Post: #1

I am having a weird 7 days.

I am skipping my third night of sleep (last Thus and last Sun were the last two).

But worried about work tomorrow. But I will be okay.

Still - just wondering if anyone has any tips for staying awake. I have tired caffeine pills in the past - but they didn't do much for me. Or maybe they did - and I never realised.

I never drink coffee - so I was hoping they would have an effect.

Anyway - just curious how other guys handle making yourself stay awake?

Post: #2

Any reason you're skipping all these nights of sleep? It's not a very good idea.

Post: #3

Yeah may permanently accelerates aging's destruction of memory. Take it from me, I feel pretty dumb trying to remember words in my 50s that were instantly available 20 years ago.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/

And I know you didn't say this, but if you're doing speedy illegal drugs, stop now and for good.

I treat guys every day in the hospital that hear whispering and voices for the rest of their lives because they fried their brains with beaucoup meth.

They have to take major tranquilizers like Zyprexa to shut the voices up.

It's not exactly a party animal scenario. They feel ashamed, stupid and damaged about having permanent Substance Induced Psychotic disorder. I almost know the diagnosis number by heart from using it a lot, but my memory is damaged lol.

Post: #4

Im a Air Force cop and we work 12 hour shifts of total boredom,
heres how I stay awake
1. beating off
2. watching porn
3.taking preworkout
4.taking college classes
5.working out
6. a lot of guys like to take lots of smoke breaks

Post: #5

At the start of each summer (here in the UK) - my sleep goes a bit mad.

I get hypomania and am too buzzed to go to sleep.

There is no down side - since I don't crash and get depression on the other side of it.

win/win right???

Post: #6

I do a lot of driving for work, and there are times where I spend hours on the same empty highway and it's easy to start nodding off.

My best solution is modafinil (chemically prevents me from falling asleep). Talking with someone on the phone also helps keep me attentive, but that's not always a safe solution.

I would've thought loud music would keep me awake, but even if it's heavy metal I eventually become used to it and tune it out. Audiobooks, even interesting ones, tend to make me sleepy after a while. So lately, I've been listening to comedy-Mitch Hedberg and George Carlin and the like. I've found it's much easier to stay awake and alert when I'm laughing every minute versus rolling down the windows or blasting music.

Post: #7

@IKnowExactly - I hate drugs. I only do alcohol. Nothing to worry about there. Still - I appreciate your concern.

Skipping sleep is great. It is only really hard for a short period - say between 10:30 and 11:00am. Something like that.

Then you get a second wind and could stay awake for the rest of the day (and into the night) if you wanted.

I don't do that - instead I just go bed and get sleep around 6pm. Then wake up around 2am - and suddenly I have some time to kill before work. And my body clock is corrected enough to allow me to easily get up the next day at the right time for work.

The other great thing - i that doing this basically cuts out about two days from your work week. SO it is a great way of sleeping up a boring week at work.

Still - Wednesday was a bit weird. It was the busier day of the year at work - so a bit of bad luck there.

On my days off - I go to bed at 5am and wake up around 1pm. So - it is easy to see why adjusting my body clock for work during the week is a big issue for me. And why weird ideas like this once offers useful benefits to me.

I don't do it often - maybe 4-5 times a year. And usually in the summer. When it gets light at 4am - it really helps you wake up. This past week has being a bit strange though. Skipping a nights sleep on three separate occasions. Almost makes me want to split my work week into to two really long days - as opposed to having to kill myself waking up in the morning.

It would work well for me - since shifting my sleep in that way means I would never be woken by an alarm clock during the entire week.

If I skip after a day off - it means staying awake for about 29 hours before going back to sleep. And during it during a work week - means staying awake for about 35 hours before going to sleep.

So - it isn't too bad. The only difficult thing is when your internal body clock kicks over to a new day - and for me that happens between 9 and 12am.

