Tonight we sleep in separate ditches.

[reddragdiva]

Who stays awake two to three days at a stretch more often than occasionally?

I last did this sort of thing on any sort of regular basis when I was editing a student newspaper ten, no eleven, years ago. (At 28, I was the Old Man of the office.) I'd make it through the last few hours having a Berocca every hour and a Sudafed every second hour. Your writing quality gets really crap by about hour thirty, by the way — the grammar and punctuation is there, but having anything at all to say or saying it at all well goes right out the window. (Though I did write one of my best articles ever around hour 34. I had all my notes right in order, though.)

Best bit is going home afterwards on the tram, around hour 40, and looking both trashed and meeeannn. Because junkies try to buy drugs from you, and take it personally when you say you're not a dealer. Well, they did me, anyway. They also did it when I'd had a REALLY BAD DAY at work. Even skinny weedy BOFHs don't get hassled walking down dark alleys when they're projecting that.

Sleep. Sleep is definitely my favourite drug ever. Well, no, cloves are. But sleep is up there.

Comments

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Who stays awake two to three days at a stretch more often than occasionally?

Me.

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

Who stays awake two to three days at a stretch more often than occasionally?

i *hate* going without sleep for too long. i didn't used to - i used to stay up for days when i was a teenager. but even at Whitby, i can't really do it now. i just go to sleep, even if i'm busy. even if i'm, er, gettin' busy, if you catch my drift. i blink, and i'm out cold. if i get too down on sleep with just not getting a full 8 hours every night i fall asleep then too. i fell asleep while driving a while back, but woke up before i hit anything. so that extreme hallucinating sleeplessness is a thing of the past for me. i may have sleepless nights, but my body doesn't *let* me get sleep deprived anymore.

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

Twenty years ago, there was a year where I never slept between Thursday morning and Sunday morning. That got to be a little rough. Since then, I've scaled back to where I only pull an allnighter once a month or so. My secret: cigarettes and strong, hot coffee pretty much constantly starting from around 4AM the first night you haven't slept, a high-calorie meal every four hours or so whether you think you need it or not, and something sweet with the coffee - donuts are good for that. The donuts are important - if you don't keep your blood sugar up, the coffee and cigarettes will still keep you awake, but you'll just sit there and twitch.

[reddragdiva]

The sitting and twitching would have been where I was writing rubbish.

[hestia.livejournal.com]

La Trobe students recommend $4 mud cakes from Coles.

[redcountess]

I used to pull all nighters quite often in my late teens/early 20s, but they did nothing for my mental state, and I never did more than one night. I now occasionally suffer from bouts of insomnia, but never for more than a day, or if two nights in a row, I'm able to sleep for a few hours during the day.

[http://users.livejournal.com/doctor_k_/]

Now that I'm in my mid-thirties, I pull all-nighters more frequently than I ever did in my youth. That's what night-shift will do to you!

It gets easier with time, but I'm full of absolute nonsense by about hour 30, and get a wee bit hysterical.
I do find however that raging-bull speed addicts in my work place choose not to mess with me though.

[reddragdiva]

"Don't make me bring my lizard brain into this discussion. You wouldn't like my lizard brain in this discussion."

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Who stays awake two to three days at a stretch more often than occasionally?

Not recently. But on the right project, yes. I do my best work after midnight.

NB: for the really long haul, I stay off caffeine.

[hestia.livejournal.com]

I never do it. Ever. Less than 5 hrs sleep per 24hrs is so bad for me and everyone around me that going 72 hours without any sleep is utterly unthinkable.

[ickle-yuki.livejournal.com]

I tended to stay awake about 3 and a bit days most weeks during my last years at uni, mostly due to utterly being able to sleep due to massively bad ezcema keeping me awake, waking up with blood covered sheets when i finally did fall sleep wasn't fun though.

Nowadays as I edge nearer to 30, I'm not really able ot manage more than 12hours awake without feeling very tired.

Some days I'll manage a couple of days awake though, but they're very rare.

Never get enough sleep it seems, or is that never enough *restful* sleep.

[ex-unagothae16.livejournal.com]

I have never been able to stay awake for more than 29 hours at a stretch. When I did manage that much I'd sleep for 13 hours no matter what else I was supposed to be doing.

I don't know if I posted about the time I managed to stay up for two whole days without sleep, but that was in August '04 and involved copious amounts of sex and caffeine.

I honestly don't really remember those two days. I remember I was awake for the second day because I had to work, but I was utterly zombified and probably made a huge fool out of myself. I'm certain that it's for the best that I don't remember.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I've only nearly done it once, on no stimulants whatsoever. There was a maths exam in the middle and my answers were apparently "interesting".

[inulro.livejournal.com]

I'm a lifelong insomniac. I can survive for ages without *significant* sleep (not a pretty sight. I worked through it for a month once, for which I was not thanked) but can no longer stay up for even 24 hours without some semblance of sleep, even if it's trying to sleep for 7 hours and actually sleeping for 1.