[GenCat]

So I didn't sleep at all last night and feel super wired! I usually sleep about 5 hours a night, but I have never not slept at all. I was wondering how long a bipolar person can go without sleeping...ive heard three days.

[jack123]

I have been days with just dozing that wasn't any help. Problem is I don't function with no sleep

[gypsy pink]

54 hours, my body was exhausted but 'my brain wouldn't go to sleep' racing incomplete thoughts, hallucinating one end of the bedroom would appear to float up then back down. That was many years ago, never want to experience it again.

[wildflowerchild25]

I need more sleep than most people and I always have. So after a few days of five hours of sleep I'm usually an irritable mess. The longest I ever stayed up was 24 hours, during which I was hospitalized for who knows what. I think I was committed that time. I remember being so pissed because when I got to the hospital it was like 4am and I wanted to sleep so bad but my roommate started having a very loud conversation with herself (presumably her voices but I couldn't tell because she was speaking Hindi), so I just got up and paced until they offered me Ativan.

That was the worst and now I take Benadryl if I can't sleep. I hate lying awake.

[~Christina]

6 days ... Yes in a row . Im a true insomniac started when I was about 11-12 years old.

[Standup2me]

Once when I was manic I went an entire weekend without sleep.

This was the same weekend that I thought renovating my bathroom would be
a good idea.....

Well...it sure was colourful

[Lobster Hands]

Yikes Christina... 6 days!

Over two and a half weeks I had 14 hours of sleep. I'd go 4 days then sleep 3 hours...now repeat that about 4 times. It was a horrible experience and I got in some of the worst fights of my life because of being so agitated/irritable.

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[Secretum]

If I don't sleep, I get extremely nauseous, to the point where I can't swallow anything. It is therefore very lucky that I don't suffer from insomnia. When I'm manic, I stay up later, but then I just sleep in later to make up for it. I went 24+ hours without sleep due to travel once, and it was absolutely horrible.

[TheatreKid]

I get really nauseated when I don't sleep too, but that doesn't stop it from happening when I'm manic. I can go a week or more with maybe a two hour long catnap per day. If it's no sleep at all, 3 or 4 days and by then I'm likely so manic I'm psychotic. And because of the nausea, I don't eat much. It's not abnormal for me to drop some weight during a manic episode.

Sometimes lack of sleep will SPARK a manic episode. I was volunteering for a week or so at a music festival and because we were short staffed, there was only time for about 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night. After 3 days of that I was hypomanic. I was a crazy productive worker and won the MVP award, but also crashed and ended up letting my supervisor know what was going on.

[SillyKitty]

I've gone about 48-50 hours. Somewhere around there.

[Resident Bipolar]

I used to be able to keep going for seven or so nights but I'd always feel terrible at the end of it. Since about a year ago I haven't been able to do any more than 2 nights in a row, which annoys me - I find there isn't enough time during the day to do everything I want to. Plus, I live in a house with two kids under 16. At night everyone is in bed and it's the only time I get the house to myself, so I can watch TV and read in peace.

Nights are my favourite time of the day. It's such a shame I can't spend all day and all night awake. That would be awesome.

[grandmaof3]

I've been up 8 days. The first 3 weren't bad.. I didn't feel bad or anything,just super energetic, but the I started having intrusive thoughts and then hallucinating. I started getting nauseous, but I didn't eat that whole time either. I was just going and going. I became irritable and really psychotic. I ended up in the er where they gave me 20mg of Geodon and 2 mg Ativan IM. That knocked me out and I woke up in the psych ward 2 days later. Now I take a double dose of zyprexa and 5 or 6 mg ativan if I stay awake more than 2 days and that usually brings me back down.

Five straight days for me. No sleep at all. BP 1. I'm headed for problems if I'm 72 hours with no sleep. Sounds unhealthy but the only thing that can conk me out then is 2 mg Xanax and a couple
glasses of wine. (Not recommended but that will put me to sleep for five hours or so.)

[Nammu]

4 days is the longest for me with no sleep but much longer with 1-2 hours of sleep here and there. It's horrible can't stand anything touching me and become hyper aware of movements and sounds.

Originally Posted by Resident Bipolar

...Nights are my favourite time of the day. It's such a shame I can't spend all day and all night awake. That would be awesome.

