What Happens to Your Body If You Stay Awake for 11 Days?

In December 1963, a 17-year-old in San Diego decided to stay awake for eleven days. This is what really happens to your body and brain, hour by hour, from the first all-nighter to day eleven, and what happened when Randy Gardner finally lay down. CHAPTERS 0:00 The boy who argued with a street sign 0:28 The science fair record 1:45 Hour 24: your brain on no sleep 2:57 Microsleeps 3:41 Days 2 and 3 4:24 You, hour 36 to 72 5:01 Day 4: hallucinations 5:43 Days 5 to 7: memory 6:16 Does sleep clean your brain? 6:46 Days 8 to 11: the subtraction test 8:04 The final day 8:39 What happened when he slept 9:17 What science learned 10:10 Why the record is banned 11:09 Sleep debt 11:58 What to do tonight (This is a safety-first explainer, not a challenge to copy.) NOTE This is general educational information, not medical advice. If you struggle with sleep or feel unsafe driving when tired, please talk to a doctor. RESEARCH & SOURCES William C. Dement, "The Promise of Sleep" (Delacorte Press, 1999): the Randy Gardner experiment, "sleep debt" Gulevich, Dement & Johnson, "Psychiatric and EEG observations on a case of prolonged (264 hours) wakefulness", Archives of General Psychiatry 15 (1966) Dawson & Reid, "Fatigue, alcohol and performance impairment", Nature 388 (1997): 17-24 hours awake vs blood alcohol Yoo et al., "The human emotional brain without sleep", Current Biology 17 (2007): amygdala reactivity Yoo et al., "A deficit in the ability to form new human memories without sleep", Nature Neuroscience 10 (2007) Xie et al., "Sleep drives metabolite clearance from the adult brain", Science 342 (2013) Van Dongen et al., "The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness", Sleep 26 (2003): six hours a night for two weeks Tefft, "Acute sleep deprivation and risk of motor vehicle crash involvement", AAA Foundation (2016) Watson et al. (AASM/SRS), "Recommended amount of sleep for a healthy adult", Sleep 38 (2015)