Self-induced Sleep Deprivation and Fasting

[TimeAsylums]

What's the longest you've been without sleep?

What were the effects?

What's the longest you've been without food?

What were the effects?

Both of these for me have been self induced. I've repeatedly, as I imagine most of you have as well, gone over 24 hours without sleep, but my longest period has been ~74 hours without sleep. Usually after 24 hours, my edges (the edges of my senses, vision hearing, etc) already begin to blur, but after 48, everything acutely sharpens, as I lose everything obtuse. Oh, god at 70, I thought that I could pass out at any moment. I experienced what I thought Ni-Se's might feel like in their daily life. The world felt unreal. My senses were absolutely skewed and not a part of reality.

The longest I've been without food was longer than that of without sleep, and somewhere around 6-7 days. Honestly, the lack of sleep was far worse.

Neither was for any particular reason of self harm, but for reasons of seeing how fasting of the mind and body could be useful in meditation and what could come about from it

the lack of sleep and food and the skewed senses totally gave me a different reality - I obviously couldn't drive, or that would be a hazard, but I enjoyed it overall. I don't have a particular method, but I think I'll do the lack of food more often. I like the effects.



So, what are your experiences, and why?

 

[PhoenixRising]

During college finals I'd stay up for 4 days straight.. After about 72 hours or so, I'd start hallucinating though o.o

I would sometimes go 5 days without food when my metabolism was at a high level of optimization and I was attempting to tune my system. Fasting seems to clear my head and make me have more energy if accompanied by lots of aerobic activity.

 

[Cherry Cola]

Fasted for over a month averaging less than 700 calories a day lost like 20kg best shit ever.

Sleep deprivation.. Maybe 36 hours? Not pleasant and I dont see no point in it : P

 

[Deleted member 1424]

@cc

Isn't that just anorexia?

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

I maxed at 70-72 hours.
The first 22-24 hours were normal, after I missed the first night my energy jumped and I was higher than usual. Less than two hours to the second morning and I stood up, because I would fall asleep sitting.

I did some excercises, ate some sugar, after I ate something I got even more sleepy, that's how it works, if you want to stay up, you don't eat. To combat this sleepiness I did even more excercises, drank a few teas (this is the first time in my life to use plural form of "tea", I feel great), after the sugar/carbohydrates were digested I recovered some energy and I could sit down and do some work.

Around the 2nd night I was normal and then when I moved past, I was dead tired from 40-72, dead tired, unable to multi-task, I had random visions of me sleeping, etc. Also I made a lot of mistakes in writing, I couldn't remember what I read, etc. I remember that I leaned against a wall, fell asleep and woke up when I started to fall, thanks to the rarely used function of the otolith organs of human ears.

Fasting is not something I choose, If I do something interesting I can forget about eating for 24 hours, so I remind myself about eating when the time comes.

 

[Brontosaurie]

@cc

Isn't that just anorexia?

tried telling him like 4749 times

 

[Cherry Cola]

No because I was fat to begin with and stopped doing it before I was underweight.

 

[Base groove]

About seven years ago I was awake for about four days. In this time, I traveled 500 km via motorcycle, camped in two different mountainous regions, moved into university dorms (meeting people and partying before school started), was drunk on three different occurrences, puked bile for over an hour, and high on mushrooms twice.

 

[Architect]

I went for some 36 hours without sleeping once, might have been longer. It was due to a 'round the world trip' where I flew to Asia, then from there onto Europe, then back to the U.S., hence I literally flew around the world. Since I was chasing the sun I thought it would be OK, since jet lag is better one direction than the opposite, but instead I landed in Europe and the room spun around (I had been in Asia only a few days). Anyhow due to a set of circumstances including travel time, some news from home that got me fired up, an internal clock that was trying to reset itself and whatnot I had to stay up for a long time.

I don't recommend it. It semi-permanently messed up my clock, it took me years to teach my internal clock to settle down again. If I was kept awake past bedtime after that, I wouldn't sleep the entire night (my mind had learned the trick of "OK, I'm in a new time zone, stay up for another 12 hours). At any rate I don't do any timezone changing travel anymore for this reason, and keep a strict schedule for sleep.

I also fasted for three days once. Good experience, though over time I lost too much weight.

 

[pjoa09]

Three day fast on a cracker and glass of milk per day.

From 9 AM to the next day 3 PM, was playing video games. I fell asleep in traffic. HIGHLY NOT RECOMMENDED.

I hate going sleep deprived and I have to eat to maintain so no longer am I screwing around there.

 

[Minuend]

I don't think I have ever attempted self induced sleep deprivation. I've stayed up a lot in the past because of depression, but the only thing I noticed was being miserable a few more hours a day. Now that I have gotten restless legs, being awake for much longer than normal becomes intolerable as the restlessness worsens.

I have done the intermittent fasting for two year or so. Now I don't really follow a schedule and I tend to eat a slice of tomato or cucumber between meals. More if we have fruits or stuff lying around the house.

The intermittent fasting gave me a better sense of when I was really hungry and when I was just bored. It also made me realize how much of the food I ate was unnecessary. It felt better for my stomach, like it got some time to "rest" from all the digestion.

I have fasted for a little more than a day without food at all.

A little more than 3 days with less than 500 kcal a day. I have had digestion issues for about 7 years, so it was mostly an attempt to get it back on track. A bad diet gives me worse brainfog than normally, but I had already cut the worst foods at that point. So I can't remember feeling different mentally. The third day I was feeling very physically weak. I had calorie restriction for about a week after that and my digestion improved a little and I guess have been a bit better ever since. But it's still quite bad.

