h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I just read the entry that says after 72 hrs. of consecutive non-sleep, you may become schizophrenic or suffer from irreversible brain damage. Has anyone tried going that long without sleep, and if so, what were the results?
lady

This maybe good/bad advice I don't know,

I am a cronic insommiac which I discovered when I became a private hire driver in Liverpool, everything started well until I slowly began to have shorter and shorter amounts of sleep and began to work longer and longer hours to the point that I was working anything upto 17 hours a day and only sleeping for 3 hours during the day and on many occasions went from starting work on the Friday evening at 5pm and then only going to bed at 7am monday morning which 3 days without sleep you would of thought that it would lead to a long sleep but for me it was if I was lucky only ever 8Hours at the most and then back to the 3 hour sleep/ 17 hours working pattern.

When people started noticing something was wrong was my sudden wieght loss and the irractic mood swings and the the paranoia started to show through which I had managed to keep hidden from people for quite a long time. Eventually I completely went out the game for a year and it was only when my grandad beg me to get help and fortunatly I was pretty coheirent that particular day. That was 7 years ago and have been on medication everyday since. At present things that happend in that year are slowly coming back me over time and I cringe and hate myself for what I put people through but luckily I have a good family and a good set of friends who stuck by me and helped me get through it all.

If the one piece of advice I can give is sort the problem out because once the paranoia sets in it becomes at really bad on going nightmare that has no-end to it which is one bad place to be in.

2tall