Related Issues. 1  Consumer Health: CAM Claims (Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research) 2  Credentialing, Licensing, and Education (National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health) 3  Herbs at a Glance (National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health)
The absolute longest anyone has voluntarily stayed awake before nodding off is 264 hours (about 11 days) â a record set by 17-year-old Randy Gardner for a high-school science fair project in 1965. Before falling asleep on day 11, he was essentially a vegetable with its eyes open. [ Top 10 Spooky Sleep Disorders ].
Best Answer: A good book to read about this is Sleep Thieves by Stanley Coren. He tells a few stories of people who tried to sustain wakefulness. One famous case is the disc jockey Peter Tripp who in 1959 stayed up for more than eight days as a promotional stunt.After a few days, he began to hallucinate, seeing kittens, mice, and cobwebs.n 1964 high school student Randy Gardner (17) attempted to break the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest time awake -- 260 hours. And after 11 days without sleep he suffered no hallucinations or paranoia and no psychotic symptoms. But Coren challenges this often repeated fact in his book.