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

I've tried this one myself, but don't get carried away with the coke thing. If it doesn't help immediately, don't think, "hey, maybe I need more coke." Then, you will likely get what is called a "bladder boundary infraction." :-p

I also find that your body temperature regulation goes mad, and you can't tell if you're hot or cold. You also itch all over, and find yourself getting unexpected bits of you body waking up at odd times. (That last one is more for boys). Also the temptation to get off whatever you happen to be on, eg train, road, pavement, even though it will do you no good, and make getting home take even longer, appears to be almost irresistable.
Or that could just be me.

wide

With me when I skip a nights sleep, I have to keep going to the toilet all through the next day, which is both embarrasing and a real drag.

After two nights out I find concentrating really hard, particularly if I'm writing things down. There I am sitting writing notes on someone's lecture and I find that I stop listening to them and start writing some sort of stream of consciousness piece. I have no idea that I'm doing it until I read the notes back and find it full of gobble-de-gook.

Never, ever attempt to miss three nights sleep. You will get ill and take for ever to recover.

GreyDesk

A friend of mine missed 3 nights sleep and started to hallucinate.

ooooh .. hallucinations ...

Perhaps the bathroom phenomina is linked to caffeine being a diuretic ...

MAy I now stress again the role of this method as an emrgeancy procedure ....

~Beeblefish

Eep. Hallucinations after missing three nights of sleep? This worries me, as I quite often skip a night of sleep to read or write or something, and I begin to hallucinate much sooner than that. After 24 hours or sometimes even before that, auditory hallucinations start along with extremely mild (oxymoron?) visual ones, in which colors fade and change and I see things out of the corner of my eye that aren't there when I turn around. And then there are colored dots, like when you stare at a light source too long and then look away. Is this even normal?

It really depnds. In my experince hallucinations take longer to start if you eat plenty and/or use stimulants(coffee, or stronger varieties), and usually take 3-4 days for me. on the other hand 2-3 hours of sleep per night gets me after oly 2 days. I guess it has to do with individual biochemistry. (also, I get auditory hallucinations no matter how much sleep I get, so my experience may not be typical.

Three miscellaneous comments regarding sleep loss:
I've read that the world record for longest time without sleep is 11 days (although I'm not sure if that's still accurate)... I wouldn't recommend attempting to beat it.
The same article (it was a Discover magazine article on sleep) claimed that people are typically sleepiest just after noon and just after midnight.
Finally, driving after several days with little or no sleep is even more dangerous than one would expect... after about a week it can be nearly as dangerous as drunken driving.

Excuse the interuption everybody, but I just wanted to say hi to slatribartfast II, who's a new users and ask him if he would like to udate his personal space to give himself an introduction. To get to your space just click on the "My space" icon in the toolbar, then click on the edit my page icon on the right side.

Thanks everyone! Sorry for the interruption

What frustrates me is the lack of better methods to skip some sleep. One would think a society like ours would, for better or worse, necessitate more effective known methods of minimizing sleep.

thank god, I thought I was the only one! My friend however becomes easily terrified. By this I mean that if she was sitting at a computer, apparantly alert and normal, and you tapped her on the shoulder or said her name in your "inside voice", she'd scream!

I missed three nights and for a while I was probably totally bonkers. The worst part is, I have trouble sleeping when I'm totally exhausted. Why is that??

Actually, there is now a way to stay alert and functional on little/no sleep. Developed by the U.S. Army(natch), it goes under the trade name of Provigil and mimics the neurotransmitters found in wakeful and alert people. After 2 days of no sleep and no coffee, but plenty of provigil and food, helicopter pilots showed no detectable loss of efficiency. There are no known side effects, but the emphasis here is on the KNOWN. I won't try it until theres some knowledge of long-term effects.(ok, maybe I will, but I probably shouldn't). It is not yet available on the open market yet, but give it time.

I used to make myself a strong cup of coffee before getting down to studying, drink half of it then forget about the rest. After I was finished with whatever, at round four in the morning, I'd throw down my cold coffee (icky I know) and go to bed, waking up suprisingly sane in a few hours. I've stopped doing this and my mornings haven't been that sharp of late. I didn't realise that it was that last pre-sleep shot of caffeine that was helping.

A couple of nights of little to know sleep does have fun effects. Agreed, the itching, (more like phantom hairs trailing my skin or little bugs crawling on me really), is very annoying as is being unable to tell if I'm hot, cold, thirsty or hungry but I also lose a lot of my inhibitions. I may not have had any alcohol but I'm no longer entirely sober. I only have visual hallucinations, though not terribly exciting ones.

BUY SPEED, ITS EASIER

I think that the itching seems to be a common thing, as I too suffer from itchy skin whence I havent slept in a while. Whats worse is now I have a really horrible dependencey on caffeine, so I make many a bathroom breaks during the day. But thats not the worst, The worst is that I can not sleep unless i have downed a 20oz of caffeinated liquid, from a general census, it seems to be a normal thing for caffeine dependents.