YES! Night tends to be my best brain time, psychologically and cognitively. So it's hard to say, "Ok, let's shut that off, so you can spend more time in the not-so-good parts of the day!"

I don't actually know how long I've been up, though I know when it most likely would have been. Up, probably about 4 am. 3 planes and 7 times zones later, landing at about 7:30 am. And went straight into the day. And well past midnight (2-3 am, maybe?), perky as a squirrel and talking a mile a minute. Zero sleep (I can't sleep in moving vehicles, let alone in the dark of night over an ocean(!) Lol.) It's the time zones that confuse me trying to calculate. Fortunately, it was a good hypo it'd sent me into. (3 weeks later, I was still getting everything and a half done.) I wasn't dx'd (and therefore unmedicated) at the time.

I could not begin to figure how often or for how long of stretches where I've operated on very few hours for days on end. Very common. Haha -- Set the scene…. In recent months, I've spent many nights up working on projects with BF, where I'll turn in usually 2 or 3 am+ when alarm is set for 6:30 for work. If not working, I might go till 4:30 - 5 am. And get up late morning. SO. Last night, it's after 3, not tired and I mention I'm thinking of just going straight through. "Oh, NOooo you don't!!" he immediately replied. Hahaha. (I'd already taken something for sleep. )

[DJCNIn]

I've gone almost an entire month, mind you I was also indulging in an incredible amount of speed, added anxiety as I raced to finish my publication in chemistry as well as prepare for a national symposium = INSANE MANIA, I had hit waking REM after three nights, that had grown progressively worse. I had obviously crashed from time to time, I called it "rebooting" as I'd sleep for half an hour to an hour ever other few days and wake feeling 100% (or so I thought).

Following the end of my symposium my ex-gf at the time had ruined my promising future by lying to the cops at my university out of jealousy, (2008 after the Illinois shootings, she'd called in a gun threat) and thusly I lost a full-ride scholarship at Stanford for Bio-Chemistry, Molecular Bio, and Med School following suit. So what did I do?

Took my saved cash, grant money, and school loans ($55,000) and moved back to my home city spending this all on cocaine, crack, ecstasy, heroine, meth, etc... I had figured my life had ended and so I tried ending it in a fun, fast way heh... Spent all of that in a month-2 months.

Met my Ex Fiancé while going through withdrawal for a month, she stayed with me and I clung on for dear life...

During the first many months we were together I'd constantly attempted suicide and had died twice, never admitted to any psychiatric facility as I'm great at getting out of such a prison promise...

She cheated on me after a long period in which I was doing far better we decided to become pregnant a couple months before, she left me after I forgave her and what ensued was her and our hundreds of mutual friends verbally harassing me (especially on Father's Day) for two years following

In those two years I'd go a week or a few days before finally sleeping. I'd be found in a comatose state and had been impossible to wake up many times but my family would just leave me be always expecting the worst.

Two years following that I'd stopped double doctoring up on my amphetamines and still I'd sleep every couple of days or every other day the majority of the time until I would run out of Adderall in which case I switched to opiates to invoke enough dopamine release to satiate myself.

Now I have far better control over my Adderall and I sleep every night except for 1-2 nights each month, mind you it takes a load of Klonopin and Herb to get me there but heh it works...

7 months ago I'd stabbed myself in the chest with a Bowie knife (had a random horrible bit of psychosis) I severed my main a artery and had completely destroyed my left lung which had to be reconstructed.

Dead for 4 1/2mins twice and seconds the third time - now I suffer brain damage when trying to talk/write/anything that involves compiling and completing a thought verbally or written.

It's crazy as I'd not attempted suicide since before my ex fiancé and I had decided to get pregnant. This came out of no where and was a fair reminder that I cannot control everything...

Sorry if this is long and drag, I'm verily convinced that so many years of hardly any sleep along with 4 deaths and addiction had severely damaged my ability to feel anywhere near accepted in social/community situations.

Even now I'm lying next to my soon to be ex that has, like so many others, promised to learn and work with me, but nope, they only ever continue to pull the trigger and induce mixed mania... Feeling absolutely hopeless

I have no support system beyond my own mind...

Can't even write anymore like I'd used to absolutely love.

.:|[9]|:L¡ves.:¡n:.|[9]|:L¡35:.