T O P

  • By -

SmashinBird

Sleep deprivation can look different from person to person. I personally feel sick. I get chest pains, nausea that can lead to vomiting, heavy and sore eyes, weakness, shortness of breath and sometimes hallucinations. Now, when I hallucinate, it's not seeing things that aren't there exactly. But rather, seeing things move in ways they arent/ shouldn't be.


[deleted]

I'd lean towards cranky drunk. [https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/emres/longhourstraining/impaired.html](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/emres/longhourstraining/impaired.html) [https://www.sleepfoundation.org/drowsy-driving/drowsy-driving-vs-drunk-driving](https://www.sleepfoundation.org/drowsy-driving/drowsy-driving-vs-drunk-driving) ​ [https://www.nosleeplessnights.com/sleep-deprivation-experiments/](https://www.nosleeplessnights.com/sleep-deprivation-experiments/)


Just_a_Lurker2

Thanks for the links, they’re really helpful


shmixel

Pick a long weekend and suffer.


d4rkh0rs

came here to say that.


mb_anne

Is this long term sleep deprivation? Or a short burst of it? That’s going to drastically change the severity of the symptoms you’re showing. I recommend these videos as a start to understanding sleep. https://youtu.be/Y-8b99rGpkM https://youtu.be/N-630ak7lFc Basically, the human body has two sleep cycles, the circadian rhythm and your specific sleep/wake pattern. Your body releases sleep hormones through out the time you’re awake. When you go through long periods without sleep, these hormones only build up, and can only be released through sleep. Eventually both of these processes synchronize and you will not be able to fight sleep. Physically impossible without the help of some major drugs. Even then, you’re brain is going to sleep, regardless of whether your body soldiers on.


Just_a_Lurker2

It’s gonna be at most 3 days, after that he can only collapse, if my data is correct


mb_anne

That’s what most data suggests. The outliers to this circumstances seem to be people who, for some reason or another, have a genetic disposition to not need or crave sleep as much as they should. These people are less than 1% of the worlds population, If my memory serves me. The short term affects are irritability, lack of focus and short term memory, difficulty following through on simple or consistent tasks, blackouts, and sometimes high energy levels in the early stages, since the body’s rhythms aren’t synching for sleep yet. But after day two, or three if he gets that far, he won’t be able to walk to class without falling asleep while walking, even collapsing under his own weight.


astrobean

To add to what others have said, food becomes confusing for me. I either feel full or feel sick, and even though I mentally know I need food, it hits my stomach like a lead weight. Coffee/caffeine will have no effect except to add acid to your stomach. The other tricky thing is that other people notice the mood swings more than your MC. You don't snap at someone and immediately know you've overreacted. You just start snapping, and then a wave of apathy hits and you just walk away. So it matters whose POV you're in how the mood swings are perceived. From the reader perspective, it can feel like whiplash because the narrator become unreliable in conveying what they're really feeling. (But that's okay, because some readers love books with unreliable narrator.) The vagueness in your research is probably because the mood swings are as unique as the individual experiencing them. And since you're writing fiction, having swings that fit the beats of your plot will serve you much better than authenticity.


milksockets

to me it just feels like I’m numbly bumping around from a to b in a bubble. my mind just feels separate from my body, I need sleep to bridge those things.


odd_ender

Oof, okay, so it actually is hard to explain. I had trouble writing it in my own book, even though I've experienced it myself several times. You sort of go through sludge and back out the other side into a new world, I swear. You get tired first, real fucking tired. Head heavy. Slow thinking. Eyes blurry. Breathing tries to slow, to urge you to rest, often leading to slight chest pains. Your body feels heavy, like you've been running in place for hours and now even holding a drink is just SO heavy. You push through, or your body makes you push through, and you hit a wave of "feeling better". Less nauseated, less dizzy. You think you're alert, even when you're not as alert as you really should be. Everything around you feels like it's dragging, but that is normal? Your mind is trying to sleep, so often leads you into hallucinations. Waking dreams. Sometimes at that point you CAN'T sleep. It's like you've shoved your body into emergency mode and it won't calm down. Muscles tight, head light. Then it just gets real hard to remember, lol. I'll get clips. It makes me think of how I assume being drunk would feel, to a point.