jacques Posted April 17, 2017 Share Posted April 17, 2017 Considering the fact that sleep problems seem to be an experience we can all relate to and sympathize with, I'm curious about the sleep habits of my fellows. Do you usually sleep not enough or too much? How much sleep do you get on your average night? What's the longest you've gone without sleep? What's the longest you've slept in one sitting? I'm personally one who rarely gets enough sleep, though I'm getting better. What was once a three hour per night average has gotten up to five or six. And the longest I've ever stayed up was back in January for about 44 hours. Would have been longer if I hadn't taken an allergy pill that helped knock me out. My longest may have also been due to an allergy pill, and it was between 14-16 hours asleep. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melissaw72 Posted April 17, 2017 Share Posted April 17, 2017 1 hour ago, jacques said: Considering the fact that sleep problems seem to be an experience we can all relate to and sympathize with, I'm curious about the sleep habits of my fellows. Do you usually sleep not enough or too much? How much sleep do you get on your average night? What's the longest you've gone without sleep? What's the longest you've slept in one sitting? I'm personally one who rarely gets enough sleep, though I'm getting better. What was once a three hour per night average has gotten up to five or six. And the longest I've ever stayed up was back in January for about 44 hours. Would have been longer if I hadn't taken an allergy pill that helped knock me out. My longest may have also been due to an allergy pill, and it was between 14-16 hours asleep. 1. I do not sleep enough. 2. Depends on the noise upstairs. I also never sleep fully during the night, so when I sleep it is in chunks. Chunks of time range from 1 hour - 5 hours (5 hours if I am lucky). Then I'll eventually fall asleep 1-3 hours later and sleep another chunk of time. 3. I've gone about 2 days without sleep. 4. The longest I've slept in one sitting, since 2006 when my sleep got all fucked up, is about 7-8 hours (only one time this happened though). Other than that 4-5 hours. On average it is about 4 hours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted April 17, 2017 Share Posted April 17, 2017 1. Not enough. I've had insomnia since about age 3. I developed some peculiar habits as a result, some of which I still practice (no need for the others, because I don't have to hide it from my parents). And I never did get caught, for which there would have been hell to pay. When I was older, one my favorite things to do was to drive around San Francisco. Among many other security measures I took along the way, I'd take the car out of gear, slowly release the emergency brake, and push the car down the street (no lights) until it was far enough away, then fire it up, turn the lights on, and drive. And then of course the reverse procedure when I returned. But around age 19, I started mostly sleeping quite well for about a decade, and the insomnia became episodic. But then things changed, and my insomnia got worse than ever. 2. That's a difficult question to answer, because I haven't been having anything consistent for quite some time now. But I did have 4-1/2 years or so, relatively recently, where I did usually sleep the same amount every night: 5-6 hours in 2010, and 3 hours from 2011 to mid-2014 or so. Then I started getting some good sleep (8 hours) for a while, and then even started sleeping too much the first time I was on Ritalin (7-9 hours at night and a 4 hour nap in the middle of the day). Later, I'd sleep about 3 hours, wake up, take doxepin, and then get another 4-5 hours after it kicked in. But now everything is haywire and none of the meds seem to help. 3. The longest was 5 days without a single wink. But I went for 8 days only getting 0-45 minutes each night back in July, which launched me into a very bad state of psychosis. It improved a bit for a while (3 hours), then deteriorated again, and I became manic. It kept going on like that with different kinds of episodes. What I've found, is that any prolonged period of less than 3 hours of sleep each night will launch me into an episode. 4. It was at the end of my first semester of college. December 23rd, I believe. I had never been so exhausted in all my life, and I slept about 24 hours straight. I missed my flight home as a result. During the semester, I only slept 3-4 hours per night, save for when I got food poisoning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teh Gaben Posted April 17, 2017 Share Posted April 17, 2017 1. I normally get just the right amount of sleep for me on average. 