (besides a doctor´s visit) to fix my sleeping schedule. To my disappointment, it didn’t.
The next day, I went about my day as usual nothing too special. When the time came to go to sleep, I just couldn’t. Even when I went to sleep, I woke up 5 hours later for no apparent reason. I don’t believe my sleep quality has improved either. Therefore I did not see any significant positive results.
However, there was a slight improvement when it came to scare tactics because I have a strict rule of staying up once it has passed 4 am, so whenever I can´t fall asleep I would just have to think of the days I spent awake.
Jokes aside, I did manage to fall asleep earlier rather than later the day after since I went to sleep at midnight instead of 2 am. However, I do not believe that staying up for days should be used just for a two-hour adjustment even though it is better than no adjustment.
When I woke up the next day, I felt drowsier and more disoriented than usual which surprised me a bit because it was the day after I did that experiment. The dark circles underneath my eyes felt a bit heavy and felt as if they were throbbing as well.
In this experiment of mine, the negative results just outweigh the slight positive result therefore I do not believe I would attempt anything similar to this ever again soon voluntarily since I know that this has been a huge impact on not only my body but also my mind.
In conclusion, staying up for two days was an interesting experiment and an experience that is worth having, but it did not yield the results I was expecting so it felt a bit like a stab in the back because I suffered through these hours awake hoping for results but… no. However, that is just science.
Luckily, I didn’t attempt anything beyond 36 hours because it would be unbearable I really am not open to experiencing delusions and deprivation psychosis. Even though I must admit that I am rather intrigued by how deprivation psychosis could feel like.
Full disclosure, this experiment was rather harmful to my health than good but this is not something I intend to do every day so nobody should be too worried.
Another full disclosure, this is not a scientific experiment nor is it a scientific article since I did not apply the scientific methods to make this of any scientific relevance. This is just for personal use and to sate my curiosity.