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Sleep deprivation as self-harm

Mr Blonde

Mr Blonde

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Joined
Oct 1, 2006
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Brisbane, Australia
Sometimes I deprive myself of sleep on purpose. Sometimes I hope it will provoke a manic attack, most of the time I'm just doing it for no reason. I go back to university tomorrow after a week away due to psychological break down and suicide attempts, but I am not looking forward to it... I can't concentrate and I'm way behind on it but I have money invested in it so I need to do it. Yet still I'm considering just staying up ALL night... not sleeping at all, maybe taking some buproprion for a booster for leaving for school.

Does anyone else do this? Is this a form of self-harm? It's definitely not good for me.
 
I've done it before, and I'd consider it a form of self-harm. It screwed me over for about two weeks, definately not something I'd repeat.
 
It wasn't one night, it was about three and a half lol. It was effective I guess, but it was affecting my workmates which is why I didn't do it again.
 
^ Ah OK, ha ha I can see how that would fuck you up for a bit.

Just to clarify my original post as well to anyone reading this, I'm not talking about sleep dep with drugs, just staying up... sober...
 
i have been doing it on and off lately.. not necessarily with intentions to cause self harm, although i am well aware that it builds up a lot of unhealthy energy inside my body and mind.
maybe this is a form of punishment upon myself that i for some reason haven't realized..
meh.
im actually doing it right now :-/ it's chemically influenced this time tbh.
 
Sleep deprivation shouldn't leave you with any permanent problems. The longest I've stayed awake is 120+ hours on methamphetamine (5 days and 5 nights), which lead to a massive amphetamine psychosis. But after I crashed for several days I was pretty much okay. The body and brain do recover.
 
in hs i dont get much sleep as it is so i dont really see it as very harmful. i feel very lethargic if i dot get a lot of sleep, but w/e. fuck i gottta wakeupfor class in 5 hours :)
 
haha - I'm the reverse. Hypersomniac.

I've slept through due dates and deadlines (not coming down off anything mind you) due to anxiety and avoidant-type depression.

Staying up thinking about my problems and myriad of incapabilities sounds like a living nightmare, if there ever was one :\
 
Mr. B I can certainly relate to this and have myself slept approximately 5 hours total in the past 3 nights.

I think there is stark differentiation between deprivation sufficient to produce psychosis and deprivation that just induces cognitive and affective (mood) changes... not that either is completely benign.

When you experience the mania do you have reduced appetite? elevated mood? When we sleep we essentially burn off serotonin... this is why when people go days and days without it they experience effects similar to those produced by serotonergic hallucinogens like LSD or DMT... they have massive amounts of serotonin building up essentially.

Likewise, when people oversleep and feel shitty as a result, they 'burned off' excessive amounts of serotonin and its now low.

When you induce mania from sleep deprivation it can certainly feel good for some people because it greatly increases the concentration of serotonin which impacts mood, appetite, muscle contraction but where it can be problematic is how it can impair memory and learning.

36 hours of no sleep produces cognitive deficits that are GREATER than being too legally intoxicated on alcohol to drive. So you are causing memory and learning issues aside from depriving your body of the rest you need.

I usually view self-harm as a means to release endorphins and enkephalins to self-medicate and I suppose this is similar but primarily affects serotonin, not the endorphin system.

I hope this is helpful... and I can certainly relate!
 
The longest ive been awake for is 4 days. I did this twice once with dextroamphetamine and the other just by being manic. Both times i got hallucinations but the time when i was manic was far worse in terms of hallucinations and paranoia. With dextroamphetamine i knew it was just the effects of the drug and the shadow people where only a result of the speed so it didnt bother me too much.

When i was manic i was pretty much in denial about being manic even though i couldnt sit still or shut up once i got talking. The hallucinations where sometimes hard to distinguish from reality which got pretty scary. Finally i had the sense to take 10mg's of zyprexa and that knocked my mania right out and i slept for about 2 days. The sleep deprivation messed me up for about a week or so and made me moody to say the least.

