What's the longest you've ever stayed awake?

[Midpack]

Most I've gone is 34-36 hours several times early in my career. At that point I felt feverish, my head was buzzing (inside at least) and it seemed like an out-of-body experience...guess I'm a lightweight.

 

[mickeyd]

3 days or so, what's that 72 hours? Army's crazy about sleep depravation training, but I do not recall most of it.

 

[LOL!]

I never had to pull an all-nighter. In college, I already knew about the law of diminishing returns, so I never bothered to attempt to study past 10 pm. Also the pubs were still open and the drinking age was 18.

I think probably the longest awake stretch is when I fly from Europe back to America and try to stay up so that I go to bed at night local time in America. That's probably 18 to 20 hours awake-time at the most.

 

[BunsGettingFirm]

I was once on a conference call that went on for over 30 hours. However, after about 19 hours all the others had to hang up and end the call, then dial in again to continue. I had fallen asleep holding the phone to my ear and was snoring so loud they couldn't continue. They yelled at me for a while, then gave up and started over. I finally woke up when the phone started beeping in my ear. I took a fair amount of grief when I dialed back in.

I have heard of meetings from hell, but this one takes the cake even without being snored on for half an hour.

 

[samclem]

I never had to pull an all-nighter. In college, I already knew about the law of diminishing returns, so I never bothered to attempt to study past 10 pm.

Wow. I wish I had been (or were now) that disciplined. I probably typed half my output in a frenzy after midnight. Studying was always accomplished in the days before exams (no sense in puttling that knowledge in the cranium too early, it wil just go stale or be forgotten). Lots of coffee, but no other stimulants except Twizzlers. I ate a lot of 'em. The trick is to keep yourself awake by being high on sugar and right on the verge of nausea. Stomach pain and fear of falling asleep and drowning in one's own bright red Twizzler vomit is enough to prevent unconsciousness and get those last critical hours of study accomplished.

I think of it as the John Bonham road to academic "success."

 

[hankster]

If that had happened on a submarine (no sea stories here, just sayin'!) then the electricians wouldn't be allowed to touch anything containing electrons until they'd suffered through at least a week of training, and the first poor schmoe nominated to go back into the gear would probably have a khaki-clad stack of supervisory "assistance" at least six deep...

Gosh I miss incident critiques. NOT.

The "fix" ended up being a keyed interlock system that should already have been there in the first place. I don't know why it takes a death or injury to get companies to do the right thing

 

[CybrMike]

4 days. Took 12 doses of Levaquin the prior week and it completely fried my central nervous system. Thought I was going to die. Went to the hospital multiple times but they just thought I was crazy. Sure felt like I was dying. Its been a year and my muscles have finally now just stopped twitching all the time. I finally feel like I'm on a healing trajectory, thank God. Good thing I'm fairly young (27) or it probably would have been the end of me.

 

[Bimmerbill]

I had many 2 or 3 day runs while doing "Army training." They seemed to think lack of sleep was good for you. 9 days of maybe 2 or 3 hours sleep a night. Now I preciously guard my sleep time.

 

[Texas Proud]

I never had to pull an all-nighter. In college, I already knew about the law of diminishing returns, so I never bothered to attempt to study past 10 pm. ...

I agree with this... my view is if I did not already know it, [-]cramming[/-] studying the night before would not add any to my knowledge...

 

[Meadbh]

I share Rich's experience. When I was an intern, it was normal to "work the weekend" consisting of arriving at the hospital at 0800h on Saturday and going home at 1700h on Monday. There were even some brutal hospitals (luckily not mine) where interns would have to work Friday to Monday, and Friday to Tuesday if it was a long weekend. My "personal best" without any sleep whatsoever was 60 hours. I'm lucky I didn't kill more patients than I did, and that I didn't kill anyone driving home. And I couldn't do it now. After 24 hours I just have to go home and crash. I hate that cold, shivery feeling and the feeling of disorientation and dissociation that comes with extreme fatigue. While the working hours of residents are now strictly controlled (maximum 28 hours continuously looking after patients) those of attendings are not. We can still be on call for long periods at a time and we rely on luck and our colleagues to get a little shuteye between crises.

 

[harley]

I agree with this... my view is if I did not already know it, [-]cramming[/-] studying the night before would not add any to my knowledge...

I, OTOH, made it through college due to night before cramming. My regular days and nights were much too valuable to spend absorbing information that I only needed once (exam day). My brain seemed to work very well with short term retention, despite what they tell you about pot. I think this is sort of like the CC/no CC, mortgage/no mortgage debate. Different strokes for different folks. Vive la différence!

