How long can you go without sleep? My personal
best is a mere 40 hours, and there’s a four-hour chunk that I absolutely do not remember,
except for the taste of gin-and-tonics. Health care workers often work full 24-hour shifts,
firefighters sometimes go three days without getting shuteye, and film production workers
lead the world in cumulative lack of sleep. Still, most of us try not to go more than
a day without at least getting in a nap. Well, this is Randy Gardner - the teen who
broke a world record when he stayed awake, without any sleep, for eleven days. December 1963. San Diego high schoolers Randy
Gardner and Bruce McCallister need a project for the upcoming science fair. While other kids
may be content with baking-soda-volcanoes or solar system dioramas, Randy has his sights set on
something bigger. He comes from a military family, constantly moving, and is used to distinguishing
himself by taking first prize at the science fair, no matter where he lives. San Diego’s
the biggest city they’ve landed in, though. If he’s going to make his mark, he’s
going to have to go bigger than ever before. So he and Bruce decide to make history. By
breaking the world record for sleep deprivation. At this time, the record is held by Tom Rounds,
a disc jockey for KPOI radio in Honolulu. Fresh from New York, Rounds had wanted to drum
up publicity for the station - and for himself, as the new guy. Setting himself up in a department
store window, he stayed up for a record 260 hours - just four hours shy of a full eleven
days. The publicity worked - Rounds made news around the world. It caught the attention
of Bruce and Randy, who love a challenge. But it is for a science fair, so they
have to come up with a scientific pretext. Their first idea: the effect of sleeplessness
on…paranormal ability. Which paranormal ability? How will they measure that data? With no real
idea how to approach that, they decide to take on a more straightforward experiment: the effect of
sleeplessness on cognitive ability. To be measured in various ways: memory tests, math problems,
and on the basketball court. They decide one of them will be the test subject, and the other
the observer. They flip a coin - and Randy gets to be the guinea pig. He’s not worried, though -
he’s confident that he can stay up the full eleven days, besting Tom Rounds by four hours, then catch
up on sleep after, suffering no ill side effects. The experiment begins early in the morning
on December 29th, 1963. They keep a chart on the wall, on which Bruce can make notations.
Randy stays active, playing basketball. Regular meal-taking is maintained, and otherwise, there
is nothing added to the diet - no stimulants, not even coffee…maybe the occasional Coke. Randy
relies on stamina and will alone. There’s one problem: it’s just the two of them, so Bruce has
to stay up with Randy. The first sign of trouble comes on day three. Bruce falls asleep while
taking notes. When he wakes up, he’s still in the middle of writing - on the wall. They need help.
He recruits another classmate, Joe Marciano, Jr. Randy’s parents are also getting
concerned. They call in an expert, Lt. Commander John J. Ross of the US Navy
Medical Neuropsychiatric Research Unit. At first, things are progressing as expected.
Randy appears to be mostly unaffected, though he gets increasingly irritable. He also starts
to get a little spacey in conversation. Still, his basketball abilities remain unaffected, and he
can still go out for walks with little incident. The New Year comes, and the boys’ experiment
gets a write-up in the newspaper. That article gets the attention of William C. Dement, a sleep
researcher based out of Stanford University. Dement is a pioneer in sleep medicine. Along with
classmates Eugene Aserinsky and Michel Jouvet, and under the mentorship of Nathaniel Kleitman,
Dement helped to identify and define REM sleep in the 1950s. Like Randy, Dement is skeptical
of the recommended eight hours of sleep. His own observations tell him that it differs person
to person. In 1963, just before the boys begin their science fair project, Dement completes his
own study on the sleeping habits of Bayard Quincy Morgan, an 80-year-old professor of German
at Stanford. Morgan claims he has gone to bed at 10PM and woken up at 2AM, bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed, every day since he was 23 years old. Weeks of observation with the Stanford
sleep researchers proved that, yes, Morgan was able to function completely
normally - including teaching, writing, and socializing - at age eighty, on slightly
less than four hours of sleep. If that man can go that long and be that productive on so little
sleep, is it possible for others to do the same? The age group is particularly fascinating
to Dement: according to the studies of the Stanford sleep lab, most teens around Randy’s
age sleep between 10 and 11 hours a day (5). He volunteers his services, arriving
with an electroencephalogram, or EEG, to record Randy’s brain activity and
eye movement. The boys’ parents are more than happy to have more professionals on the scene.
While Dement says Randy seems mostly unaffected, Lt. Commander Ross records that he’s
beginning to experience hallucinations. Day Four: Randy mistakes a street
sign for another person on the street. He later becomes convinced, although
briefly, that he’s a famous football star. Day Five: despite being indoors, a path
suddenly appears in front of him, winding its way through a quiet forest. Randy knows
it’s a hallucination, but still - he sees it. The hallucinations are not unexpected.
Even before Tom Rounds in Honolulu, another DJ pulled a no-sleep stunt. Back in
1959, Peter Tripp of WMGM in New York City attempted a “wakeathon” to benefit the March
of Dimes. He broadcast from a glass booth in Times Square, with occasional breaks to
use the bathroom or change his clothes. As the days wore on, he began to
hallucinate. After 120 hours, or five days, he saw flames shooting out of a drawer in his
hotel room. A scientist became an undertaker, taking him away to die. The face of a clock became
the face of a friend, the longer he stared at it. Then he began to believe he was the friend, that
he wasn’t really Peter Tripp, that the sleep scientists around him were plotting against him.