2. Around about 10 hours a night, thanks to the ludicrous amount of medication I'm on. 3. Longest I've been up for was 4 days+ Can't remember the exact amount of time but it felt like forever. 4. Longest I've slept in one sitting is 20 hours when I was on a medication called Clopixol. It completely wiped me out every day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aura Posted April 17, 2017 Share Posted April 17, 2017 Do you usually sleep not enough or too much? It depends. Recently I've been sleeping too much. How much sleep do you get on your average night? Recently, 9-10 hours per night. My ideal in the past before medications was 7-8 hours. What's the longest you've gone without sleep? 3 days What's the longest you've slept in one sitting? 20 hours maybe? I had hypothyroidism causing extreme depression. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dtac Posted April 17, 2017 Share Posted April 17, 2017 Do you usually sleep not enough or too much? Typically not enough. If I have no alarm and nothing to do the next morning, I might sleep too much, but that's rare. How much sleep do you get on your average night? 4-6h. Generally not enough for me, but that's due to insomnia and meds barely working. What's the longest you've gone without sleep? 2 days. I usually pass out from exhaustion around the 36-40h mark. What's the longest you've slept in one sitting? 14-16h when I was depressed and taking Seroquel. It just fueled my sleepiness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGotOut Posted April 17, 2017 Share Posted April 17, 2017 9 hours ago, melissaw72 said: 1. I do not sleep enough. 2. Depends on the noise upstairs. I also never sleep fully during the night, so when I sleep it is in chunks. Chunks of time range from 1 hour - 5 hours (5 hours if I am lucky). Then I'll eventually fall asleep 1-3 hours later and sleep another chunk of time. This is unfortunate to hear. As far as my experience with this mental illness has been, my symptoms are dependent on the quality of sleep I get the night before. Of course I have more flexibility as far as needing less sleep if I get a few consecutive days of quality sleep. But if I go a period where I am sleeping like you then I inevitably get symptoms flaring up. So it seems when i'm stable due to quality sleep my illness is less likely to flare up over a few bad nights of rest, but if i'm not sleeping well my illness slowly destabilizes. I'm not sure what the reason is for why you can't sleep better than you are. I am almost sure your psychosis would definitely be reduced if you had a quality 8 hours of sleep most nights. I make sleep a huge priority in my life, and its been a big part in becoming symptom free. I hope you can fix your sleep issue eventually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melissaw72 Posted April 17, 2017 Share Posted April 17, 2017 4 minutes ago, JustGotOut said: This is unfortunate to hear. As far as my experience with this mental illness has been, my symptoms are dependent on the quality of sleep I get the night before. Of course I have more flexibility as far as needing less sleep if I get a few consecutive days of quality sleep. But if I go a period where I am sleeping like you then I inevitably get symptoms flaring up. So it seems when i'm stable due to quality sleep my illness is less likely to flare up over a few bad nights of rest, but if i'm not sleeping well my illness slowly destabilizes. I'm not sure what the reason is for why you can't sleep better than you are. I am almost sure your psychosis would definitely be reduced if you had a quality 8 hours of sleep most nights. I make sleep a huge priority in my life, and its been a big part in becoming symptom free. I hope you can fix your sleep issue eventually. I think if I got more sleep things might be better overall. Maybe it is the reason I get symptomatic so often ... not to the extent of anything extreme, but like being very depressed (like I have been for awhile now), anxious, headaches ... leading to irritability, agitation, etc. Idk. Part of the problem as to why i am not sleeping better than I am is because the noise upstairs has gone on for so long. Long story short, it has been going on for about 10 months, landlord knows, tried (along with their landlord) to get them quiet, but never followed through with stuff, making it so the people upstairs really couldn't care less about things because no one follows through and they get away with being noisy (understatement) ... has come to the point I am getting the housing authority involved, and if the HA says it is ok, I will involve the police. Because clearly nothing is working over the past months. I think once they stop, if they stop, things will probably get a lot better. I agree with you that my psychosis would be reduced. I try my hardest to make sleep a priority also ... I take a nap every day if I can, and do my best at night. I can't do any better with sleep than I am now. A big problem I find though, is even if I had a good night, total 6-7 hours (though not all at once), when I wake up and go about things, I find I need a nap 3-4 hours later or it is hard to function. It is as if it is night before I go to bed. It might be the depression now, Idk. That has gone on for a long time now. Thank you ... I hope I can fix the sleep issues also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gearhead Posted April 18, 2017 Share Posted April 18, 2017 Depending on exactly how you want to define sleep, the answer is either "a few days," or "roughly nine months." