In the Dead of Night

As some of you know (or most of you, as the case would have it) I tend to not sleep much. I have a weird sleeping schedule, which usually lands me about 4-6 hours of sleep, although admittedly, its been closer to 6 lately. I have no issue with my sleep schedule, and I normally feel very rested. Lately though, I've decided to try something different.

As of the writing of this post, I have not slept in approximately 66 hours. The worst part is, as odd as it sounds, I'm not particularly sleepy. I realize that after I get some rest, I very well wake up and find that I have written a few paragraphs of incoherent gibberish, but right now, I feel fine. So here is what happened:

The game Spore was released on Sunday. (Amazing game, by the way. If you are at all questioning wether to buy it or not, do so.) I played the game for a while, went to bed. Monday, I woke up, did some stuff, and eventually ended up playing World of Warcraft (WoW) that evening. At about 3:30 - 4 am, I quit WoW and decided to play Spore for what I thought would be an hour or so. I play Spore, and eventually decided to look at the clock. I knew I had certainly gone over an hour, but lo and behold, it was noon, on the dot. After I cursed myself for being an idiot, I decided that it would REALLY screw up my sleep schedule if I went to sleep at that point, so instead of sleep, I read. After reading, I started getting sleepy, so I showered, then ate. By the time the night had rolled around again, I was no longer sleepy at all. Sure, I felt a little tired, but not sleepy. So I thought to myself, "I wonder how hard it would be to do it again." Well, it had been a while since I tested my limits on sleep depravation, so I thought "What the hell" and decided to find out how hard it would be, and how long I could go. The next night had a similar schedule to the first. I must admit, the hardest parts usually come between 2am and 6am. This is when the world is quietest, I find. People on the west coast have gone to bed, and people on the east are not quite awake yet. It is these times where staring at a screen becomes the hardest.

This is my third night doing this, and will probably be the last, as it is becoming increasingly difficult to ward off the Sandman.

I would like to describe some of the oddities I have experienced due to the lack of sleep:

It starts with the sole feeling of lacking energy. When I first got tired, I wanted to do nothing but lie there, which would lead to sleep. This was easy to overcome. From then on, this feeling would come in waves. It was easy to get through these waves, so long as I kept myself busy.

Day 2 had my eyes occasionally becoming very watery, which would be followed by a burning sensation in the eyes, especially when exposed to bright light (I believe that this feeling is to be expected). This would occasionally reoccur, although less frequently, during the following day.

Sometime around night 2, I would find myself staring into space. I was not asleep, but I was definitely going through phases of just clearing my mind and thinking of nothing. I would realize, for example, that I had been staring at a computer screen for no reason for a couple minutes while doing nothing, or that I suddenly had stopped reading my book. I wasn't quite sleepy, but once again, I was not at 100%.

Sometime during day 3, I began to get an occasional headache. It would be a sharp pang of pain in the area behind the eyes, which would quickly reside. I have not had one of these since after dinner, though, so it is possible that they were hunger related, although doubtful.

At some point here, it became impossible for me to go outside without sunglasses. It just made my eyes water.

During the evening of day 3, I am guessing it happened around 5pm, I started experiencing a variety of optical illusions. I would imagine that I saw slight movement here or there, or things would start wavering. I thought I saw a vase with flowers tipping over, but as I my body instinctively jerked to prepare to catch it, I realized it hadn't moved. Lastly, and perhaps most curiously, as it occurred with most frequency, was the fact that my brain began making errors with colors.  My red LCD alarm clock numbers glowed a darker cyan at one point for a period of about 10 seconds, only for it to go back to its normal color after a blink. A dark red car (maybe burgundy) looked violet to me for a few seconds. There are a few other colors that changed in hue (got brighter/darker), and a couple other colors that were swapped (green and orange), but mostly, the swap came with shades of red and blue. Very strange, but I don't have the awareness to do a proper net search at the moment to see if anything has been documented in regards to it.

Right now, I once again feel tired, but not quite sleepy. It is currently 635 am. I began writing this at 6. I am tempted to stay up for another 5.5 hours in order to make it an even 72, but I feel it would almost be torture. I have the energy left to do it. It would only take a coke and a quick bite to eat in order for me to be re-energized enough to do this another day, but my body is not the problem. My real problem, lies more in my mental condition. I know I am not all here right now. If only you cold see all the typos I am currently making. My body is tired, but I am not really exhausted. My mind, on the other hand, yearns for a break. It is very difficult to maintain a thread of thought. Reading has become difficult, as I have trouble processing what I am reading. I read it, only to find that I did not understand what it is I have read. Even gaming is difficult, as I find myself suddenly blanking out. Even writing this is difficult, as I start to write something, only to forget the point I was making. I was attempting to do simple mathematics earlier (adding up the hours I've been awake) and even that was horribly slow going. I actually had to think about something as simple as 24x2+12+6. It took me 2-3 minutes to do what you've probably done at a glance. I must say, though, I consider this a worthy experiment. It has shown me that if I needed to, I can easily (for the most part) stay awake, but, in those situations, I should avoid making critical decisions, and should instead attempt to solve problems in the simplest of fashions.

It is now 6:55am on day 3, and I have not slept in 67 hours. This blog post will remain unedited after posting, regardless of how incoherent it may seem to me in retrospect. I have not even gone back to read what I wrote. Truly, though, I just wanted to state all of what I have experienced as an initial reaction, before everything has processed. Maybe I will write a blog post in response to this, although I really find it doubtful that I will. Who knows. As the age old saying states: Let me sleep on it.