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View Full Version : How little sleep can you get a night before you stop functioning?



Pike
10-08-2012, 01:09 AM
We are talking about this in chat. I am the world's biggest lightweight and anything under than seven hours of sleep a night just kills me :|

~*~Celes~*~
10-08-2012, 02:01 AM
I find that I can function on as many as I need to, but I burn out pretty fast :/

Raistlin
10-08-2012, 02:03 AM
For one night? I can get very little sleep, almost none, and still function the next day. After no sleep, I'll start to be borderline functional halfway through the day.

Over a period of days, I can only get 2-4 hours of sleep for a few nights in a row before I desperately need more sleep.

Peegee
10-08-2012, 02:41 AM
minimally I need zero to 90 minutes of rest just to not die.

my record for continuous awake times is around 60 hours at which point I started to hallucinate conversations made by 3rd party people I know

TabbyTrap
10-08-2012, 03:08 AM
On work days, 3 hours will do me if I've been burning time. On most saturdays, I'm asleep til 11 or 12.
Usually around six hours otherwise.

Shiny
10-08-2012, 03:15 AM
Stupidly went on 3 hours of sleep and still went to work. My brain was not functioning so did odd things all day. Luckily none of it was job costing dumb things. My body needs at least 6 hours to function properly, but my brain needs at least 8. Still I like to get at least 9-10 hours as much as possible.

Jowy
10-08-2012, 03:21 AM
I can still function on five or less. I just get hopped up on caffeine and nicotine to get through the day.

The Man
10-08-2012, 03:23 AM
It depends how much sleep I've had the preceding few days. If I've been very well rested then I can perform fine on anywhere from two to six hours. If I haven't, then I need at least seven hours of sleep or I will be a zombie.

I used to drink caffeinated drinks to cope with this but I stopped when it started making my sleep problems worse.

Denmark
10-08-2012, 03:37 AM
coffee is amazing. i've functioned effectively on 2-3 hours sleep, over the course of a few days. I've taken exams on zero sleep, also, though i usually crashed right after.

Shorty
10-08-2012, 03:53 AM
Late teens/early twenties spent all night every night drinking everclear and went on two/three hours of sleep to get up the next morning and work two jobs, six days a week. Would probably die if I tried to do it again.

Now, anything less than seven I'm grumpy and tired all day. Probably could not function on less than four.

Jiro
10-08-2012, 04:25 AM
somteimes you just gotta pull an allnighter

DMKA
10-08-2012, 04:40 AM
Yeah, I'm pretty much a lightweight that can't function right without at least 7 hours.

Tigmafuzz
10-08-2012, 04:48 AM
I've been getting four or five hour nights every two or three days for the last... nine years? Ten? Something like that. I assume I inadvertently trained myself into that odd rhythm (in the same way that a person can train themselves to sleep two hours a night and still function simply by forcing their body to accept that as its new schedule) and I just haven't grown out of it. Although I still don't full understand how the number of hours I sleep is unaffected by whether I've been awake for two days or three. I even occasionally go four but then I have to deal with hallucinations for the last few hours before I go to sleep at a reasonable time :|

Jiro
10-08-2012, 04:48 AM
I reset my record at something like 45 hours or something. I don't really remember. I can do alright on minimal sleep but it fucks me up for a long while afterward. I think I'm getting too old for this shit.

NorthernChaosGod
10-08-2012, 08:32 AM
If it's only for a single day, I can get as little as two hours and function reasonably well for a day. I'd need at least five hours a night to go for more than that though.

NeoCracker
10-08-2012, 08:34 AM
Well there was the two months in the navy, getting 2-4 hours most nights, and a few nights with no sleep at all, before I finally crashed to a point they kicked me out. So really it depends on the levels of crazy my Insomnia feels like going. :monster:

Parker
10-08-2012, 09:45 AM
I'm interested in polyphasic sleep and want to try an uberman one day - but work/sociallife/uni does not allow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep

Chris
10-08-2012, 11:52 AM
I only sleep for about 5-6 hours every night, and it seems to work for me. If I get under three hours, my body shuts down. :zombie:

Bubba
10-08-2012, 12:03 PM
One night of very little sleep doesn't affect me too much the following day. I was up till 3am last night chatting with a friend and left his house at 7.30am to come to work.

But yeah, if I did something similar tonight then I'd be totally zombie-fied tomorrow.

Clo
10-08-2012, 12:15 PM
Wow, reading this thread has really inspired me to get off this couch and go curl up in bed with my comforter.

