# Sleep and Dreams > Sleep and Health >  >  I want to pull an all-nighter.

## Puffin

It's the summer, and I still have over a month before school starts. I'm looking to pull an all-nighter sometime in the next few days. So, I'd like to know any preparations that will make it easier to stay up all night. I'd also like to know how easy it would be to WILD after doing one, as well as what to do afterwards to get over the effects of no sleep for 24 hours.

My mom doesn't want me to do one at all over the summer (same "I'm still growing so I need my sleep" excuse), but I'm doing one anyways. I'm sixteen and can pull it off.

Thanks for the help! (:

----------


## AURON

Historically, I've never been successful after staying up for 24 hours, and my recall was always horrible.  Maybe that's just me though.

----------


## Samael

Be prepared to feel like crap in the morning, and I do mean nausea. Your digestive system won't have time to reset overnight. You'll also want to avoid caffeine as much as possible, or you'll end up crashing. 

I don't recommend all-nighters, but if you're going to do it, try to avoid having anything important to do the next day, especially if that involves driving.

Signed, your friendly neighbourhood art-school drop-out.

----------


## Puffin

> Historically, I've never been successful after staying up for 24 hours, and my recall was always horrible.  Maybe that's just me though.







> Be prepared to feel like crap in the morning, and I do mean nausea. Your digestive system won't have time to reset overnight. You'll also want to avoid caffeine as much as possible, or you'll end up crashing. 
> 
> I don't recommend all-nighters, but if you're going to do it, try to avoid having anything important to do the next day, especially if that involves driving.
> 
> Signed, your friendly neighbourhood art-school drop-out.



Based on your replies, I suddenly don't feel like doing one anymore!  :Eek:

----------


## Tara

I pull all-nighters every weekend. Typically, I feel great the next day. I feel incredibly energized, like my body has gone into overdrive. Doing it once over an entire summer isn't going to harm you. Staying up all night really isn't a big deal. Staying up for a few days is more of a problem.

----------


## XeL

It's not as bad as they make it sound, trust me. I've been up for 60+ hours and it's okay. 

24 hours shouldn't be a problem for you. WILDing might be though, since chances are that you'll be too tired to focus, and just crash. 

Anyway, buy some coke, play some game, read a book and enjoy  :Shades wink:

----------


## Maria92

An all nighter is likely going to kill your chances at going lucid, but they really aren't so bad. As long as you stayed occupied (and you will need to to pull this off), you should have energy to spare. Sleep deprivation in humans is the same for two hours as it is for six.  :wink2:  Get some books, set up a stumbleupon account, and down as much coffee as you can. As long as you don't let the caffeine levels in your blood deplete, you can do this no problem. Just don't OD on coffee and you'll be fine.

----------


## XeL

> An all nighter is likely going to kill your chances at going lucid, but they really aren't so bad.



Not necessarily. REM-rebound + possible starvation (for some reason i often forget to eat when I stay awake for longer periods of time) = Lucidity.

----------


## Maria92

> Not necessarily. REM-rebound + possible starvation (for some reason i often forget to eat when I stay awake for longer periods of time) = Lucidity.



True...fair enough, but from experience, the dreams I have after all-nighters are so chaotic and random that there is no hope of detecting anything out of the ordinary, because I'm not sure if anything actually exists. Even if I did become lucid in such a time, I'd have to sort out all the crap, and then find my body so I could go do something. But, I guess that's just me.  :smiley:

----------


## XeL

Nah, I can relate.

I'm usually to tired to DJ after all nighters anyway!

----------


## nina

What are you trying to accomplish with your all nighter? What is the point?

----------


## Puffin

> What are you trying to accomplish with your all nighter? What is the point?



Seeing for myself how difficult or easy it can be to WILD, as well as just for fun. I haven't done one for a few years.

----------


## Tyson

If you're going to pull an all nighter make sure you have something to fill your time. You know, other than anticipating the effect it'll have on your dreams  :Cheeky: 

It's always fun to have an all nighter when you're with a bunch of good friends, inebriated or otherwise. From my experience, every hour after midnight that passes the conversation gets deeper as everyone begins to let down their guard a little more. You can learn a hell of a lot about a person by frittering away the wee hours with them.

