Whats the longest period of time that you have stayed awake/with minimal sleep/rest
 

scoobydugan recently asked a similar question in a quest to get back to NY, which prompted me to get out the old calculator to work out how long I had gone without serious sleep whilst driving or working. I once did a 24 hour shift when I worked for a iron ore mining company.
But, back in the days of my long distance truck driving, I carted livestock for a living from the north-west, of West Oz.
My base was just over 1300 kms from Perth, where the livestock markets were. These markets closed at 8.30 am, Wednesday mornings. I had 2 loads to go from home base, and a 3rd from a station about 250 K's closer to Perth. I began my first run on Saturday afternoon, about 6pm. I finished the last trip, at the markets just before the 8.30am closing time, Wed.
Total Hours on the road:110 hours
6200k's or 3875miles total distance
1328k's or 830 miles per 24 hour day
Trucks maximum speed was about 105 kph
Rest stops included refuelling, meals, loading and unloading.
If you add 10 hours of daylight for the Saturday, it actually was 120 hours with minimal sleep. Nowadays, there is no way I could acheive that.
All one up. No co-driver. Oh and only poor radio reception!

http://www.usatourist.com/english/tips/distances.html

I reckon for me at a LAN party. Woke up at about 8am Satuday morning and got to sleep at about 1am Monday morning.... whats that 41 hours non stop....

btw, like the avatar......

does that involve drugs or not?

Wiithout drugs, I've been up for almost 30 hours. I had to drive to LA from Protland, OR to get my girlfriend and then back. It's about 15 hours to where she was at.

I was fine, just alot of coffee, and I had the shakes by the time I got home.

With drugs, it would be longer, alot longer in fact.

Spent a week in Singapore once...20 hours sleep in 10 days. Including one stretch, toward the end, where I stayed up for 50 hours. I was seriously tripping by the end of that.

48 hours... on a schoolvacation with the entire class to Austria. I couldn't sleep in the bus. So I stayed up... without coffee or any stimulant, mind you.
When I finally got to the destination I laid on the bed and slept like a log for 12 hours. They even threw water in my face to try to wake me for dinner, but I just wouldn't wake up. :p

And 48 hours another time before my first high school senior year exam. I'd just tried out coffee plus the effect of nervousness kept me up all night. I aced the exam though. :D

I think the longest I've done without sleep was about 54 hours. I went from midday on Saturday through to 6pm Monday. In that whole time all my caffiene consumption was contained within 3 cups of (strong) coffee.

The basic chain of events for this was I was going to a conference.

I has to catch the train at about 6am on the Sunday, so, there was no point in me getting sleep before leaving as I would have just been even more wasted for the travelling.

From there it was about 24 hours of travelling (including waiting for connecting trains).

When I finally got to my destination at 6am on Monday I had to go to the conference which was starting around 8am.

Well, the next 8 hours were spent listening to talks with an attention span of about 5-10 seconds and the final half of that day at the conference spent blacking out :)

After another hour of travelling to get to my accomodation (was staying with relatives) and some time to eat, I completely crashed.

It was definately a fun bit of time, but I have no intention of repeating it again.

Five days with only a few hours sleep.

When I was in high school and my parents were both out of town on business, a friend and I decided to see how long we could stay awake. With a lot of coffee and some Vivarin, we stayed awake from Monday morning until sometime Wednesday morning. I'm not sure of the exact hours, though, but I remember feeling like I was gonna die if I didn't get some sleep.

32 hours awake.

I've gone like 30 hours without sleep, finishing up a computer science project for school. It was awful...

With a tooth that needed to be pulled over a holiday, I was awake for 36 hours straight.

Otherwise, my record is about 12 hours sleep in 96 total hours as a volunteer at a religious retreat.

Mine would only be basically skipping a night of sleep. So I woke up at say 8 AM, then stayed up for...close to 40 hours and went to sleep probably 11 or 12 the next night.

I decided to do a solo roadtrip from middle tennessee to charleston SC so that i could see the ocean. I chose to not stay there and drove all the way there and all the way back in one go. I was up for 42 1/2 hours total, and 20 of those were spent on the road ( and stopping for fuel/caffeine ). Thanks to that roadtrip I never drive tired now. :D

I've been up for 24/25 hours before. I had been working for 8hrs, then I had to travel about 7hrs, went out to eat and the movies, stayed up playing video games and walking around the park at night. Once my head hit the pillow, I think I slept 12hrs.

The longest I've ever went with no sleep at all was like 36 hours. And I only did that because I had a bad ear infection and the pain had kept me up the night before.

LAN party! w00t! About 40 hours. I get really cold and hungry after being awake for about 24 hours.

I spent 8 nights in Cancun with no more than 4 hours of sleep each night, and even then, sleep was finally reached by around 8 in the morning so the days themselve's seemed soo damn long!

How do you people go 5 days with only a few hours of sleep? I barely made it the 40 hours I did.

76 hours with NO sleep. but I also hold the record for most hours of sleep........24 hours of straight sleep, plus another 16 after I woke up to piss. That was after my concussion :)

I've slept for 30 hours straight after I skiid into a wall. Apparently it wasn't a concussion, but never trust doctors who also say that chipped and knocked out teeth are "minor cuts and bruises".

About 36 hours due to gambling in Vegas.