In all, he lasted 8 days, 8 hours - 200 hours in all. Some still maintain that the experiment
did permanent harm to him psychologically. Fortunately, Randy’s hallucinations are not that
violent. And unlike Peter Tripp, no drugs are being used to keep him going. He has other ways of
staying awake. While it’s dangerous to sit down, he enjoys driving around in the convertible
Dement’s brought with him. Dement also observes that the growing media coverage is becoming a
circus, with newspaper, radio, and television all camping out in Randy’s neighborhood (9).
The attention and sudden celebrity is enough to keep anyone awake, much less a 17-year-old at
the height of his confidence. And, of course, there’s always basketball. All else is beginning
to suffer: his speech slows and slurs, he has trouble remembering the names of common objects,
he stops speaking in the middle of sentences and forgets he was talking at all. The group conducts
tests on his senses of taste, smell, and hearing, and are surprised to see that not all of them
become dulled - but, rather, more sensitive. Randy begins to fight them on some of the smell
tests, especially, saying he can’t stand it. But his basketball game does not suffer - he even
continues to win when playing against others. Dement’s mentor, Nathaniel Kleitman, noticed
similar behavior in his early experiments in 1922. Kleitman observed that subjects had to be in
constant activity to fight off drowsiness. And not just any repetitive activity,
but something truly dynamic - like basketball or bowling, activities where
you’re constantly changing speed and approach, where there’s stimuli all around you. After all,
he found that subjects would start to fall asleep as soon as they closed their eyes even while
in the middle of walking. As his student Dement would later put it, “almost continuous muscular
activity is necessary to forestall overwhelming sleepiness (12).” Kleitman also found that it
got worse for his subjects between 3AM and 6AM. Dement finds a similar challenge. While during the
day, Randy can be photographed, give interviews, go bowling with his friends, generally act
like a teenager without any issues - at night, that all changes. For one thing,
there’s nothing open - at least, no establishment that will let a trio
of high schoolers in. For another…well, remember, Randy is going on nine days now. Over
200 hours without sleep. That broke Peter Tripp, but Randy’s not even hitting Tom Rounds’
world record yet. As Dement later writes, “at night we were driven to increasingly
heroic measures to…resist sleepiness (9).” By Day Ten, Randy is experiencing paranoid
episodes. During a radio interview, he suspects the host is mocking him. Purposely
trying to make him appear foolish. But while he might not be a fool, he is getting
vaguer. When Dement speaks with Randy, he records that while there are some minor lapses,
Randy is altogether pretty together, pretty unaffected. He still knows he’s Randy Gardner. But
when Lt. Commander Ross records his observations, he notes that Randy is having trouble remembering
some of the details of the past ten days. And in order to get any response,
he often has to be prompted. Day Eleven. The home stretch. Lt. Commander Ross
records that Randy is expressionless. They conduct a test - starting from the number 100, Randy
is asked to proceed downward by seven. 100, 93, 86, 79, 72, 65…65….65…when asked to go past
65, Randy is unable to. In the middle of the test, he’s forgotten what they’re doing. Later, though,
Dement records a more optimistic interaction. After 3AM, Dement and Randy find
themselves in a penny arcade. The two compete in about 100 games on a pinball
machine - and Randy wins every time. To Dement, this is proof of “his lack of physical or
psychomotor impairment (9).” As the morning comes, Randy gives a press conference. According to
all observers, it’s the best he’s presented himself - he’s articulate, informative,
engaging. He’s also a world record holder. January 8, 1964, Randy Gardner, 17 years
old, has gone without sleep for eleven days. He is whisked away to the San Diego Naval
Hospital where, watched over by more sleep researchers in a lab, he finally gets his first
night’s sleep in 264 hours and 12 minutes. He’s out for 14 hours and 40 minutes, before he
finally gets up to use the bathroom. He stays up for 24 hours before going back to bed for another
eight hours…and continues his life as normal (12). The data of his brain activity is processed in
Arizona, and the results are pretty interesting. While Randy technically stayed
awake, his brain was taking catnaps. Parts of his brain would actually fall
asleep, while other parts remained active. This may explain the hallucinations both
he and Peter Tripp experienced - they were actually dreaming while still
awake. A curious preservation tactic, but one that seems to prove that the brain does
need to rest. Randy set out to prove the human body doesn’t need sleep; instead, he learned that
the body finds a way. Sometimes nightmarishly so. The boys of Point Loma High School take
first place in the Tenth Annual Greater San Diego Science Fair. Randy even appears on
television, on an episode of What’s My Line?. Well into his 60s, he continues to be contacted by
scientists and researchers from around the world, but there’s also a not-so-fun side effect. Randy
suffers from almost-debilitating insomnia, and he fully blames his record-breaking stunt. He suffers
for almost a decade before finally finding a routine that works for him - and now, the boy who
didn’t sleep is a man who needs his eight hours. In the meantime, many others have worked to
dethrone Randy. A month after the experiment, Toimi Soini of Finland reported staying up for 276
hours. The Guinness Book of World Records, though, recognizes Maureen Weston of Peterborough,
Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom, who in 1977 went without sleep while participating in a
rocking chair marathon for 449 hours - that’s 18 days and 17 hours! But don’t even try to beat
that. The Guinness Book of World Records no longer recognizes the category of sleep deprivation,
deeming it too dangerous. As Dement wrote in his 1972 book, Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep,
it is impossible to, quote, “locate a person who never sleeps and yet is healthy and alert at all
times. Although a number of claims have been made, they have quickly faded under the cold glare
of round-the-clock scientific observation (3).” Now go watch everything you know
about sleep and dreaming is wrong! Or click this other video instead!
