After thinking hard about what I could “Experience” I came up with the idea to get only 3 hours of sleep every night for a whole week. I wanted to see how it would affect my body, energy, school academics and my overall attention to things. To do this, I had to stay up early in the morning at 4 AM. I usually get up at 7 AM, so it’s often a struggle to get up, get ready, occasionally I take a shower in the morning. I then usually proceed to school from my house in Ham Lake and it takes usually a good 15 minutes to get to school.

DAY 1: I actually felt great, I remember not even yawning at all it was so weird. I felt like I had a lot of energy and I even weight lifted after school. But as soon as I got home, and laid on my bed I felt exhausted and quickly fell asleep for almost 2 hours. After my “power nap”, I was very ready to stay up late until 4 AM, and I did that with ease not feeling tired or ready to sleep but I fell asleep anyways…

DAY 2: As I woke up 3 hours later, my eyes stung and I was slow to get up. My mom would yell “get up Ethan!” As I hurried downstairs, I tried to eat my usual bagel but I felt ready to throw up. I went to school and got my first yawn 10 minutes into first hour, many more would occur throughout my day. At lunch I ate a lot because I actually felt hungry. I decided to weight lift again even though I was mildly tired and didn’t feel like doing much. I went home and once again fell asleep exhausted, woke up 2 and a half hours later. When I woke up the realization set in that I had to stay up until 4 AM again. That really sucked and I knew somehow that I would feel even more fatigued the next day.

DAY 3: The next day I noticed that I had the tendency to stare, after I looked it up I found out that it’s a side effect to little or no sleep. It made me think of insomnia, and quite frankly scared the hell out of me. That morning I looked at myself in the mirror and saw that my eyes were bloodshot and stung very badly as if someone had dumped salt into them or as if I had just opened my eyes in chlorinated water for 10 minutes straight. I felt extremely lazy at school and didn’t feel like doing anything. I decided to not go to weight lifting because of how exhausted I was and I went straight home to take a nap. I slept for over 2 hours and woke up again with the hard realization that I was gonna have to stay up late again. I did this with ease but had the thought in the back of my mind of how terrible the next day would be…

DAY 4: By this day, I was almost ready to quit because I didn’t feel like doing anything. My eyes stung once again but that was the least of my worries. I went off to school and throughout the day almost fell asleep 3 times. I knew that my attention span was terrible at this point and I often stared at the floor as my teachers were talking. I remember starting on a project but then totally dropping it even though I had the whole class period to do it. I was just so exhausted and I told myself that I would work on it later… I never did. I skipped weight lifting again and definitely did not feel good about that and I felt out of shape to be honest. I always felt bloated and fatigued, it was hard to eat and my appetite was gone, but strangely I didn’t feel the hunger pains. You already know that once I got home, I went straight to sleep and when I woke, I realized that I only had one more day and then recovery.

DAY 5: It was the last day and all I felt like was crap. My eyes stung so bad and it felt as if some darkness or cancer had spread across my body and I was being dragged down, it was hard to stay awake in class and I stared a lot, at one point my eyelids felt as if there was 5 pounds pushing down on them and I was forced to shut them but I knew that I could absolutely not fall asleep. It was definitely a struggle to get through this last day and I often dreamed of being in bed sleeping… As I got home, I went straight to sleep even though I knew I shouldn’t have. But to me I didn’t care, it was the weekend.

RECOVERY: For the 2 day weekend I had, I tried as hard as I could to get my sleep schedule back to normal and for once in almost a full week, I felt energized and I was able to play some basketball outside…

CONCLUSION: I can only imagine what a negative effect this could have on people who normally get very little sleep. After experiencing this and knowing what it feels like, it just isn’t a good thing and I wouldn’t choose to do it again. At the end of the day, I need my sleep and I absolutely hate being exhausted so this was pretty challenging but I made it through and I’m proud and I definitely do not recommend that anyone try this because you will be miserable…