What Is the Longest You've Been Awake?

Depression?

On a return flight from China to Europe I was awake at 7 AM China time and arrived at 2 AM destination time the next day. I could not sleep one minute on the plane. Driving home in a rental car for 2 hours on the highway in the rain was a blur. I then still had to refuel the rental car, drop it at the depot and take a cab home. At that point I was so blitzed on caffeine and sugar I couldn't sleep until 5 AM. That's about 30 waking hours. So I slept through Sunday and was awake again just in time for the work week. Meh. Bonus story: In the early morning after the second day of a LAN party (look it up, youngsters) I had been awake continuously for 26 hours and was driving home. I woke up on the outmost overtaking lane of the highway in a standstill car. Biggest adrenaline jolt of my life. Luckily no traffic at that time of day. Drove to the next rest stop and slept in the car for a while. Don't drive when tired!

Horatio Pitt

I wanna say 72-80ish hours, somewhere in that range. Ended up sleeping 24ish hours after that. That was years ago, and not proud to say, but me and an exgf were into bad drugs back then

Gray

You all have much more exciting stories than me. I can't remember personally being up more than 28 hours. I have always to some level been asleep or at least attempted to sleep. I've had bought periods of poor sleep that last for any days where I might only get a few hours of sleep a night, but that doesn't really count. One of our people in studio here claims they stayed up about 2 days. But that's it.

I no longer remember the exact number (which I did note at the time), but it was around 40 hours. I did it just because I could (I never put myself in a position where I NEED to do anything important between midnight and sunrise, though I might elect to do so anyway). I was at summer camp and there was a tradition of having a bit of a sleepover in the common area on the last night, and I just never elected to actually sleep. I don't plan to do that again, though. Experimentation says that a) after around 4 AM I need to keep myself constantly occupied to avoid getting quite mentally fuzzy, b) once fuzzed I need to get at least a significant portion of a full night's sleep to de-fuzz, and c) once the sun is properly up I cannot go to sleep to de-fuzz (and while I might have kept myself un-fuzzed that long I am unlikely to maintain it much longer). I can cheat by keeping myself alert all night and then sleeping very briefly (on one occasion just fifteen minutes while the sun was rising, which come to think of it was probably only possible because I was in a moving bus to rock me to sleep), but I don't generally do that either since it's risky.

Borg Lord

44 hours straight is my record; that was not a fun finals week. As to my sleep schedule, it's...whenever I'm in bed. I work mostly 12 hour night shifts, but occasionally pick up day shifts, so my sleep schedule is all sorts of wonky.

Harmless Kitten

72 straight hours helping my girlfriend (at the time) complete her graduation project. Also, 72 hours after my newborn daughter was born. Let me just say, the latter was worth it, the former not-so-much...

Bensaret

72-ish hours i think. Wasn't good for me at all. I did know a friend in high school who stayed up for almost one week straight (he was competing with a friend...) and ended up with kidney failure...

kallenin

In high school (a fair number of years ago) I intentionally stayed up for 64 hours. I was trying for 72. It was stupid because it was during the school week. This was particularly and incredibly stupid because I was also going without food or drink at the same time. I don't even remember why I did it to start with.

I remember several times I've stayed up for over 24 hours simply because I had really messed up sleeping patterns (sleeping from 4am to 12 noon), and then was asked to do something in the morning, so I just stayed up for a bit longer and drank Red Bull. Not a good idea. Especially since I can't remember the details of why I did that.