At my college they give us 'group projects' to work on which adds up to around 40% of grade for the course. This one semester I had like 5 group projects all due within one week. Ofourse no-one ever does anything until the last week which meant HELL for me since even though I'd done my 'parts' others hadnt done theirs and decided to tell us so the day before the due date :/

So anyway, this one week I went 5 days with an 1 hour sleep each day and every waking hour studying/reading/typing at a computer. On Friday went and partied/danced until 4 in the morning. Went to sleep, woke up Sunday 7am....

Lost around 8 pounds through the whole week. Got HUGE black sacks under my eyes that took 3 weeks to get rid off.

Longest I've stayed awake was 48 hours. Back when I was in highschool I got like 4 hours of sleep a night.

Asta!!

The longest I have been without sleeping would be about 14 hours. It was brutal.

29hr shift at work
3 different stores and 1 shower and change of clothes in the middle. i came home and crashed out for 12 hours.

36 hours

I almost don't want to mention my piddly 27 hours...

48hrs, partying followed by insomnia

i have stayed awake for 72 consecutive hours once..

my friend was a psych major in college and he did a project on sleep deprivation or something of the sort...me and some of my buddies helped him out by staying awake way too long...

by the time it got to around 50 hours, i could barely focus my eyes on anything for longer than a few seconds

at 72 i was just a complete brain moron and had to go to sleep.

yzerman~

i tied your record for sleep...

after a night at the bar in which 60oz pitchers were only 1$ i crashed on the couch at my friends house

i got up at 10am and wandered over to a sandwich shop, and fell asleep in there for 30min..

my sister randomly came into that same shop and saw me, woke me up and drove me home, i got into bed at 11am on saturday, and woke up at 11am on sunday

i was in bad shape :)

by the way StevieY is my fav hockey player...

i name all my multi player rpg characters Yzerman when i am in a game :)

40 hours. Flew from here to Chile and then stayed awake to beat jet lag.

heh 40 hours
lan...8:00 am one day to 12:00 am the next

76 hours with no sleep and lots of alcohol: deadly combo

got up thursday at 6 in time to rehearse my last exam. Went to take the test, then headed to a restaurant with the entire class to eat and afterwards chitchatted. At night we went out to celebrate and ended up partying all night. We then realised we had to be back in school at 9 am, for a pre-results speech, so we decided to go there straightaway.
That was the 24 hour line.
After that speech, we were expected to say a few words, and then get some feedback from our teachers and professors. When that was finished, we were hungry again, and decided to get some food with the whole group, and spent time in front of a little bar, chitchatting some more. Then most people gave up and went home to sleep. At that point, a friend called me to ask where the hell I was since I had promised to help them put together their LAN-party and there were 6 hours left till people would begin to arrive. So I drove there in a hurry and helped put the network in order, made sure there was enough electricity and prepared some of the food etc. After that, I drove home, got my own PC and brought it over to the LAN of course. I got there, installed it, and played some games for an hour or 3. Then downloaded a few movies, and after that, it appeared to be 10 am :p
that was the 48 hour line...
So I had breakfast, and after that, I had bar-shift (them lan-gamers need to drink too you know) till the afternoon. I played a bit more, and then had kitchen-duty from till 10 pm. I finally got off and I decided to play a bit more, till I felt really sleepy.
Just when I figured I might as well go to sleep, a buddy said: hey, look what I downloaded off the net last week:
Some kind of vampire movie with Alyssa Milano (that kept me awake :p ) Don't ask me the name of the movie though.
By that time, it was 6 am again (72 limit) , and I figured I would stay up for 2 more hours, to get the breakfast for the lan from the baker, and make sure everyone got their part. Of course, nobody ever gets up in time during a lan, so it took a little while longer to distribute everything.
When all that stuff was finished, I figured I would go and see how far my download queue was on my PC.
While I was sitting there, I swear to God I saw a chipmunk dance over my keyboard. That's the point where I said: Goodnight, I've had my share :D
Crashed in the sleeping area and slept through the whole third day of the Lan-party. Got up just in time to get my stuff out of the room before they started cleaning.

No drugs at all... well, cigarettes and coffee.

When I worked thirds, and went to school, and various other things... woke up Wednesday at noon, went to school, studied, went to work, came home, studied, went to school for 2 exams, went to work, came home, slept like 2 hours, golfed worked out, went to work, got off work sat about 7 am, drove to Cincinnati (3 hr drive), drank all day, parited all night until 4 am sunday, got up at 9 am Sunday, partied until 9 pm, then passed out from lack of sleep.

maybe 25 hours. really not as bad as others though.

Awesome to hear it man......the man is my idol as well as a great role model. As a kid I always wanted to be like "Stevie".....I'm still trying awful hard ;)

Hmmm... 72 hours during finals week, no sleep in that time. No caffiene either, I didn't want to crash. I did it on willpower!

Went to bed, only slept for five hours. I woke up feeling refreshed so I stayed awake for another 40 or so. Got to bed at a normal time, midnightish, and was up at 7 the next morning, feeling normal.

Its amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it.

Did a world record for dj on radio in 2000, 62 hours and 4 on either side meant 66 hours, funnily enough was too tired to sleep properly after.
The difficulty was appearing alert and awake as well as doing the radio stuff, adverts intors interviews.. got the certificate from guinness butmissed the 2000 book by 2 weeks.

~50 hrs once after getting my car locked in a garage (i now religiously make note of what time garages lock up)

had too many obligations/commitments to lay my head upon a pillow, so i was in the strange zombie state. like driving asleep almost.

when i had my 4 wisdom teeth removed, i basically was asleep for a full week cuz my mom kept shoving the pills down my throat every time i came to. but i never felt any pain that i can recall...