I seem to be more prone to hallucinations these days after not sleeping for even as little as 2 days. I often get flashes of light or sense something is just out of my field of vision. When i take my meds i don't get this but im not that fond of risperidone so i often don't take it even though i really should. I would consider intensional sleep deprivation as self harm because it certainly causes nasty effects on the old brain and if you have a mental illness it will make it much worse. If you have bipolar disorder it can definetely trigger off hypomania, mania or mixed state. Neither of which is good but mixed state mania is fucking torture.

When we sleep we essentially burn off serotonin... this is why when people go days and days without it they experience effects similar to those produced by serotonergic hallucinogens like LSD or DMT... they have massive amounts of serotonin building up essentially.
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The hallucinations i get from sleep deprivation are certainly nothing like the pseudo hallucinations i get from LSD or psilocybin. If sleep deprivation was like being on LSD i certainly would not be complaing about insomnia. It actually resembles the hallucinations or rather delerium i got from the 2 times i took dimenhydrinate in a rather stupid attempt to get high. Yeah it was plain dumb but i was 13 and didnt have a fucking clue as to how dangerous it was. It somewhat reminded me of the hallucinations i got during alcohol withdrawal as well.
 
paranoid android said:
The hallucinations i get from sleep deprivation are certainly nothing like the pseudo hallucinations i get from LSD or psilocybin. If sleep deprivation was like being on LSD i certainly would not be complaing about insomnia. It actually resembles the hallucinations or rather delerium i got from the 2 times i took dimenhydrinate in a rather stupid attempt to get high. Yeah it was plain dumb but i was 13 and didnt have a fucking clue as to how dangerous it was. It somewhat reminded me of the hallucinations i got during alcohol withdrawal as well.
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I should have been clearer, I just meant that it produces hallucinations because of a somewhat similar neurochemical process to the tryptamines... not AT ALL that the effects are that similar, or at all pleasant.

Your experience seems consistent with that I've heard and read about repeatedly... the delirium eventually experienced from severe sleep deprivation is much closer in effect to unpleasant anticholinergic overdose such as diphenhydramine, dimenhydrinate, atropine, etc. than to enjoyable LSD or DMT trips.

I appreciate you pointing out that miscommunication!
 
Cane2theLeft said:
I should have been clearer, I just meant that it produces hallucinations because of a somewhat similar neurochemical process to the tryptamines... not AT ALL that the effects are that similar, or at all pleasant.
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The process is nothing similar to tryptamine/serotonin hallucinations. They feel more like dopamine hallucinations to me.
 
Thanks for the replies everyone, it would be interesting to perhaps delve a bit deeper into what processes are behind the effects of sleep deprivation.

I'm sometimes guilty of oversleeping as well, and I hate it. I wake up feeling physically and mentally awful, and I usually oversleep when I want to avoid something as well. :\
 
For my averages:

Depression = 14-20 hours a day of sleep
Manic (no drugs) = 4-14 days no sleep

Bipolars have different types of depression than unipolar. Instead of insomnia hypersomnia seems to be more the case.

I do have a phobia of sleep though which obviously causes problems. Regardless, I find mania far more unpleasant than full blown suicidal depression.
 
I do the same thing sometimes. I'll also deprive myself of water and food because I convince myself that I don't deserve it. :\
 
Sykoknot said:
^I used to be the same when I was depressed. I would just try to sleep through everything so I didnt have to feel anything. It worked pretty good too. But far from healthy.
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Hm, this may explain why i prefer to just sleep rather then do anything, it works extremely well but it leaves me waking up like ive been beaten by a baseball bat.
 
^ Yeah I hate that feeling when you wake up after sleeping way too much.

I'm starting to get scared of going to sleep, at night while I lay there awake struggling to doze off I start to get weird panic attacks and delusions, I also have been having nightmares that scare the shit out of me. :(
 
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