When I was in my late teens I worked retail. One summer our manager left and took quite a few employees with her, leaving our store understaffed. I had to work some really long hours in order to make up for the short staff. That combined with typical teenaged partying left me little time to sleep.

I didn't think it was such a big deal until late one night I arrived home after yet another busy double shift and realized that I remembered nothing, NOTHING, about the actual drive home. I remember getting into my car and pulling onto the highway and after that I drove home completely on autopilot. I must have been half-asleep at the wheel. It was a bit frightening to realize how out of it I had been. I could have killed someone.

Man, bugbread, that sucks.

When I was working on my thesis, I had to build a very elaborate architectural model. Had I not been sleep deprived, I could have constructed the thing in about a quarter of the time it took me, no exaggeration. I'd cut a piece wrong, swear, cut it wrong exactly in the same way, swear, vow to pay extra extra special close attention, and cut it wrong in the same way, again. The most times I did this in a row? Six. I threw a hissy fit, complete with winging a long metal straight-edge at a wall. I went home, cried, smoked some pot, slept for four hours, and went back. I eventually finished, and a couple weeks later, presented it in front of a panel of well-rested (the bastards) architectural jurors. They loved it, thank god.

On preview: Once, while driving, I managed to actually convince myself that it was perfectly fine to close my eyes for a few seconds. (!) The gravel on the shoulder woke me up. That was pretty scary.

I blank out during travel all the time, but I'm walking, so it's no big deal. Happens whether I'm sleep deprived or not (probably because I'm usually either reading a book or playing a video game when walking). Pretty impressive when you realize that you've blanked out of entering a train station, going to the platform, riding the train, changing trains, exiting the train station, entering another train station, boarding a third train, exiting the station again, and then walking all kinds of zig-zag streets without remembering anything except the game.

As for the "make the same mistake 6 times", my work doesn't involve cutting, so I tend not to notice the mistakes I make until I come back for my next shift. I'll think I'm doing great, go home, sleep, come back to work, look at what I did before, and basically go, "BUH?!?!"

I didn't think it was such a big deal until late one night I arrived home after yet another busy double shift and realized that I remembered nothing, NOTHING, about the actual drive home.
I have had this happen - we were working 16 hour shifts 7 days a week for several weeks to get a boat finished for shipping to the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show and, several times, I found that I had driven home but had no memory of it happening. But then, I often find that I forget large parts of my 1-hour commute every day - finding myself almost at the motorway turn-off without remembering the past 30 minutes or so. I wonder if our brains just process this as useless junk because it is exactly the same as the drive every other day.

I have also fallen asleep at the wheel after my brain told me that it was OK just to close my eyes for a second and been woken up by the roar of the engine to find that I had put my foot flat down when I nodded off and that I was also on the wrong side of the road, all while I was towing a trailer with two boats on it. Scary shit.

this will wake you up. and cheer you up. and they're buds of mine.

and I recommend "Who Needs Sleep?" by BNL

jonmc, that was awesome. There need to be more songs about monkeys. And, the weirdest thing: I am watching Clerks right now and the hockey scene came on as I was listening.

If that dosen't this will.

I wonder if our brains just process this as useless junk because it is exactly the same as the drive every other day.

I think I read in Consciousness Explained, by Daniel C. Dennett, that it isn't so much that your brain processes it as useless junk, but it kinda separates your memory from your thinking processes. That is, your mind is working fine when you're driving, but the data isn't being written to the hard disk afterwards.

But, again, in my current state, my memory about what Dennett said should be taken with a few grains of salt.

LeeJay, that song was buy this band from my birthplace of Bridgeport, CT. I've seen 'em live about a bazillion times. And they do songs strictly about hockey. Monkey's only occasionally pop up.

wow, lost my post somehow. maybe I do need more sleep.

Was an insomniac for some time, but have had two trials of extended non-sleep:

-- in high school, I decided if you can't beat em, join em, and did a science project on sleep deprivation, aiming for, but not reaching, 100 hours. And yes, hallucinations ensued (mostly delusions, but some hallucinations near the end).

