What is the longest time you've gone without sleep?

About 28 hours. Pulled an all nighter reading Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, then had a final.

A tad over 70 hours; just short of three days.

Much of that was spent in the boiler room of a ship repairing an exploded switchboard.

Without drugs? About three days.

36 hours, I think. I was twenty, on my way to Costa Rica, and stranded in New York. Spent the night stumbling around the airport, trying not to get hit by the maniacal drivers of those little cars. They kept yelling, “Beeeep”. It was surreal.

When I had finally managed to get on the plane, I fell asleep before we even left the ground.

Four days sailing solo in a storm. Delirium and apparitions, but I got home. I’ve done a lot of 72—hour stints. One while on a research project taking cardiac output on a patient in whom we’d installed an experimental measuring device inside his aorta. I had to take a series of measurements at continuous fifteen-minute intervals on twelve-hour shifts. It was supposed to be on 6hr shifts, but one of the researchers got sick. Then the other guy went down and with a combination of coffee and short yoga ujjayi breathing sessions every few hours, I got the job done with no problem at all. I didn’t miss one measurement and wasn’t especially exhausted at the end, which I attribute to the ujjayi. I probably would’ve done even better without the coffee. I was totally sold on yoga after that.

As a first year RN on a cardiac step-down unit in Orlando, we were constantly short staffed and I was asked to do two 16-hr shifts back-to-back more than once. That’s two double shifts back-to-back. I was the new guy and had no kids at home, so the nurse manager always approached me first. And I had a hard time saying no in those days.

About 48 hours while travelling. I didn’t feel very well by the end of it. I need regular sleep.

about 48 hours

About 48 hours. It was not splendid.

Nick Nolte/Eddie Murphy…Another 48hrs
Nah not really, mine is a meagre 26hrs.

Two days/nights. I drove non-stop from Phoenix to Chicago in order to meet a girlfriend and go to a concert. Fifty or so miles from Chi I started hallucenating and wound up falling asleep in my motel room and missing the the concert. I was very young and stupid then and would never do something like that now.

3.5 days. Happened about 4 times in a 2 year span. Pure torture. Not sure why it happened either.

In field tactical exercises in the Army we were forced to work all sorts of duties in a field medical lab for 36 hours. I’ll never forget at 4 a.m. being asked to type and cross 6 units of whole blood for a fictitious patent. When I was handed a tube of blood that had 2 different patient names on it I tossed it in the bio waste container and told the phlebotomist that I need another specimen with the correct name. He told me to give him back the specimen and he would correctly label it. I said no because the ID of the specimen is in question. The doctor came in about a half hour later and said that they couldn’t obtain another specimen, the patient died and that I killed the patient. I felt like my head was going to explode. I yelled back, “No you killed the patient by not giving me an adequate specimen!”. Can’t remember much after that. Slept good though.

Probably 26ish hours.

Once, early in my career I did a 48+ hour “shift”, also on a boiler repair. This was a utility boiler forced outage, however, and I was the only supervisor who could be sent on short notice. I hired a small crew of boilermakers after driving six hours to get to the site, worked through the night with them, then hired a new crew for the day shift, and worked with them through the next day. Night shift again. Day shift again. By the end of the second day a new supervisor was sent in to take the next night shift. (I had tried to stretch out and sleep in the office space I was given, but I was “thinking too hard” – this was my first ever job as the HMFIC, and I was having a blast.)

By the time I tried to check into the hotel that night I looked like I had been crawling through a pigsty, but it was just wet coal ash from the furnace bottom. (They didn’t want to let me into the hotel room until I promised them that the very first thing I was going to do was to shower. Twice. Next morning was a joy, since I had come without luggage and had to put those clothes back on … to go shop for new clothes.) Ahh, fun times.

Even now, though, when I fly to Asia I usually stay awake for around 36 hours or more at a stretch. What I do is spend a normal day at home or at the office the day before the flight, then stay up at home all night and spend it finalizing plans and packing, and take a limo for a couple hours to the airport. Then around 24 hours in flying and layovers, a four-hour taxi ride to the jobsite, and I sleep like a baby that first night (which would be noon here in the US East Coast). I’d sleep on the plane if I could, but I just can’t manage that, and it does help to get me fully ready for sleeping through the night in Asia!

I can do two days no problem. I need to follow that with a ten hour nap though. I once couldn’t sleep due to illness. I don’t recall how long I went without sleep, only that it was long enough to cause hallucinations; I believe about ninety hours.

Two days when I was in my teens. It seemed easy at the time. Now, I genuinely think I’d end up in the hospital if I attempted it.

I’ve probably reached around 26–30 hours somewhat often, I always end up screwing up my sleep schedule so I am awake at night, and to reset it I need to basically pull an all-dayer, waking up at 7–12 pm, and going to sleep at a similar time, but often I get overtired.

I don’t know why but people seem to insist a 12 hour day is normal, but I’m dead tired by then, and then I wind up getting overtired and screwing up my sleep.

7 days writing an English essay in the computer lab on” the importance of being Earnest.” I got 65 % on the essay.

Almost 3 days in college and it wasn’t fun.

5 days. I was still pretty much a Newlywed and had a job where I worked late nights. I was trying to do my job as well as spend time with my bride. My brain was like oatmeal and I needed to get my Texas license back. We went to the DMV and I surrendered my NM lic and had to take the written test all over again. Even in my mental state, I aced the test. The weekend came and my body and mind gave me one big raspberry and I crashed and slept for those two days.