About 50 hours. My wife was pregnant with our daughter and things went south real quick. Ended up in emergency surgery and our daughter spending a week in NICU. My wife is still dealing with issues from the ordeal, but my daughter is 18 months old now and she is just an absolute treasure and sooo smart! We’re so thankful to have her in our lives.
A week.
I was in my teens and had no commitments at the time and just spontaneously decided not to eat or sleep for a few days - which I later decided would be a week. At the time, I had no idea of the world record for this or I probably would have tried for that - although, obviously, I was not supervised or anything.
The afternoons from the second day onwards were the worst - when I felt pretty lousy - but otherwise I was running on serotonin and was pretty much on a natural high for most the duration.
At the end, I cycled 12 miles during which one of my feet cramped and left me jabbing at the pedal as it went past, but I did it ok.
I slept extremely well when I finally did, but I took some while to get back into the whole eating thing again.
There is no way in hell that I could do anything like that now.
72 hours ~ish (I did get maybe a 1.5 hour nap… somewhere in there).
Wife was giving birth, things got complicated, I was so nervous, anxious and excited. The hospital was terribly uncomfortable as we had to be in a special room due to my wife’s situation. Driving home from the hospital was EVERY ounce of pure WILL I’ve had. Those 72 hours I drank so much caffeine… so many pots of terrible coffee… I got home and slept for about 5 hours once the family came over to see the baby.
It was the worst and best time of my life.
On was on this helicopter infil-extract mission (walking multiple km in and out for fun) and got back to base, and was immediately put on the gunturret of a convoy that was going to an outpost. I was oh by the way informed I going to spend the next few weeks (read: months) there so it was a frantic packing job before hopping in the turret. I think I was up in the ballpark of two solid days,[and in thinking about it] a hair over going into a day 3. I ended up throwing up from energy drink overdose.
[Edit: in retrospect perhaps not an amazing amount of time, as I’m sure plenty of gaming sessions have gone long- but it did feel the longest. Certainly the most sustained exertion and concentration without sleep.]
It’s fascinating how much us humans can endure.
I can’t imagine being awake that long and having to do things that have actual consequences. At least if I drop into a microsleep while playing a videogame or get paranoid and shoot at a friendly no one gets hurt.
Definitely seen the black dog on the road driving and that was only after a 24hr stint awake and behind the wheel for 11hours under some less than ideal conditions. I said no to my boss a lot more after that, luckily they understood.
It’s funny, my most distinct memory of the time is being on the exposed turret and reaching for my energy drink can, only to find it frozen solid to the metal of the turret. It was about that time I started really realizing how long I’d been up for.
42 hours. 11/11/11
Was this a Skyrim-related issue?
Sure was!
I think I did like 30hrs once in college. Pull an all-nighter to study with a friend, and then had to go to class to take the exam. I don’t even remember what class and how I did.
a little over 60 hours, when ME3 came out I played it from midnight (or whenever a VPN gave me access) until I had to go to work (dragging steel plates around a parking lot and spraying things with glue), then got home and played it until I had to go to work again when I got home from work after that I just passed out until the next morning. I have no idea why I got that obsessive, it doesn’t happen to me anymore. Which is actually less fun, it never really affected my life in a major way except this one time.
About 27 hours. Shift switch from days to night often didn’t go well. I don’t do shifts anymore due to it
I struggle with this too atm, I’m just not hardwired to switch my sleep schedule so easily and on short notice.
4 days awake. Worst tooth infection ever… my head was basically exploding. Swishing cold water would kill the pain for about a minute. In retrospect I should have went to emerge? I’d lay down and start to fall asleep, then BOOM. I was starting to have hallucinations and I think I was seeing “shadow people” out of my peripheral vision. Eventually the antibiotics kicked in and I stayed asleep for 5-6 hours… something woke me up and I bolted awake… I WAS ASLEEP??
I had an endoscopic gallbladder surgery, that was a walk in the park. Tbh I’ve had headaches worse than that lol.
I’ve quite frequently skipped a night because of random bouts of insomnia, but the worst case was a couple years ago where I just couldn’t sleep for two nights in a row. So, about 48 hours awake total. Do not recommend. Definitely not after learning (and experiencing) how vital sleep is. Catch your Z’s when you can, folks. You really do need it.
i think around 24 hours, in college the anime/gaming club i helped run would do a overnight sleepover thing every semester, i remember getting home and crashing around like 11am. i don’t think i’ve ever stayed up longer than that with no sleep.
i frequently get not enough sleep, though,
this last weekend I was awake for about 40 hours to watch the 24 hours of leMans. The race didn’t start until midnight my time which is why it was so much longer than just being awake for 24 hours.
Aye just this past month, for 4 weeks straight, I had severe back pain. In the beginning it was so bad, and especially worse when I laid down that I couldn’t sleep. I would have to stand up all night to relieve the pain, and all day, in pure exhaustion and pain. Over the span of some days, I don’t sleep for one night at all, and within a five day block slept an average of 2.5 hours each night. I still had to work and other stuff. I went to pick up my kid from school and was telling a friend there “I don’t know how I’m still alive, in running on nothing but pain and caffeine, and still standing here and moving semi-normally” shit was crazy!
Enlistment. Reporting to basic training, my day started at 3:30 AM. Didn’t get to the barracks until 4am the following day. By the time we had our gear stowed, it was time to start the next day.
On day two, 4 guys in their last week of training were supposed to be showing us the ropes our first week. Instead, they hazed us all night long on the second night, and it wasn’t until the night of day three that we were finally allowed to sleep. About 65 hours.
Just over 40 hours. Travelling with no time to rest during layovers and couldn’t fall asleep on the plane or the buses for the life of me.