Post: #8

(05-13-2014 09:14 PM)Molon Labe Wrote:  Im a Air Force cop and we work 12 hour shifts of total boredom,
heres how I stay awake
1. beating off
2. watching porn
3.taking preworkout
4.taking college classes
5.working out
6. a lot of guys like to take lots of smoke breaks

I once got stuck doing the set up and take down for a major concert (of course my rookie self couldn't get scheduled during the concert itself where all the drunk tossing was). The worst part was that it was a radio dead zone (go fucking figure), so I did two twelve hour shifts watching the stage crew trapped inside my own mind.

Post: #9

I understand where you are coming from as I live even farther north, and the endless sun is a tough change this month. That being said I think sleep is the most important thing for our health. just go to bed. turn off the electronics.

Post: #10

I ended up using a modified polyphasic sleeping while in college to get all of my work done and study. It's actually harder going from polyphasic to normal again. Mind you, I didn't have an exact sleeping schedule. I fell into brief 30 minute naps during the day, maybe two or three of them, with a longer (4 hour) sleep period from 2AM-6AM. I wouldn't recommend it. In terms of staying up... it's largely a contest of will. It's honestly more important to do your work correctly, though, so if being tired will affect your quality then take a half day to get some ZZZ's.

Post: #11

I worked graves for 3 years, switching back and forth between a "normal" schedule, and my work schedule. I found that melatonin the night before I switched over to my work schedule gave me a deeper sleep and allowed my body to switch over fairly easy. Coffee doesn't really do anything for me because the crash makes me so tired it's better to avoid it completely. I've also found that listening to upbeat music I enjoy (EDM in my case), helps out a ton too.

Post: #12

In the UK they had a wonderful game show which was unique.

It only ever had one series.

It lasted a week. And the ideas was simple.

Eight people would stand around an expensive truck and touch it.

The last one to stop touching it - won the truck. It was called 'Touch The Truck'.

The last person standing was a guy who had stood there for about 6 nights and days - with his hand on the truck. Pretty amazing. And just before each contestant dropped out - you could often see them hallucinating and talking to themselves.

Post: #13

(05-16-2014 08:43 AM)cardguy Wrote:  In the UK they had a wonderful game show which was unique.

It only ever had one series.

It lasted a week. And the ideas was simple.

Eight people would stand around an expensive truck and touch it.

The last one to stop touching it - won the truck. It was called 'Touch The Truck'.

The last person standing was a guy who had stood there for about 6 nights and days - with his hand on the truck. Pretty amazing. And just before each contestant dropped out - you could often see them hallucinating and talking to themselves.

My goodness, that's like "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?", only in real life! I don't know whether to be amazed, envious, shocked, disgusted, or all of that at the same time

Post: #14

The guy who won was some hippy/raver type. He said he could have gone on for days longer if he had to.

I can't remember but I think he used the truck to give money to a charity or something.

Post: #15

It's a useful technique for coercing confessions, even confessions that aren't true.

The Japanese police do it to an extent when they arrest someone. That's a large part of the reason that the conviction/confession rate when suspects are taken into custody approaches 98/99%.

If you go long enough without sleep, you do and say strange things. If you are homeless and have no mental stimulation (apart from your other material concerns), you can quickly go mad.

It's hard to explain protracted, mindless sleep deprivation and boredom. They're connected. Paul Theroux does a good job of it in The Old Patagonian Express.

Post: #16

If you only need more energy for an extra few hours then high intensity cardio will give you a rush of energy. It also tires you out eventually but the endorphin high will last long enough to get you through a few hours.

I also second the recommendation for modafinil. That's what that drug was made for and it really works when you're sleep deprived.

Post: #17

Sleep deprivation gives you a buzz. Research has shown it is an effective treatment for depression. But sadly it only lasts until the person next gets a good nights sleep.

It can be a form of drug as well. 'My Bloody Valentine' made probably the most critically acclaimed album of the 90s - and they used sleep deprivation as their drug of choice to help make the album.

This is their best song.

Post: #18

(05-18-2014 08:54 AM)cardguy Wrote:  Sleep deprivation gives you a buzz. Research has shown it is an effective treatment for depression.

That is absolutely true, and something few people know (not that there is any reason they should). In fact, total sleep deprivation followed by sustained partial sleep deprivation is the most effective treatment for the (quite rare) major depressions.