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rabbity9 Posted April 18, 2017 Share Posted April 18, 2017 This is a good topic. It's really interesting how much sleep issues seem to plague people with bipolar, even when not in any kind of clear episode. Do you usually sleep not enough or too much? Usually not enough. I like 90% sure I have delayed sleep phase disorder, because I am almost always energetic when I should be sleeping and consequently exhausted when I should be awake. Even as a kid, I would sometimes get in trouble because my dad would find me still up reading or drawing or whatever when he got up for work at 4 AM. How much sleep do you get on your average night? Lately, it's been about 5 hours on a work night, then I drag the average back up to about 6.5 by getting 8ish on the days when I can sleep in. I still wake up tired on those days, but find myself unable to get back to sleep even though I want to. What's the longest you've gone without sleep? 48 hours or so. It was a few years ago and during a pretty stressful final semester of grad school, so I couldn't tell you if it was because I was hypomanic or not. I just had so much work to do to finish everything, so maybe I was just fueled by necessity, but I did feel pretty unstoppable during that period, so I could have been very conveniently manic. Or the stress and sleep deprivation triggered it. What's the longest you've slept in one sitting? Not more than 10 hours without waking up at all, as far as I can remember. When depressed I've spent the whole day in bed, slipping in and out of sleep and mostly just getting up to go to the bathroom and maybe to eat or drink something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alien Navel Cord Posted April 18, 2017 Share Posted April 18, 2017 On 4/17/2017 at 2:51 AM, jacques said: Do you usually sleep not enough or too much? How much sleep do you get on your average night? What's the longest you've gone without sleep? What's the longest you've slept in one sitting? - I sleep not enough, it seems. - On an average night maybe I get 6 hours of sleeo - I've gone 3 nights without sleep - I've slept 18 hours without waking up or stirring in the least bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcjimjam Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 (edited) I usually sleep too much. On average I get about 14 hours a night right now. Longest I have gone without sleep, not sure, maybe 3-4 days. I have slept about 30-40 hours at once. Edited April 20, 2017 by mcjimjam Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yuna Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 On 4/17/2017 at 4:51 AM, jacques said: Considering the fact that sleep problems seem to be an experience we can all relate to and sympathize with, I'm curious about the sleep habits of my fellows. Do you usually sleep not enough or too much? How much sleep do you get on your average night? What's the longest you've gone without sleep? What's the longest you've slept in one sitting? I'm personally one who rarely gets enough sleep, though I'm getting better. What was once a three hour per night average has gotten up to five or six. And the longest I've ever stayed up was back in January for about 44 hours. Would have been longer if I hadn't taken an allergy pill that helped knock me out. My longest may have also been due to an allergy pill, and it was between 14-16 hours asleep. I haven't slept in a week straight since starting depakote. I thought these meds were suppost to help with sleep. What the fuck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gearhead Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 Depakote is usually sedating, particularly at first. Have you let your pdoc know about this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katok-Man Posted April 23, 2017 Share Posted April 23, 2017 This month has been bad; 2 hours a day for the last ten days. It's getting pretty crazy now. My record was last year was five weeks on 2 hours a day. Tonight I am taking one dose of 300mg of lithium. Dizzy from the lithium now from last night taken 24 hours ago. 2mg of Klonopin and see if I finally get some sleep. This is the third day back on Lithium. Just starting at 300mg once again after being in the hospital at the start of this year for toxicity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melissaw72 Posted April 23, 2017 Share Posted April 23, 2017 2 hours ago, Katok-Man said: 2mg of Klonopin and see if I finally get some sleep. Idk if this will help you or not, but for me when I take klonopin with some food in my stomach, it works a little faster and much better. