<story><title>Getting too little sleep can have serious health consequences (2013)</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/how-sleep-deprivation-decays-the-mind-and-body/282395/?single_page=true</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>otherusername2</author><text>I once, involuntary, went without sleep for around 72 hours. I was at a music festival and we were either pulling through the night or I couldn&amp;#x27;t sleep because of the noise. When the time came to go home, I really felt pretty good. At that time I had been awake for around 60 hours. My body was tired and my thinking was a bit sluggish, but nothing too bad...&lt;p&gt;Until I got home and tried to sleep. By then I was feeling dead-tired, but I simply couldn&amp;#x27;t sleep. This wasn&amp;#x27;t your average &amp;quot;Oh I can&amp;#x27;t sleep, guess I&amp;#x27;ll do something else and try again later&amp;quot; case of &amp;#x27;insomnia&amp;#x27;. I was &lt;i&gt;so&lt;/i&gt; extremely tired; all I wanted was to sleep. I started having hallucinations much like the early stages of a mushroom trip (minus the fun). My eyes couldn&amp;#x27;t focus, I couldn&amp;#x27;t think.&lt;p&gt;Finally I managed to fall asleep (while constantly suppressing panic attacks; something I&amp;#x27;ve suffered from in the past and know how to deal with now). I had lucid dream after lucid dream during that sleep. It was very unsettling as I got the feeling (during lucid dreaming) that I wasn&amp;#x27;t getting any &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; sleep and I&amp;#x27;d go insane.&lt;p&gt;All in all the lucid dreaming aspect was pretty cool, and in retrospect perhaps worth the unsettling experience of being awake so long. But I&amp;#x27;ll never ever want to repeat that experience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>PuffinBlue</author><text>I had sort of an &amp;#x27;opposite&amp;#x27; experience following 86 hours of no sleep and lots of physical labour.&lt;p&gt;Military training, 3 1&amp;#x2F;2 days of digging ad building trenches by hand. Middle of high summer and digging through stony clay.&lt;p&gt;Interspersed between the digging were numerous patrols and mental tests.&lt;p&gt;I experienced the hallucinations whilst fully awake from about hour 76 particularly throughout the night and early morning. I vividly remember stopping so talk to a Colour Sergeant I knew and shook his hand, only to find it extremely prickly. Trying again the pain brought me to my senses and I realised I was shaking hands with a Holy bush.&lt;p&gt;During a dawn attack the following morning I frequently fell into micro-sleeps whilst &amp;#x27;standing to&amp;#x27;, resulting in bashed knees and a couple of trips to the bottom of the trench flat on my face.&lt;p&gt;Come an enforced rest period at hour 86 I lay down and experienced the kind of unconsciousness I&amp;#x27;ve only experienced under an anaesthetic. I was utterly gone.&lt;p&gt;3 hours later I felt amazingly refreshed, just as well as there were 48 more hours to go without sleep until the exercise finished.</text></comment>
<story><title>Getting too little sleep can have serious health consequences (2013)</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/how-sleep-deprivation-decays-the-mind-and-body/282395/?single_page=true</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>otherusername2</author><text>I once, involuntary, went without sleep for around 72 hours. I was at a music festival and we were either pulling through the night or I couldn&amp;#x27;t sleep because of the noise. When the time came to go home, I really felt pretty good. At that time I had been awake for around 60 hours. My body was tired and my thinking was a bit sluggish, but nothing too bad...&lt;p&gt;Until I got home and tried to sleep. By then I was feeling dead-tired, but I simply couldn&amp;#x27;t sleep. This wasn&amp;#x27;t your average &amp;quot;Oh I can&amp;#x27;t sleep, guess I&amp;#x27;ll do something else and try again later&amp;quot; case of &amp;#x27;insomnia&amp;#x27;. I was &lt;i&gt;so&lt;/i&gt; extremely tired; all I wanted was to sleep. I started having hallucinations much like the early stages of a mushroom trip (minus the fun). My eyes couldn&amp;#x27;t focus, I couldn&amp;#x27;t think.&lt;p&gt;Finally I managed to fall asleep (while constantly suppressing panic attacks; something I&amp;#x27;ve suffered from in the past and know how to deal with now). I had lucid dream after lucid dream during that sleep. It was very unsettling as I got the feeling (during lucid dreaming) that I wasn&amp;#x27;t getting any &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; sleep and I&amp;#x27;d go insane.&lt;p&gt;All in all the lucid dreaming aspect was pretty cool, and in retrospect perhaps worth the unsettling experience of being awake so long. But I&amp;#x27;ll never ever want to repeat that experience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>globuous</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a crazy story, I could never imagine myself not sleeping for 72 hours!! When I mess up my sleeping schedule pretty bad (which happened a lot back in college), I usually do sleep paralysis when falling asleep (as opposed to when waking up). And I can do it 6 or 7 times in a row, it&amp;#x27;s a nightmare. Usually though, I realize what&amp;#x27;s going on (it&amp;#x27;s happened to me so. many. times.) after the second or third &amp;#x27;paralysis&amp;#x27; and sleep on my stomach, which for some reason, allows me to fall asleep without the whole paralysis thing going on. You can actually turn sleep paralysis into a lucid dream if you &amp;#x27;control&amp;#x27; it properly. I usually just wake up thinking &amp;#x27;thank god I&amp;#x27;m alive&amp;#x27; though.&lt;p&gt;For those interested in sleep paralysis, wikipedia&amp;#x27;s got a pretty good page about it:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Sleep_paralysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Sleep_paralysis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sleep is truely fascinating.</text></comment>