Long hours and their effects

I find that I have a general lack of awareness of what is going on around me and do things on 'autopilot' a lot, for example back in my uni days I remember walking in one morning and nearly getting run over by a car, I'd just pretty much crossed the road without looking even though there was blatantly a car coming. Shook me up quite a bit but then 5mins later I realised I was crossing another road without looking :/

Another thing I've done when very tired was to go to a cash point, ask for £40 cash, retrieve my bank card and then just walk off after putting it back in wallet without taking the cash. Didn't even realise until I checked my wallet later.

I also find when deprived of sleep it moves up the list of priorities a lot, in terms of wanting to go to bed. I know that sounds obvious but I'm talking about starting to act like an addict who needs a fix, going to great lengths to be able to sleep and forgoing other important things, not being worried about how much it costs. I've lied to family before in order to be able to go to sleep before after 52hrs awake.
 
i've pulled 40h+ shifts when my relief hasn't showed up or during important well segments,

I used to chain smoke back then so would have probably been on 60+ a day.... nice way to help kill myself..

Some of my Finest BS has been after 24h without sleep :)
 
I've worked a rotating shift pattern for years (20+! where the hell does the time go!?:eek:). I've had some very long waking periods in that time which has often been due to disrupted body clock. The most difficult aspect for me is changing my clock from night back to morning mode. For some reason my inner clock seems to change very easliy and strongly into a nocturnal pattern during even only a short run of nights.

I've spent many a night trying to sleep before a morning shift but literally just lay awake all night, horrible feeling the next day, feels like jet lag x10.
It's very easy to make mistakes and generally perform badly when suffering with this, I just have to make sure I'm extra careful and double/triple check the important stuff.

Due to being naturally a night person I try and swap as many of my morning & day shifts for nights as possible, I tend to sleep pretty well during the day and generally just feel a lot better when working nights, it's pretty much the polar opposite of my colleagues who complain like hell about the nights and how terrible they feel when working them, which is great for me as it means swapping is usually easy. No idea why I seem to thrive on nightshifts though, then again I always was a bit strange.:eek::p

Just realized all that is totally off topic! It's a thread about long hours, not night shifts and body clocks you peckerhead!:confused: (talking to myself again, well..... I did tell you about my malfuctioning bodyclock, hey! what day & time is it!?:p) Ah well it's kind of relevant, I think.:confused:
 
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Slade2 said:
I think when I was at uni I had about 4 days where I didnt sleep. The lines between reality and dreams becomes so what blurred. I remmeber being really hungrey having probably not eaten for a while as well as no sleep. I was walking around to the local shop and it actually left like I was Mr soft from the soft mint adverts. Walking all floaty like.
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This is very true. You see it at airports where a lot of people are sleep deprived. A lot of people seem quite numb to their surroundings. There's a hint of giddiness as well.
 
I've nodded off at traffic lights and woke up just as we turned to green :p When I am driving it's fine, it's just being stuck in traffic when I am tired i have to wind windows down or pull over.

I once came in after working several days of 20 hours shifts and felt like playing Eve Online. I jumped in to my shiny new battleship, undocked, targeted a station gun and opened fire. For those that don't know, this resulted in a criminal status, the station attacking me and destroying 1 months hard work in saving to buy said battleship :p
 
Guest2 said:
Never from working long hours but from being up pretty much 5 days straight with little sleep causes you to hallucinate, hear things and have the worst nightmares ever.

Seeing cartoons playing on your wardrobe when you close your eyes is not fun. Neither is the feeling of not wanting to fall asleep because the nightmares are too bad or fearing of another night of sleep paralysis

Arhhhhhh. Ibiza!
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Been there. Once stayed up 6 days no food or sleep. Lost 10 lbs and looked like a walking corpse. I remember thinking if I went to sleep I would die, hearing people banging pots in the kitchen at 3am and talking to people who weren't there about how I knew they weren't there but that I'd talk to them anyway since I felt like they were. All while having severe visual hallucinations.

Ignoring what a nightmare experience it was, it really is interesting to see your neat little experience of a persistent self and world deteriorate into its components.

These days I just work 12 hour days and get a bit snippy or fall asleep on the train.
 
Guest2 said:
Never from working long hours but from being up pretty much 5 days straight with little sleep causes you to hallucinate, hear things and have the worst nightmares ever.

Seeing cartoons playing on your wardrobe when you close your eyes is not fun. Neither is the feeling of not wanting to fall asleep because the nightmares are too bad or fearing of another night of sleep paralysis

Arhhhhhh. Ibiza!
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Devrij said:
Been there. Once stayed up 6 days no food or sleep. Lost 10 lbs and looked like a walking corpse. I remember thinking if I went to sleep I would die, hearing people banging pots in the kitchen at 3am and talking to people who weren't there about how I knew they weren't there but that I'd talk to them anyway since I felt like they were. All while having severe visual hallucinations.

Ignoring what a nightmare experience it was, it really is interesting to see your neat little experience of a persistent self and world deteriorate into its components.

These days I just work 12 hour days and get a bit snippy or fall asleep on the train.
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Were these experiences under the influence of something? Not judging, just trying to work out how one stays up for so long without you dropping like a sack of spuds. :p
 
Theophany said:
Were these experiences under the influence of something? Not judging, just trying to work out how one stays up for so long without you dropping like a sack of spuds. :p
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Yes, but it's against forum rules to talk about it. Let it suffice to say I stopped doing it 6 years ago.
 
Devrij said:
Yes, but it's against forum rules to talk about it. Let it suffice to say I stopped doing it 6 years ago.
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I had a similar experience during my second year at university (many a moon ago now) and when I started having serious haunciantions it kind of prompted me that 1. I need sleep. 2. Using chemicals to stay awake to complete assignments leads to rubbish assignments.
 
Leading up to Christmas I was doing 65 hour weeks for about 2 months. My life was work>sleep>work>sleep.

Fiancée wasn't happy but it was good opening my pay slip every week.
 
I used to regularly stay up for 3-4 days at a time.
You start to see things out of the corner of your eye, get a bit paranoid and have aural and visual hallucinations. I would also see fine wisps of white smoke coming from anything I focused my vision on.
 
Worked a 48 hour shift once (probably up for 56 hours total), non stop shopfitting, by the end I couldn't figure out where my keys went in the car or how to phone a taxi so I walked to my friends house down the road and crashed on the sofa. Woke up 8 hours later, got a lift home and slept for 6 more hours before I felt normal again.

Longest I've stayed up is 6 days straight but that was hellish, never would I consider that again.
 
LordSplodge said:
I had a similar experience during my second year at university (many a moon ago now) and when I started having serious haunciantions it kind of prompted me that 1. I need sleep. 2. Using chemicals to stay awake to complete assignments leads to rubbish assignments.
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I wrote my literature review after an all day drinking session and waking up at 4am in the morning not being able to sleep. I got a pad out and wrote 5 sides of notes

When I finally got up and sobered up I was amazed at the notes and wrote it fully out. I got 68% for that badboy!

My brain must work better at night or something :confused:
 
Tripnologist said:
I used to regularly stay up for 3-4 days at a time.
You start to see things out of the corner of your eye, get a bit paranoid and have aural and visual hallucinations. I would also see fine wisps of white smoke coming from anything I focused my vision on.
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YES! The white smoke! I thought it was just me. It sort of pours quickly upwards off of the surfaces of things. At first I thought my monitor was on fire until I noticed it was coming off the sofa too.
 
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