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HAL9000 Posted April 24, 2017 Share Posted April 24, 2017 Do you usually sleep not enough or too much? No enough How much sleep do you get on your average night? 3 or 4 hours with exceptions. Trying various things to help but my formulary doesn't do Ambien CR (Which worked) Vistaril works but I feel like a veg the next day. Valium helps me get some sleep but my GDoc won't like hearing that (I think) There has to be something that helps that doesn't make you gain 90 pounds or veg you out too much. What's the longest you've gone without sleep? A week. "Military BS" a guy made me "Fire watch" every night and the lack of sleep turned me into a raging maniac. I found out who was doing it and calmly told him if I saw my name on the watch list I was going to tear his arm off and beat him with it. *I don't think I've ever been like that but lack of sleep is bad for you. I believe I slept standing up holding a rifle at port arms but it was like 20 seconds sleeping then I would wake up before I fell over or dropped my rifle. What's the longest you've slept in one sitting? Two days. It was shorty after the week of standing watches all night that we got home and I just slept for 2 days straight. My mom wanted me taken to the hospital but my Pop went through something like that and sat up until I finially got up. The only time I remember him ever cooking anything. I think I ate 6 or 7 fried eggs. That was a time in my life that was some fucked up shit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iceberg Posted April 24, 2017 Share Posted April 24, 2017 For me if meds are ok I get normal 7-9 hr...but I need sleepy drugs to do it...too little or too much really depends on the episode. The longest I've stayed up is 48 hr ish and then I started hallucinating Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
friedcerebrum Posted April 25, 2017 Share Posted April 25, 2017 I once managed to stay up for about 46-48 hours once while trying to trigger mania. Didn't seem to work though. All it did was make me feel awful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rainyday107 Posted April 30, 2017 Share Posted April 30, 2017 (edited) I tend toward leaning to not enough sleep, I think. (Bipolar 1 so my mood is usually mixed or manic.) Average hours per night during periods of stability is 6 hours. That's my ideal. Anything over 9 hours indicates depression. Anything 4 or under is heading to mania or mixed episode. Longest ive slept - 18 hours or so Longest I've stayed awake/zero sleep: 5 days. Threw in the towel and had my pdoc admit me to an IP unit to stabilize. Edited April 30, 2017 by rainyday107 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TinkerMel Posted April 30, 2017 Share Posted April 30, 2017 Longest I've slept... 12 hrs.... Longest I've gone with out sleep... over 72 hrs... I stopped counting at the 3rd night.... I slept the 4th night... so I guess 72 plus 8 hrs? 80hrs? Yeah... I have been on ambien (and a slew of other sleep stuff) since 2013.... Bleh.... Got a second sleep study tomorrow night, and nap study Tuesday day... should be interesting... Wasn't maning during my 80 hr wake period.. I just don't sleep... I can't turn off... I just can't.... I don't have racing thoughts, or think of anything in general.. I just don't turn off... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yuna Posted May 2, 2017 Share Posted May 2, 2017 On 4/21/2017 at 2:54 PM, Gearhead said: Depakote is usually sedating, particularly at first. Have you let your pdoc know about this? Getting a new doctor. Old doctor can shove it. Strangely enough starting depakote def causes insomnia, almost a restlessness to it- strange isn't it? Starting Trileptal used to put me to sleep instantly- recently staring Trileptal caused me insomnia. My poor brain is fucked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jt07 Posted May 3, 2017 Share Posted May 3, 2017 I've been without quality sleep for the past week. Sometimes, if I am lucky, I manage about 4 hours of fitful sleep. My head is not right. Withdrawal sucks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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