The young man who was awake for 11 days to break all boundaries and suffered serious consequences

randy gardenera 16-year-old teenager born in San Diego, California decided to push himself to the limit of his sleep resistance on December 28, 1963.

That day Gardner left no longer sleep until the morning of January 8, 1964, that is eleven days later.

It all started with a plan he came up with with his high school friend, Bruce McAllister. They both decided to enter the Guinness Book of Records for spending most of the time without sleep. And one of them did.

Randy Gardner’s goal who challenged the human dream

randy gardener Y Bruce McAllister They first decided that they wanted to study the effects of sleep deprivation on “paranormal abilities”, that is, on the attainment of other planes of consciousness. Before abandoning that idea, due to various problems in its implementation, they wanted to explore the effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive and physical performance.

The only thing left to do was flip a coin to see who was taking notes and who was suffering from insomnia. that no one has achieved in the history of mankind. And the turn for the “enterprise” fell to Randy.

Since 1963, Gardner’s 264 hours remains the longest sleepless period a human has ever achieved and it has been scientifically proven. Randy broke the previous record of 260 hours.

The experiment might have gone into oblivion had it not been for a local newspaper covering it, and it attracted the attention of the Dr. William Dement, a sleep researcher at Stanford University.

“I was probably the only person on the planet at the time who had really studied sleep,” Dement told the BBC. And I add “Randy’s parents were very worried that it could be something really bad for his health. Because he wasn’t sure and there was a possibility that the young man would die from not having slept. “

That is to say, for the company, death was not entirely excluded. Previous human experiments had shown this sleep deprivation caused paranoia, suspiciousness and other problems in the volunteers undergoing these tests.

Therefore, at the request of Randy Gardner’s parents, the experiment would be supervised by Dement, as well as Lt. Commander John Ross, of the United States Navy’s Neuropsychiatric Medical Research Unit in San Diego.

The whole process was described by Dement in an article published in 1965, since the doctor stayed awake next to Gardner during several days of the “enterprise”.

Until then, only one official sleep resistance experiment in cats had been reported. When they reached fifteen days without sleep, the cats died.

How was the process that Randy Gardner went through without sleep for 11 days

According to Dr. Dement, Gardner did not use stimulants to stay awake. However, he had people around him who entertained him.

During the eleven days, Gardner experienced mood swings, loss of memory and attention, loss of coordination, confused language, and even hallucinations..

Without the help of his collaborators, Gardner he would struggle to stay awake after 36 hoursand would find the desire to sleep almost uncontrollable at 48.

“Subtle bursts of sleep may have escaped you even before bed: sleep-deprived people go in and out micro dreamsseconds of sleep that occur without anyone noticingoften with his eyes open, ”Dement said.

Therefore, to keep him awake, the team made him play pinball and basketball, would prevent him from going to bed. and made him talk through the door every time he went to the bathroom. This is to avoid the temptation to sneak a nap on the toilet.

The first stages of the experiment went smoothly. However, on the second day the young man had difficulty identifying objects by touch. On the third day he became irritable and had a hard time making tongue twisters.

On the fourth day, memory lapses occurred and her first hallucinations and delusional episodes began.. “I had hallucinations that he was a famous black football player, Paul Lowe, of the San Diego Chargers,” Gardner wrote in Esquire years later.

The hallucinations continued the next day, the teenager he saw a path in front of a forest instead of the rest of his house.

“After that point, everything pretty much went to hell,” Gardner wrote. “There were no more ups, only lows and more lows. It was like someone was polishing my brain.. My body was dragging and my mind was shattered. “

Over the next few days, Gardner’s speech became slower and more confused and his memory deteriorated. He began sentences and stopped in the middle, forgetting where he was going or being interrupted by a new thought.

Like others who have experienced sleep deprivation, he experienced paranoia.

Randy Gardner’s Last Sleepless Day

At this point Randy was expressionless and needed constant solicitation to answer any questions., which he did in a monotonous and rousing tone. The tests of his mental abilities soon ceased, as she would eventually forget what he was doing.

At this stage it did not seem to be suffering many ill effects, and set a new world record after overcoming sleepless days and nights.

After Gardner was awake, he was monitored for several nights, during which time he had a lot of REM sleep, gradually returning to normal.

The experiment concluded that, during sleep deprivation, certain areas of his brain had been “catapulted” continuously.. The same effect was later observed in experiments with rats, in which subsets of neurons were deactivated while the sleep-deprived rats continued their wakeful activities.

From the extreme experience of Randy Gardner, the Guinness Book of Records has stopped publishing any attempt not to sleep. The authorities did so in order not to promote a business that it could cause harm to the participants. Including death.

How was Randy Gardner’s health after 11 days without sleep

Once he hit the record, Gardner slept 14 hours straight. He woke up only to go to the bathroom. As the days went by, his sleep patterns returned to normal. He initially had no problems, but later said he suffered from insomnia which became unbearable and completely upset his life.

Bruce McAllister, Randy’s friend who accompanied him during the eleven days the experiment lasted, told the media at the time that the project left some lessons for science.

Indeed, an Arizona hospital sent a computer that detected parts of Randy’s brain had been “hijacked”. That is, parts that rested and replenished while others were awake.

The story of the two teenagers who decided to beat the dream caught the interest of the press. It has been the third most popular topic in the US national media for some time.