5. Four days without sleep will turn you into a psycho.
Only four days without sleep are needed for hallucinations to set in. For confirmation one needs to simply look back to our old pal Randy Gardner (from the first entry on our list). Randy was held under sleep deprivation in highly controlled conditions, being monitored round-the-clock by a team of physicians. After just four days without sleep, Randy began hallucinating, believing that he was the African-American collegiate football player Paul Lowe, winning the Rose Bowl.
Such hallucinations are not unique. When Brit Tony Wright stayed awake for eleven days back in 2007, after only five days he recorded in his online diary visions of “giggling dancing pixies and elves” appearing on his computer screen.
Although such anecdotal evidence is far from empirical, the simple fact is that it’s not ethical to subject participants to such lengths without sleep, so reproducing such results is rare. Regardless, don’t try this at home, kids.
By Jacob Franek, Entertainment Correspondent for AskMen