-- in fourth year psych, my thesis was almost finished but I was flat out of time. I went three full nights without a wink and was driving back to the U at about 5:30 am on day four, when I found myself falling asleep at the wheel. Repeatedly. Scared myself silly. Opened the window (winter in Winnipeg) and cranked up the radio, all to no avail. I managed to make it to the U and resumed work in the 24-hour computer lab... only to find that now I was falling asleep at the keyboard. I never remembered falling asleep. I'd just suddenly wake, usually just a minute or two later, and where I'd been typing would have a half sentence or so of added ramblings, whatever was in my head. Again and again. I couldn't finish. So I then decided to risk a nap on an arts student lounge couch, hoping that the crazy 8:30 rush of students would wake me. And amazingly, they did, and after 2 hours' sleep, I felt AMAZING. Finished the thesis, handed it in, went home, and CRASHED... No delusions or hallucinations that time, though.

Now, either of those things would just kill me, though I subsist on 4-5 hours most weeknights.

Oh, and I completely jet-lagged out when I was a kid, arriving with my parents in Hawaii en route to New Zealand. I remember staring at this tv which had American television on it and it was SO loud and colourful and manic that apparently I began raving like a lunatic. I think I was ranting about products on the commercials, not sure.

your mind is working fine when you're driving, but the data isn't being written to the hard disk afterwards

I'm convinced that these blackouts (of the "I suddenly realized that I'd made it to work but had no memory of the trip") are simply a failure to move from short-term to long-term memory. There is ample evidence that, as you say, you are behaving normally, carrying out complex manoeuvers that require thought and attention, but as there is NO need to remember any of it, you don't. The difference between consciousness and memory, which we don't normally notice.

I'm convinced that these blackouts (of the "I suddenly realized that I'd made it to work but had no memory of the trip") are simply a failure to move from short-term to long-term memory. There is ample evidence that, as you say, you are behaving normally, carrying out complex manoeuvers that require thought and attention, but as there is NO need to remember any of it, you don't. The difference between consciousness and memory, which we don't normally notice.

Well that makes a bit of sense and it makes me feel a little better about blacking out on the drive home. It was a frightening sensation at the time.

I went to college full time and had a three night shift a week job and a two- twelve hour shift weekend job. I don't remember how long it had been sice I'd slept, I just remember I was finally driving home after an extended period of wakefullness, and I was on the highway going fast and swear I saw a barefoot man in a pink shirt and jeans standing in the middle of the road.

Combine a large amount of stamina, a damned near insatiable desire not to miss anything, a sleep disorder and a certain lack of common sense and you get a good 15 years of regular two and three day stints. The only aid I have ever used was caffeine, but even so, somewhere between 36 & 48 hours, I would have to become mindful of delusional thought processes and past 48 hours hallucinations did start.

Visual hallucinations were the easiest to counteract because they just made no sense whatsoever (a cowboy hat melting on the grill when I was alone in the restaurant and the grill was off, for example), but it was hearing things (voices, phones ringing, etc) and the unmistakable physical sensations of being touched or articles of clothing/materials that I wasn't wearing that freaked me out the most.

Bugbread, does your work not involve much physical activity? If you can, get some light exercise. Even just walking can help. There's something about the combination of sleep deprivation and inactivity that makes it worse.

Coffee and alcohol tend to make things worse, so cut down or avoid them until you are feeling better.

I'll spare you my sleep deprivation story. It lasted about two and a half years and only ended about two months ago. I'm so glad it's over. *knocks wood*

Well that makes a bit of sense and it makes me feel a little better about blacking out on the drive home. It was a frightening sensation at the time.

An experiment that I remember Dennett describing was: a long, unrepeating, unending string of numbers is played (like someone reading out pi in a monotone). After a while, you totally tune it out while doing whatever else you're doing. However, if the voice suddenly stops, and the experimenter asks what the last three numbers read were, you remember them. The whole time you're tuning out, your mind is just putting the data in an unconscious RAM space, and at a moment you can call it up if needed. If unneeded, it gets discarded. So while you're zoning out while driving, if a cat runs out in front of your car, you should (supposedly) respond just as quickly as if you weren't zoning. You're not just working somewhat, but you're working at normal capacity, and just not remembering what's unimportant.

