Well, my no sleep experiment was a success. I’m bummed I couldn’t go longer, but really glad I held out as long as I did. Long enough to get sick, physically sick from staying up so long.
I made it 48 hours. Two full nights.
It’s not really that long. I feel like a bit of a wimp.
7AM Saturday to 7AM Monday.
By the end of it, I was destroyed. In every sense of the word. I’m not being melodramatic either. I know it *sounds* melodramatic. But damn, I was a wreck. Falling asleep if I stayed still, and just as bad when I went for a walk to try and stave off the inevitable.
I woke up after a five hour sleep (nap) and got up to get some food. I made breakfast. And then I saw the (victory) pie that I had bought in the last hour of my walk this morning. I’d completely forgotten about it until I saw it. I cast aside my other (inferior) breakfast and ate some of that sweet sweet pie.
I was able to keep notes. It was pretty difficult near the end there. At about 5AM I hit a wall, a wall that twisted my stomach into knots and made my eyes start to do stupid things.
It was fun. It was educational. And there’s no way in hell I think things would go as I had thought they would (in my book) before I did this exercise. I’ll have to write some changes with this knew knowledge.
And in the end, that’s what I wanted. To better understand what happens when we go without sleep.
We go insane. We become shambling simulacrums, mindless automatons.
Or at least, I do.
Thanks for reading.
Heidi exhaustedly out.
P.S.: Thank you Minecraft and Sons of Anarchy for helping keep me occupied while I tried this madness. Both are good.
(I started a new world in Minecraft, one in which I vowed never to make a bed and sleep in. It was hard. It was fun. I think my stained glass windows ended up looking a bit like eyes, bloodshot and wide, a subconscious act on my part.)
H.G. Bells 