I'm going to try some limited sources of nutrition again to see if it helps if I exclude even more food groups and stick to a select few I know I can tolerate for a week or so. A soup of rice noodles, curry, garlic, soy sauce (wheat free), maybe protein powder has been highly effective before.

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

Sleep? http://www.intpforum.com/showthread.php?t=12103

Food? 2 days. It isn't long before I'm out looking for food if I don't have any, regardless of source. Who stole your kid's jack o lantern off your front porch? I did, and I ate that motherfucker (the jack o lantern, not the kid).

Calorie restriction? Self-induced for like 3 weeks when I was too afraid to go to the grocery store. I had like 2 cans of spinach a day and started eating orange peels and packets of condiments and shit. Jack o lantern thievery occurred near the end.

Apparently after fasting for 3-4 days (per personal conversation with Diane Wilson, who's done many a hunger strike) you get a massive energy burst and it's a hell of a lot easier afterward.

the lack of sleep and food and the skewed senses totally gave me a different reality - I obviously couldn't drive, or that would be a hazard, but I enjoyed it overall. I don't have a particular method, but I think I'll do the lack of food more often. I like the effects.

The true reason that the China Study produced the results that it did was because of their caloric restriction, religious fasting, and hard fucking work.

Same reason why your Eat to Live wannabe diet works: Calorie restriction. Nothing to do with made up values for the amount of protein in broccoli or pseudoscientific assertions that animal protein is carcinogenic by white Dr. Oz.

Fasting seems to clear my head and make me have more energy if accompanied by lots of aerobic activity.

^Catabolism.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

My longest periods of being awake were usually during English paper all-nighters( around 1.5 days or so). My worst though was back when I was 12-13, I stayed up all night on a sunday playing video games thinking I didn't have to go to school because I was too sick. I ended up having to go anyway, my brain was fried and I could barely see anything the whole day.

 

[redbaron]

I don't think I've ever gone more than 20 hours or so without some form of nap. I've had unintentional periods of 48-72 hours with only a few hours sleep, though never entirely sleepless. I pretty much just sleep wherever I am if I'm tired.

As for food, I've fasted for five days before. I think modern culture is quite sad, where so many people overeat constantly. I currently eat 3 small or 2 average sized meals a day, and try to make them full of foods with the contents that I need. I often feel slightly hungry, but I think that it's part of getting used to not being completely full all the time.

 

[bemused]

as someone that suffers from cyclical insomnia - why would anyone purposely deprive themselves of sleep?

Personally, I wouldn't wish insomnia on my worst enemy, but hey if masochism is your thing, who am I to judge?

 

[Deleted member 1424]

I semi regularly go 20-30 hours without sleep; I can't really help it. I frequently have to reset my sleep schedule so I'm awake at the right time and the easiest way to do this is to stay awake for an extra period. There was a five day period where I could only microsleep. I had pneumonia and couldn't breathe when I was unconscious, in retrospect I really should've been in a hospital setting. That's the most sleep deprived in a long career of skipping sleep that I've ever been.

I very occasionally fast for 24 hr periods for the potential longevity benefits of intermittent fasting. I somewhat gave it up. It's difficult to do regularly without people noticing and commentating. A lot of people think it's freaky or will start trying to give you half assed nutritional advice and I'm too lazy/private to defend/explain the reasoning behind my habits to most people.

 

[Polaris]

I have fasted for longer periods a couple of times. The first time was twenty days, the second time was ten days. I did this for health/experimental reasons.

As I have a high metabolism and don't put on weight easily, this was probably not so smart in retrospect. I lost too much weight. But I felt great.

During my twenty day faste, I felt like crap for the first three, four days. I had flu symptoms and extreme fatigue.

Then suddenly I picked up and had energy like I haven't experienced since early childhood days. My mind was also exceptionally lucid. I slept well and felt amazing - but I was losing too much weight and people were commenting/assuming I had eating problems.

When I started introducing solid nutrients again, I felt weird, almost like a hatred for eating. I can see how people can become anorexic with this mindset. It gave me an insight into eating disorder mentality.

I noticed my physical reactions to different foods, and particularly foods high in stimulants/reactants like amines, glutamate and salicylates. High amine foods are of a fermented nature: cheese, sauces, fermented drinks, etc. These are also high in salicylates. I would become hyper and then drop to excessive fatigue. The high glutamate foods are things that are high in flavour. High salicylate foods also tend to contain a high amount of natural colour such as most fruits, capsicums, tomatoes, pumpkin, beetroot, etc.

The reason I did this was because I had irritable bowel and allergies. I wanted to see if the symptoms got better, and they did. The foods that contain these natural chemicals should generally be eaten in small quantities or avoided by people with sensitive digestion/irritable bowel/food intolerances as they trigger reactions more easily.

So I try to eat more 'boring' foods generally without compromising my nutrient intake, which is tricky to begin with. But as I got more accustomed to eating foods low in flavour I started appreciating it more, and actually prefer more bland or subtle flavours now. I find them more interesting.

I have never voluntarily attempted sleep deprivation as I'm a chronic insomniac. The longest I've gone without sleep was four days. I was pretty wired, but experienced no hallucinations or anything "exciting" like that.

 

[pernoctator]

No because I was fat to begin with and stopped doing it before I was underweight.

But being underweight is a symptom of anorexia, not a prerequisite.

 

[Base groove]

But being underweight is a symptom of anorexia, not a prerequisite.

I believe he was making the point that although he exhibited some of the symptoms he did not exhibit them all, particularly, being underweight is one symptom he apparently did not have.