Which is slightly different from really aggressive daydreaming (actually imagining some scene from a movie, or what-have-you), which is redirecting your focus itself.

If you get home, get out of your car, and remember a full hour of thinking about hot nubile sex, then you were probably daydreaming, and presenting a big ole danger to the people around you. If you get home, get out of your car, and have no memory of anything, then you were (probably) driving as safely as when you were normally focussed.

Bugbread, does your work not involve much physical activity?

Does walking to the coffee machine count?

I actually worry about deep vein thrombosis at work, that's how sedentary it can be.

That said, other people get much more sleep deprived than I do, and apparently hallucinate.

Oooooh, little running things, scampering patches of light in my shadowed peripheral vision, seen out of the corner of my eye but disappearing whenever I look at them... blurry little cloaked, tiny-legged demons, maybe, taunting me with just the odd glimpse... skittering along the base of a wall, gliding the way the shadow of a hawk moves over the ground when it swoops just overhead... usually inverse shadows, but sometimes true dark shadows if I'm in a bright, white, fluorescent-lit place... and the scary feeling that I'm not hallucinating, but I'm in a special state where I can see things that normally can't be seen...

Oh, yes. Yes.

Then it's definitely time to sleep.

Mmm, I also get a bad case of "porn head".

Anything and everything mentally turns into a cheesy 70's porn sequence, with the throbbing guitar and "mmm... mmm... YEAH BABY!" dialogue.

Anything.

I'll be handed a memo and told that it's about standards of judicial review, and mentally, I'll be like "I'LL show you a standard of judicial review... wa wawa waaaa mmm.. mmm.. Oh yeah!" A store clerk will ask me if I want paper or plastic, and mentally, I'll be like "I'LL show you how to bag... wa wawa waaaa mmm.. mm... Oh yeah!" A girl guide will be selling cookies at my front door...

Well, you get the idea.

Heh. You don't know from sleep deprivation, none of you, until you've had a baby. Preferably one that you're breast feeding every two hours, who cries whenever he's put down-- for eight months-- and who doesn't sleep through the night until he's three.

Amateurs.

I got so used to hallucinations that they just became a regular part of the landscape. I used to pass out with my head on the steering wheel while stopped at red lights. Enough weird things and associations started going through my head-- the smell of lilacs would trigger a whole dreamlike state where I would feel like I was in Amsterdam, walking past the canals, that sort of thing-- that I started thinking of them as 'the peripherals': surreal additions to consciousness. I would hear people talking to me, music playing, low level electronic buzzes.

These days I sleep lots, and make lots of time for it. Short term sleep deprivation because of work or school is one thing; not getting more than two or three hours sleep at a time for months because you literally cannot-- you have a baby to care for-- is a whole other matter.

Sorry, hopelessly intrusive and personal question, so feel free to ignore if it offends: were you a single mother, jokeefe?

I should probably clarify why I'm asking that.

Recently married, would like to have a kid soon (and both the wife and I agree on that ;), and pretty determined to share the childraising responsibilities. I know it's more work than I can imagine, etc. etc., but I'm wondering if 2 or 3 hours a night is the norm even with two parents raising the kid, or if two parents allows that to become 4 to 6 hours a night.

In college, a regular sleep deprivation hallucination was wisps of smoke in my peripheral vision.

Most sleep deprivation I have ever experienced: I am an inveterate procrastinator. I just cannot start working till the deadline is near. If I try, it doesn't work. (My mother is like this too. And my boy. Personality attraction, for ya.)

Anyway, I had four days in which to write three papers totalling sixty pages, only one of which I had done the reading for, and to do a semester's worth of number theory homework and understand it well enough to complete the test, which would be the last thing I did. I got a total of seven hours sleep in those four days. I totally lost the ability to speak to other people and make sense. I would fall asleep with my eyes open, as I typed. I still have no idea what some of those papers said. I grew to detest my inner voice, because it would not shut up. I had hallucinations of breathing objects and talking leaves that rivalled psychedelics.