(05-18-2014 08:54 AM)cardguy Wrote:  But sadly it only lasts until the person next gets a good nights sleep.

Almost right -- the key is to interrupt sleep before it enters a REM cycle. But you don't need to sustain total sleep dep forever -- it can be curative if sustained for a limited period of time, followed by an extended period of partial sleep dep.

The flip side of this, cardguy, is that your ability to enjoy sleep deprivation to the extent that you do constitutes strong evidence that your own depressive burden is a great deal higher than you probably realize. Normal people who do not sustain a quite high depressive burden do not seek out sleep deprivation in this way and most certainly do not handle it well. So your ability to handle sleep dep with such relative ease, and your obvious thriving in it, is basically proof of a fairly significant underlying depressive substrate.

You will probably say something like, "I'm the happiest person I know, so how can that be"? The answer is, pretty easily. One can maintain a good deal of psychological contentment -- for a while -- even while suffering from a fairly significant depressive load. This is especially true while one's androgen levels remain as high as yours obviously are. In this period, the depressive chemistry manifests itself in somewhat different ways, like extreme diurnal variation -- feeling down and apathetic in the morning, but wide awake and hypomanic at night -- and occasional physical symptoms, mainly digestive (owing to bad depressive/cortisol chemistry in the gut).

However, this phase usually cannot be sustained indefinitely. And if and when the psychological habituation to it breaks, it can get very unpleasant very fast.

In this regard -- and I really hate to dwell on it, but I have to -- the bourbon is not doing you any long-term favors. It allows you to self-medicate in the very near term, but over time it fundamentally abets and deepens the depressive brain chemistry, while depleting the all-important androgens.

Just something to consider. Like most people, you probably will not change certain beloved habits until you've already taken real and evident damage from them. But I write this just on the chance that you'll have the genius to embody the exception to that rule, since you are an exception to some others.

Post: #19

Post: #20

Yeah -- sorry to hit you hard like that out of the blue on a Sunday... but these are my honest thoughts, for what it's worth.

Post: #21

Yeah - I just wanted to use the meme since it always makes me laugh.

I really do appreciate your advice.

My problem with drinking - is binge drinking. So - that is the main area I try to control. When I am not drinking - it is not something I particularly crave. Just something nice that I liked to have when I am eating.

I was discussing this at work once. Can you have depression - without realising it? Even if you are a genuinely happy person? It is an interesting question which smells of paradox.

Anyway - did you ever see the link to the interview with Francis Beveridge? He gives a good insight into how I feel about life.

/thread-35962-...#pid727605

Even though I am incredibly nihilistic and bleak in my outlook - I am still a very happy person. I just have a strange sense of humour I guess.

Man - I would love to have depression. The idea of being off work for months at a time would be heaven for me. I envy those who get to go on long-term sick leave.

Post: #22

(05-13-2014 09:03 PM)cardguy Wrote:  I never drink coffee - so I was hoping they would have an effect.

Coffee is good for staying awake and try these instead of your regular vitamins:

http://www.amazon.com/Optimum-Nutrition-...s=opti+men

It worked for me, now I don't need to nap anymore.

Post: #23

(05-18-2014 12:16 PM)cardguy Wrote:  Can you have depression - without realising it? Even if you are a genuinely happy person? It is an interesting question which smells of paradox.

Like I said, you can sustain a fairly high depressive load for a while while doing fine psychologically. Emphasis on "a while". It doesn't go on like that forever.

(05-18-2014 12:16 PM)cardguy Wrote:  My problem with drinking - is binge drinking. So - that is the main area I try to control. When I am not drinking - it is not something I particularly crave. Just something nice that I liked to have when I am eating.

That's what you've always said.

For someone who doesn't crave something, you certainly have a good deal of... loyalty to it, let's say. You were definitely not willing to go on for very long without it.

(05-18-2014 12:16 PM)cardguy Wrote:  Man - I would love to have depression.

Nah, you wouldn't.

Post: #24

For me personally coffee and water combined work best. On the one hand caffeine works wonders and on the other hand you will have to visit the toilet pretty frequently