SLEEP DEPRIVATION

I used to think I was an exceptionally sleep-deprived person, but I eventually realized that I was just an adult. It's pretty typical for American adults to be sleep-deprived. We have a hard time juggling 40-50 hour work-weeks coupled with commutes, personal responsibilities, and just way too much entertainment. Some of us have loved ones and families as well.

When I used to be into making amateur games, I would frequently stay up working on them for days at a time. The same is true for music (most of Grave Spirit's tracks were written after 4:00 AM).

Now I am generally more happy and secure and I tend to sleep in a consistent, but inadequate, pattern. I average about five hours per night. I have come to accept that, if I want to play video games and write music, I need to give up a few hours of sleep every day.

I wonder what the effects are for segmented sleep deprivation versus continuous sleep deprivation?

After I came back from China last summer I didn't sleep for nearly a week.

I'm not very good at staying awake. I just have a couple of memories of some tougher bits. One was in the army when we didn't sleep for a while instead we marched all through the night (in what seemed like circles, though to be honest I just followed the back in front of me).

Another was last year when I volunteered for a medieval fair-type thing that I combined with a night job (morning papers). That meant I worked during the night (and with my rythm skewed it meant I didn't sleep much before I went to work), got home to eat some breakfast then went straight to the fair to get them orders what to do. The whole day I was around being friendly to kids and letting them ride some sort of strange wooden horse. Then when the first day of the fair was over I had planned to go home and get some sleep. Unfortunately (yeah right) there was a barbeque afterwards with free food and I had to stay with the very friendly people that were there (only for a little while, I thought) and after a tour of the castle (there's some castle ruins beside where the fair was) in the middle of the night I realized I had to get to work.

So off I went to do my rounds again. However like the night before I worked double which meant I got home just about in time to get back to the second day of the fair. (I might have gotten an hour or fifteen minutes of rest there in the morning though I'm not entirely sure) The second day of the fair was much like the last one. Pushing kids around on the wooden horse. When the day was over there was a followup where we had to empty the place of all traces of the fair and clean up and all that good stuff.

It did take a while. Fortunately the following night I didn't have work so I slept all well and good and was back in business.


To be honest in those few days the deprivation didn't seem to affect me much. I believe it was because of all the physical work I was doing. Otherwise I tend to fall asleep nearly everywhere but the fact that I was constantly going about meant that I never really felt tired. Of course the second I stopped and sat down on the grass it took some effort to get up again. It was also in the middle of the summer and when the sun doesn't go down you don't need as much sleep.

From my limited experience in sleep deprivation the only "symptom" I can really recall is a certain numbness in the head. Like if you scratch your head it sort of isn't there but still is. I don't know. There's also the tired floating around feeling. It's a bit like being drunk I guess. Or you know, tipsy or whatever it is called.

I like my eight hours a night.

bahleted

I stay up late for no reason and that gets me into a bad cycle. It takes a good few weeks to get me back on track if I do that. The whole in bed by ten thing is something I would ideally love to do but being a 2nd year undergrad that just isn't ever going to happen.

So my pattern is sketchy.

I also expect to be bed-ridden and ill after this.

I usually get 6-7 hours of sleep at night, then another hour in the car ride to work.
I look like a fucking raccoon, guys.

author=Fallen-Griever link=topic=3924.msg78521#msg78521 date=1244131088
You need to truly embrace sleep deprivation and make sure it becomes useful to you! Every dissertation, report etc. that I have ever handed in has been written as a result of jaffa cakes, energy drinks and no sleep.

usually, my issue is that after days of no sleep, its all you want. you don't want to get out of bed because you're risking the chance that "tonight might be the night!! maybe i will finally sleep!!"

also, when you DO get out of bed, and during the day, you just feel like you're drunk. nothing functions. you feel wrong and all you can think of is "if only i could sleep, it'd go away" only when you try, it doesn't come...

I try to stay the hell away from sleep deprivation, especially considering I'm big into fitness and all that; trying to stay fit and not getting enough sleep is extraordinarily mutually exclusive, unless you're in the military or something. It's really one of the worst things you can do to your body if you don't HAVE to do it.

Besides, I'm a wreck if I don't get enough sleep.

Unless I'm out I can barely stay up past midnight. I love sleep.