Finally, I took the test. I did all the easy problems, then, when I reached the harder ones, every time I began to think my way through, a sharp pain descended from my crown into the center of my head. It was finally painful to think. I gave in and fell asleep for twenty-two hours.

I did graduate, though. And now I take a nap every chance I get.

Sorry, hopelessly intrusive and personal question, so feel free to ignore if it offends: were you a single mother, jokeefe?

Ah. Yes, pretty much. My son's father was around, but not living with me, and not a lot of help unless he was pressed into action; so I suppose the answer would be yes, in all the ways that counted, I was a single mother. Oh how I envied women who had a partner who would help out in substantial, heavy-lifting, diaper-changing ways. I'd forgotten just how much until you asked the question.

Ah, jokeefe, I feel so sorry for you! I don't have children, but my sister and sister-in-law do (with full help from their husbands), and for the life of me, I really don't see how single moms manage, especially in the early years.

Dame, you sound like me on the procrastination bit. If I could get rid of only one bad habit (and I have plenty to choose from!), that would be it. On the other hand (and it's possible that these traits are connected) I can tackle a completely insane task in front of me and bear down with total concentration and force for extremely long periods... I know this because in my early years in journalism with a start-up publication I sometimes worked for 36 hours straight on production deadline. No hallucinations, but we did tend to occasionally dissolve into hysterical giggling. (But dame, your story is beyond the pale - you're lucky you didn't end up in the hospital, girl!)

It's been a long, long time since I had to do anything like that, but my husband still does since he's a sound engineer for film and video, and feature film shoots sometimes stretch out to crazy lengths. He's pretty much exactly the same as I am - an almost criminal level of procrastination in everyday matters, but on the spot: calm, steady, organized, never-give-up, never-give-in.

When I was working in tv I pulled a lot of 36-48 hour shifts, and I always knew it was time to crawl under the nearest desk when I started seeing the bunnies. Lots of 'em, usually white or honey-brown, As hallucinations go they were utterly benign, but I didn't want to push it into Donny Darko-land.
Jokeefe, I'm with you. It's not just the sleep deprivation during those months, but the weirdness that's overtaking your whole body. I had lots of advice during my pregnancy, but the post-natal world seemed to be a largely ignored place. And if you have to work a job on top of it.... ugh, I remember lots of bunnies. (And breastpumping, and anxiety, and irritating relatives...ughx2)

Like dame, I saw white smoke or mist in my peripheral vision on several occasions when somewhat sleep-deprived. I would also on occasion hear voices, for example, in Munich railway station after a day's work, an extremely uncomfortable overnight train-ride from Rome, a job interview, and a day walking around the city, I thought I could hear passers-by whispering maliciously about me in English...

I have not had more than 8 hours sleep in the past 5 years. On average I have between 4-6 hours a night. It used to be worse when I was drinking heavily. I'd be up until 5-6am drinking a bottle of Jack and then I'd be at work 3 hours later ready for another day. My longest period without sleep was 5 days. I was going to I3, a big 3 day LAN party and for two days before hand I had gone without sleep as I had decided to watch EVERY episode of Babylon 5 from all five series. That took two days away from my life, then I had to pick up a couple of clanmates to head to Swindon (of all fucking places). I spent three more days without any sleep at all popping pro-plus, drinking coke and eating snickers before taking my friends home and nearly killing myself because by the end of it all I though I was playing Ridge Racer and was doing 120mph at night in the rain.

I will admit to having had a 10 minute nap on day 4...

We have had periods at work where we were very short-handed and 16 hr shifts were the norm. All of us know about the mice that skuttle about on the edge of our vision and joke about it.

Once when I was driving home, I suddenly shook my head and looked around and realized that I was lost. I still don't know how that happened. I must have been asleep with my eyes open because I suddenly realized that I had taken a wrong turn somewhere and had no idea where I was--even though I drove the same route day after day for years.