After this recent election I didn’t sleep for 5 days. Just seemed like one really long day that eventually seemed like one really long dream. My sleep schedule is still messed up but I am sleeping again. Unfortunately I’m not waking up from this nightmare.

8 days.

I was in my early 20’s and invincible and spent a week one summer bouncing about between clubs, house parties and outdoor raves, and taking a metric fuck ton of party drugs and psychedelics.

The week started with some really good exctasy at a nightclub (like REALLY good, the whole smoking area was basically a giant cuddle puddle in the photos), and then there was a lot of speed and drone/mkat at the various after parties.

We had rooftop ‘picnics’ (blankets, cushions, and drugs) watching stars and sunrises and having lots of beautiful, silly, fun moments at several different houses, and more picnics were had in the following days in gardens and one place had a pool.

There were outfit changes and showers at various points of amphetamine induced efficiency too. I lost my favourite tshirt (Cult, Love album) somewhere and we were all swapping/sharing clothes at one point for photos. (It probably found a good home where ever it ended up though and it’s part of party karma for all the various clothes I lost and acquired that year)

Mid week, someone came round selling DMT and I’m pretty sure I induced some kind of REM state by smoking a piece (see below if you want to know what that was like). I did a bunch of ketamine too after it wore off, so that probably also really helped, what with the semi-lucid visuals that induces.

On the 8th day, (I was the last original survivor of the core group, most had dropped off earlier in the week and come back though) I was feeling relatively fine all things considered, but admittedly by this point I had a music and various song lyrics looping in my head near continuously and in a more intense way than I normally do.

Then I thoughtlessly took a tab of acid at a night club we were at (wrong environment completely for me to take acid), and very quickly stopped having fun.

I remember feeling the lsd in my jaw and then feeling very paradoxically sober and overwhelmed (go autism, go) as everything was now too loud and people, and flashing lights and humidity.

I borrowed a friend’s keys and took the night bus back to their place as it was closest, and I remember really struggling to get the key to work in the lock of their house door. It had a pull push motion required to get the latches to flip while turning and I could not figure it out. Probably only took a few minutes but it felt like forever.

Eventually I think muscle memory kicked in and I got it. I woke up like 10 hours later as my friends were getting back from another club, for another afterparty at their house, and I went home.

That was a very fun year for me, and that week of awake is legendary, even if I do say so myself.

DMT, for anyone wondering what it’s like, was absolutely fucking incredible.

You get this like little clear sheet of resin that you have to smoke in a weed pipe, covered with and on a bed of ash, so as not to burn it.

Inhale deeply, hold it in for as long as you can, and then lie flat back and close your eyes to exhale.

The visual fractals upon the exhale are intense, eyes open or closed, you are floating in the matrix with them. It’s sorta like what you see when you push on your eyelids, but more fluid and sacred feeling, and your whole body feels like it is floating. It feels like this trippy visual part lasts hours too, but in reality it’s less than a minute.

You also get this beautiful feeling of pure oneness with everything and safety, and this grounded inner calm that lasts for weeks afterwards.

Nearly 80 hours. This was around 12 years ago, I had a full time job and was on a volunteer fire department. I would get off work and immediately get toned out for a fire or back to back medical calls until my shift the next day. It took copious amounts of caffeine to keep going, and eventually I just crashed out from exhaustion. 0/10 don’t recommend.

About 36 hours. Borded on the plane for Mauritius (afternoon) , after 12 hours of flight, landed there, was told I need a visa to get in. Borded on exactly the same plane , flew 12 hours back. 2/10 wouldn’t recommend. Still gets 2 points for psychodelic effects of tiredness

Not very long. About one and a half nights. Went to a rave where I stayed up all night and day then went straight to a metal festival next night. Tried to drive after to go back to my far away home but couldn’t drive safely because my eyes couldn’t see the road very well. I was exhausted and had to nap for a few hours mid trip.

Three days. I just wasn’t tired. The extra free time was great but I was getting worried.

Years before that I was awake for 36 hours. This didn’t end well, which is why the more recent episode was starting to worry me. I was coasting down a hill on a bicycle and fell asleep. I nodded off just long enough to lose my balance. 3 stitches in my head ( I still have the bump as a reminder ), left knee swollen like a football, lots of roadrash.

I’m very glad I didn’t have a drivers’ license at the time as this could have been much worse.

I was in labor for 40 hours, so probably that. Then at the end of it I had a baby that didn’t sleep either.

As a teenager I stayed up for 36 hours playing warcraft3 online.

In university I once spent 48 hours finishing a project. Afterwards I remember trying to count coins to get milk. After 4 or 5 unsuccessful counts my girlfriend at the time went and got milk while I slept for nearly 20 hours.

Probably 36 hours, I worked alternating 12h shifts in an irregular schedule, I had worked a night shift, and before I left, my teamleader pulled me aside for a talk about my performance not being good enough.

That made it impossible to sleep and I spent my time cleaning my apartment until I got back to work in the evening again.

At the end of my second shift I took a few calls from Australia and as I am doing my best to support them I can feel myself starting to fall asleep in the middle of speaking.

I don’t recommend staying awake for 36h straight.

Oh, and teamleader?

Don’t have these talks when the person is between two night shifts, the bright days already make it harder to sleep!

Bit more than 72h. We were doing a practical project at uni and had a deadline on the following Tuesday. We got to work on Saturday. We made it on time, though, everything worked. 10am that day we had a presentation scheduled.

And then somebody short-circuited one of the motor control boards and it stopped working. That’s when I left to go sleep for a day.

Every once in a while I’ll just skip a night’s sleep, then go the bed and wake up at the normal time the following day.

I used to recover after a day or two of normal sleep, but now that I’m getting a little “older” (ie not invincibly young anymore) I’m usually wrecked for a week after pulling this stunt.

Why? Usually videogames or YouTube and “because I can”. No, I’m not the healthiest individual.

I did a little over 4 days when I was a teenager just to see how long I could go. Really kinda sucked after the first 2 days. But I was just playing video games.

I did many 2-3 day stints in the Army. That sucked way, way more because yeah, I was definitely not playing video games.

Not quite 5 days.

I had a bulged lumbar disc but all the pain was in my knee so I thought I had done something to my patella. I couldn’t get in to see my doc so I was just trying to make my knee comfortable, which was impossible because it was an inflamed nerve. Then finally I was crawling back into bed for one more try to sleep and something about how I moved shifted the bulge and the pain went away. Maybe 30 seconds later I was hard asleep.

This was in the 90s and one of the local stations played reruns of Gilligan’s Island from 2:00 am until the news started at 5:30. I watched so many episodes… but I’m fine (⊙_⊙)

When I was a student I wrote a piece of software. Originally an assignment to be done within 6 months, I decided to go for it at once. I started programming on Thursday, and finished it on Saturday, while living on snacks, pizza, soft drinks, and tea. No time for sleep while being 100% in the zone.

After a night long drug binge, I stayed awake for five days. It was interspersed with small naps, and by the third day I was getting some healthy sleep again (perhaps 30mn or so at a time), but it never felt long enough. I was only back to a normal sleep schedule on the fifth night. It was terrible. I phoned a friend at some point to help me because I was in shambles and absolutely panicked I would never settle again. Don’t do cathinones