Of course, in the courses I was truly interested in, I attended classes, paid attention, did the work, and didn't need to cram. But it was fun, so I did it anyway.

 

[SciFiFan53]

I agree with this... my view is if I did not already know it, [-]cramming[/-] studying the night before would not add any to my knowledge...

I second that. Also, like LOL, I never pulled an all-nighter during the semester, but did several on the 18 hour drive home afterwards. Got a few funny hallucinations at around the 35 hour mark (while driving), so pulled off for a couple of hours sleep.
I think it has been pretty well proven that performance and decision quality drops off drastically after about 24 hours (as noted by previous posters). Pretty scary that emergency room personnel and some military (from posts here) operate or train with routine sleep deprivation. Seems an open invitation to disaster.
I've also seen some studies that for long term peak performance, nearly everyone needs 6-8 hours of sleep each night. Those same studies claim that most Americans are sleep deprived to some degree.

 

[M Paquette]

The "good" news is that your first mistake would likely be your last...

Bwahahaha! Thirty-six hours of closing out tanks, inspecting and clearing tagouts on systems after repairs, followed by a 24 hour duty 'day', which included warming and raising pressure on the reactor system (Paperwork, fuses to install, lineup checks), followed by... reactor startup (you knew this was coming), bringing up the whole steam plant, followed by "Set the maneuvering watch; Prepare to get underway".

Oh, and guess who had the first underway watch... I always wondered who I ticked off.

Nothing quite like bringing a reactor critical after you've been awake for 60 hours, and knowing you've still got 16-20 hours before you get a 5 hour nap.

 

[Urchina]

In college, 52 hours. At the end of the first 24 I had fever, chills, and insatiable hunger. By the end of the first 48 I had muscle shakes and difficulty following even the most basic of conversations (as in "you want fries with that, hon?".

I only stayed up because I had three major finals (stats, calculus and physics), two final presentations and three term papers due in that 48 hour time period.

When it was over I went back to my dorm, ate a huge meal, and then slept for 26 hours straight. Utterly freaked my roommate out.

This may, 36 hours as we prepared to evacuate due to wildfires. I just couldn't sleep with the sirens and flames so close.

 

[Urchina]

4 days. Took 12 doses of Levaquin the prior week and it completely fried my central nervous system. Thought I was going to die. Went to the hospital multiple times but they just thought I was crazy. Sure felt like I was dying. Its been a year and my muscles have finally now just stopped twitching all the time. I finally feel like I'm on a healing trajectory, thank God. Good thing I'm fairly young (27) or it probably would have been the end of me.

CyberMike, we had a similar Levaquin experience this last January. Took 3 doses, got tendonitis in my Achilles (and DH got it in his knees). Immediately stopped taking Levaquin and switched to a penicillin-based drug, but the side effects are still with us, though lessening.

I'm never touching that stuff again unless I'll die if I don't get it. It's awful. Good luck in your recovery!

 

[Nords]

Nothing quite like bringing a reactor critical after you've been awake for 60 hours, and knowing you've still got 16-20 hours before you get a 5 hour nap.

And then a few hours later, as the submarine is headed down the channel toward open ocean:

"Hey! Reactor Operator!! (*smack*) Shift those main coolant pumps to fast speed NOW, goddammitt!!"

And that's just the Throttleman talking, not the watch officer snoozing quietly behind you...

 

[DblDoc]

My worst experience was while on a busy trauma service in SF. We were on every other night and then every other weekend. This meant arriving for work on friday morning and leaving monday night. We would get occasional cat naps but if you got 8 hours total over the 4 days it was a slow weekend...

DD

 

[CuppaJoe]

I can’t accurately count the number of hours beyond 2 a.m. (“Numbers is hard,” copyright REW). But I once worked at a MegaCorp dept. that occasionally gave special luncheons for groups of employees who had worked 24 hours straight. I qualified for that but sensibly found a transfer to a dept. with normal business hours before my “free lunch” came up. I learned from that experience!: I’m no good after 2 a.m., useless even with photos. zzzzzz

 

[Meadbh]

My worst experience was while on a busy trauma service in SF. We were on every other night and then every other weekend. This meant arriving for work on friday morning and leaving monday night. We would get occasional cat naps but if you got 8 hours total over the 4 days it was a slow weekend...

DD

Those were the days, my friend....

My late father, after seeing ER, the TV series, said: "Nobody could work like that". When I told him that we did, he was horrified. "You'll be old before your time", he sighed.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I want to ER.