One thing I can't say is that it's been beneficial to my dreams though. I often wake up with no dream recall at all, unless you count hallucinations from lack of sleep.

----------


## ClearView

-Puffin
 I don't think that a nighter would affect you in any way at all unless you have some kind of activitiy the following morning. Now, Your challenge doesn't make much sense. You can easily just go outside , jog a mile or walk a mile or something, and that will get you as tired as pulling a nighter would get you, and you can expirement that way. Save better things for the nighter, like going inviting friends, doing drugs, and things like that. drinking, drugs, things of that nature. That'll really make you feel badass. 
-cV

----------


## Hidden

Hahaha, you're just like me earlier this summer.  :wink2:   My friend and I had both never stayed up all night, so we thought we'd try it just to see what it was like.  It was fairly difficult, actually, but since then I tried switching to Uberman (only lasted three days) and now staying up all night is easy.  Oddly, I've found that if I go to sleep after an all-nighter I usually only sleep for 6 hours (normally I sleep 9-13).

I wouldn't recommend sleep deprivation for lucid dreaming.  When you're sleep deprived, you'll catch up on your nREM sleep before moving on to REM, so in a way it's counter-productive.  It might work to stay up all night, then take melatonin (or some other REM-suppressant) the next night so that you'll only catch up on nREM sleep, then go for REM rebound the next night.  Alternately, you could take melatonin only for the first half of the night and then go for REM rebound in the second half.  Note that I haven't actually tried doing that myself; it just seems like it would work based on what I know.

----------


## Mathias

I gotta say man, all nighters are counter productive. I'm not an expert on WILDS and what not but judging by what they say, if that's what you're looking for, you're not going to have much success. Also, it screws up your sleeping schedule for a while. I don't know how yours is already and maybe you don't care about that, but I think all nighters just achieve confusing your body, and wasting a lot of time afterwards sleeping for like 15 hours.

I recommend World of Warcraft, that crap will keep you up all night no problem  :tongue2:  Get a trial if you want, but don't buy it you'll waste days of your life if you get into it. But that's just what I think because I've lost most of my interest in gaming due to the whole counter productivity factor of it. I also don't think caffeine is needed. I don't drink caffeine because I think it sucks and I hate seeing people addicted to it. All you gotta do is find something so interesting that you won't be thinking about sleep. For me, it could be looking up stuff about lucid dreaming, reading far into a manga, or just something I'm passionate about and want to research or be entertained by. It'll probably be harder for you than the other guys on here saying that it's easy since your 16 and your body probably has a high metabolism and uses a lot of energy, so you may get tired faster than you think.

Anyways, I'm rambling. Hope I've helped  ::D:  Good luck.

----------


## ooflendoodle

First of all if you don't want to use caffine to stay up get a few apples and eat those during the night, this works just as well. Doing it alone will probably be much harder so get some good friends half the time when I stay up all night with my friends we never get even a little tired 'till like 5 or 6 we don't even plan for it the next day. If it wasn't a struggle in the night to stay up you should feel fine for about 3-6 hours unless you sit in a comfortable chair for too long or hear soft music then you'll start nodding off, after then you might start hallucinating anywhere in the next 48 hours (Unless of course you sleep). If you can, try to stay up all day so when you go to bed you won't mess up your sleep schedule to much hopefully you'll be able to sleep in but you might still feel a little tired. Like Mathias said get something to keep your attention, beat a fun video game or something my record is 11 hours straight  ::D: 
Good Luck

----------


## The Adventurer

i have had several experiences with this on several different occasions... try not to be tired the day before. The key for me is to make sure you have a purpose. You will not be able to keep yourself awake very easily if you don't have a goal that you are trying to achieve. I have rented many hours of my favorite tv show "24" the night before and then stayed up all night to watch it. For me it is also very important to have lots of caffeine, sugar, and snacks. you do not want to be hungry and feel sick! i've seen that some people would not recommend caffeine because of the "crash", but i don't see how you are going to avoid a crash if you are awake for 24 hours straight. Once you have a goal, caffeine, sugar, and snacks make sure you never get too comfortable. laying on your bed won't help you get an all-nighter  :smiley:  

As for the connection between all nighters and lucid dreaming, i don't really know. but have fun with this anyways. sometimes i feel fine and even energized (in a very goofy way) the next day, and sometimes i feel dead (which is fine as long as you don't have any big plans.) go for it!