Night! :D

Rostum
10-08-2012, 12:18 PM
Lately I've only been getting around 4 hours of sleep per night, and it's just continued this perpetual cycle of stress which is really not something I can deal with very well at this point in my life. I'd give anything to go back to 8 hours a night. :(

Unbreakable Will
10-08-2012, 03:40 PM
Depends, if I have work I need at least eight solid hours or I'll die. If I'm not doing anything at all I can go 24 hours without sleep, which is pitiful because a year or so ago I could go on a day and a half Halo Reach marathon and still be down for whatever.

Children and responsibilities have turned me into a wuss. :cry:

Cloudane
10-08-2012, 04:20 PM
For one day I can pull an all-nighter. Can't sustain it though.

Overall I need an average of about 8 hours a day, as far as I've been able to tell. But it's psychologically almost impossible - I have to get up at 7:30 for work, so would have to be in bed for 11pm (I use a fitbit for sleep tracking and learned that you easily lose 30-60 minutes on the time taken to get to sleep and little minutes here and there when you wake up and toss around). 11pm. When you work until 5, then have to get dinner as well, that's not a lot of leisure time really and it's tedious working and sleeping your life away... so I stay up later than I should and spend life like a zombie.

Recently I've been trying to convince myself that 6 hours to myself while functional and able to actually do things is better than 7-8 hours spent as a zombie sprawled across the bed not even having the energy to play a game. It's an uphill struggle though. I have to get past certain facts like: assuming I live another 40 years and get an extra 2 hours a day that's 1216 extra days (more than 3 years) spent unconscious!

Iceglow
10-08-2012, 10:14 PM
If it comes to no sleep I can push myself for about 3 - 4 days before I begin to feel like I'm physically dying, probably am. If however I get like 2 hours on the 3rd night you can generally add another full day or two to the mix without me wanting to die but I'll sleep like a log for 24 hours at the end of it. I'll generally also begin hallucinating about crap.

If we're talking my normal sleep pattern, I tend to sleep like 3 - 5 hours a night every night depending on how healthy I'm feeling when ill I sleep longer.

Agent Proto
10-08-2012, 10:17 PM
I can sleep with as little as 2 hours to the more normal 8 hours. But normally, I usually need about 5 or 6 hours to feel well rested. :)

Loony BoB
10-08-2012, 11:59 PM
I got home at 3am the other day, very drunk. Woke at 6am, went to bed again about 30 minutes later, woke again at around 8am. So four and a half hours. No hangover, either. Was pretty pleased. xD I was tired the entire day but was functioning just fine. Think I spent most of it in #eoff. :p

I used to pretty much live on three hours sleep per night. It was because I had an online relationship with a girl in California, eight hours distance. I could work fine and all, and had no problems there, but over time grew very grumpy outside of work and it inevitably destroyed the relationship. Lesson learned. But basically, I can probably go down to around 2-3 hours sleep and still function at work the next day if I had to.

Pike
10-11-2012, 01:42 AM
I really am a lightweight compared to you guys. I got about six and a half last night and it absolutely destroyed me. Going to bed early tonight. xD

Pumpkin
10-11-2012, 04:30 AM
I once had to go a few days without sleeping due to some emergency situations but on average it depends what I'm used to. When I was used to waking up at 6 I was okay waking up at 6. Now that I'm used to waking up later, even if I get the same amount of sleep time, if I wake up at 6 I will feel terrible. I've also noticed I can go to bed at 9 and wake up at 6 and feel worse than if I went to bed at 4 am and woke up at 10 am.

Araciel
10-11-2012, 06:11 AM
7.

I needs my beauty sleep.

Bubba
10-11-2012, 11:33 AM
I got two hours sleep last night. I do not feel good today.

Faris
10-11-2012, 11:02 PM
I never started functioning.

NorthernChaosGod
10-11-2012, 11:56 PM
I really am a lightweight compared to you guys. I got about six and a half last night and it absolutely destroyed me. Going to bed early tonight. xD

You're such a lightweight for everything. I want to feed you other drugs besides alcohol and see how you react.

Pike
10-12-2012, 01:30 AM
I really am a lightweight compared to you guys. I got about six and a half last night and it absolutely destroyed me. Going to bed early tonight. xD

You're such a lightweight for everything. I want to feed you other drugs besides alcohol and see how you react.

Oh god xD

Bubba
10-12-2012, 01:37 AM
Just say no, Pike

JUST SAY NO!

fire_of_avalon
10-13-2012, 02:39 AM
All you people are fucking up your Circadian rhythm.

I mean I am too, I generally get five to six each night, but I also hate sleeping.