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Comment by firefoxd | Hacker News Reader

And causes hallucinations!

Will post my story here in the near future, but let's just say a good man was doing my taxes at 3am. It was okay at first, because he was a hard worker. Suddenly I realized it was 3am, and told him to rush it. He complied, hunched his back and buried his nose in all the documents. I looked down at my legs and saw that I was wearing my boxers only, I told him to hurry it up because I gotta go to bed. I could hear him mumbling a response and hunching his shoulders some more to work faster. I felt bad for putting all this pressure on him. I got closer and put a hand on his shoulder, only to find that he had fallen asleep. I looked around and saw that his desk was a crib, and that this man was my premii 2 months old son.

I'm a father of twins.

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I was working in my bedroom on the second evening of a sleepless marathon. I kept hearing distant chatter, like two people whispering together.

I thought my roommate had brought someone home and they were whispering in the living room. I put some clothes on and exited my bedroom to find the house completely dark and empty.

On my way back to the bedroom, confused, I realized the faucet was running slightly in the bathroom across the hall and my brain was interpreting it as human whispers and English-like words.

I notice this sort of aural hallucination always happens to me after 24 hours of staying awake.

Now I have to ask: why do you stay more than 24 hours awake, more than once?

Rarely, I've experienced sleep paralysis [0] when going to sleep after being awake for 30+ hours, a feeling that's dreadful and scary, something I'd never wish on my enemy.

Occasionally, I lucid dream [1]: Flying like a bird or falling like a feather after 22+ hours of wakefulness, a feeling that is very addictive.

Often times, a pulsating head and neck migraine [2] follows sleep deprivation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream

[2] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/migraine-head...

I learned here on HN that Eskimos don't have access to a lot of drugs or alcohol, so they used to just starve themselves in order to get to this hallucinogenic state!

People really have a deep seeded desire to alter their consciousness.

That sounds interesting. Do you remember the comment/post?

You know, I searched for it but I just can’t find it. Perhaps I’m mistaken about the source.

When my mother was in the hospital, I usually stayed with her during the nights, awake, in case she needed something. Two nights I couldn't sleep the day before, which meant I had to stay awake, in dim light, after 24 hours without sleep. I started seeing spiders crawling the walls. I just had to focs my eyes to make them stop, but I saw spiders on the corner of my eyesight, which was umcofortable. After those nights, I understood how important is to sleep well.

Yeah. If I am awake for more than like 40 hours I start to hallucinate. Never anything close to as bad as what you describe, mostly just weird shapes in the corners of my eyes. But I have had also had some aural hallucinations too.

One of my favourite examples of sleep deprived hallucinations is from Courtney Dauwalter. Courtney is an ultra marathon runner (eg 200 miles) and there are many times we she is extremely sleep deprived while running.

She has mentioned that while running she has seen bunnies running alongside her, a violin playing man, and even a woman churning butter[0]! Very interesting how our mind reacts to minimal sleep.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imivD-wnmDs

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