----------


## kookyinc

Pulling all-nighters have never helped me dream, but they make me more fun in the real world, at least until I crash and completely run out of energy.

----------


## LuceYourself

well... there is one very simple and very effective (and very fun) method of staying up all night (and in my experience, it can produce some psychedelic dreams)

but I don't think it's appropriate to suggest it on this website (especially to a 16 year old) 

anyways, I find all nighters really easy to do.. do them all the time (whether voluntarily or not).. second best method in my experience is to keep yourself occupied by playing a really addictive game, or doing a marathon of your favourite type of films/television

----------


## Blacklight

I did it once, stayed awake for 32 hours and slept 18 hours. Didn't help with anything.

----------


## Spectrum

A few weeks ago, I stayed up for 38 hours without sleeping.  It certainly didn't help my dream recall, but I guess it was pretty fun.

----------


## Raspberry

I've pulled an all nighter once. Complete with camping, fire and alcohol (luckily nothing happened). I felt like complete shit the next day, and had to carry all of our camping stuff to my friends house. The boys made us bacon sandwiches which helped alot, but yeah I was knackered  ::lol::  and was in bed by 8pm. Was actually really fun though, and it's fun to laugh about with your friends. I don't think I dreamed that night, I pretty much passed out.

If your mum won't let you, go camping like I did. We found a nice patch in the woods and had some fun  ::D:

----------


## ElsiaStar

Well I just read in my Psychology book(summer homework  :Sad:  ) that a deprivation in dreaming(which also could be sleeping altogether, I think) can lead to a significant increase in the amount of dreaming time during the next sleep time. I don't know whether or not it will be easier to WILD or not, but you might dream a little longer.

About the all-nighter, I've been trying to pull one all summer but never have anyone with me who wants to stay up all night. The latest I got to was like 5am. I would really like to pull one off also, but school is going to start soon for me so if I do I have to do it soon. You just have to keep yourself occupied and it helps a lot it you have someone with you. I wish you luck!  :smiley:

----------


## Spectrum

I find I can stay up as long as I want if I have people to talk to (on msn, facebook, etc).  Caffeine helps too, of course.

----------


## Odd_Nonposter

Relevant comic:


*Spoiler* for _._: 





(Alt-Text : After somewhere around 40 hours, there's no academic reason to go to the class. Only go for the hallucinations.)




Even more relevant:


*Spoiler* for _._: 





(Alt text: "I'm not listening to you. I mean, what does a SQUIRREL know about mental health?")




Funny comics aside, I don't really enjoy sleep deprivation much. Being off a couple of hours for me just makes me an angry zombie for an hour in the morning. If it's after midnight, imma goin' to bed!  :Off to Bed:

----------


## OldNutter

> I've pulled an all nighter once. Complete with camping, fire and alcohol



That's the best kind  ::D: 

Anyway I've pull off a few, and I do notice i dream a bit more when I'm super tired. Makes you feel like crap though.

----------


## Dreamsun

I did one 2 days ago... Fell asleep during the day at 15.00... Now I'm doing it again.. it's 10 AM now... I want to get my sleep cycle correct... for most of the summer I've been goin to sleep at 4 and wake up at 2.. now it's more like 6AM to sleep and 4 PM up... So I try to fix it..

----------


## Daskashi

I've been pulling all-nighters a good bit this summer. If you or someone does want to do it make sure you wake up energized have a plan for what to do with your time and plan on sleeping at least 8 hours when you do finally fall asleep. One night every now and then is not that bad, although sleep deprevasion is bad for you, a small minority of sleep researchers think we sleep way too much and we are capable of regular all-nighters. After a couple years ago 6.5-7.5 hr/night is the proven optimum for longevity. When I pull an all-nighter, I find that after the next sunrise I have an unusually happy day but feel tired after waking up once I do go to sleep or the day after that. My PR is 84 continuous hours, when I was 17, but I do not recommend staying awake for more than one day or regularly as you will have frequent hallucinations, which go away after with even little amounts of sleep but can be unsettling. During my long stretch someone recommended B vitamins (now-a-days 5 hour energy) don't do that, it didn't do anything, placebos worked just as well. Good luck.

----------

