I have been up now for twenty eight hours and I have been hearing voices for about the past two hours or so. (I don’t think I have slept in total more than sixteen hours since Sunday.) Some of the words I am hearing are very clear and even make sense, e.g., “okay, let’s go now,” and at other times it’s just some mumbo-jumbo.
It has happened to me before and I always find it interesting thinking that some people can be tricked into believing that the experience is more than just an illusion. I don’t know what it would feel like to go through a visual hallucination, but I doubt it would fool me either. I know it hasn’t worked on my uncle who went through a NDE and “saw things.” Similarly to my audio hallucinations, he said that what he saw felt real, but the emphasis should be on the “felt” as opposed to the “real.”
Anyway, I am not sure what I am writting or even why I am writing at this point, but I am too tired to be able to do anything else and I need to stake awake for at least another eight hours. Maybe I’ll let the person speaking in my head post the next comment. 
Why are you staying awake for that long 
At any rate don’t drive, or do anything dangerous.
Working. And I will have to drive once I am done, but Benjamin (the voice talking to me) says he’ll keep an eye on me.
Working. And I will have to drive once I am done, but Benjamin (the voice talking to me) says he'll keep an eye on me.I agree with MA: do not drive. Take a cab. I had a 'one second sleep' in the car. Luckily it was a road with a curbstone, so my car was pushed back to the road. Without curbstone I might have been killed. Really dangerous.
I got into an accident in a cab last week and it almost happened again this week. I think those guys are more tired than me. (Although most of them are just cretins.) I actually feel much better now and even Ben seems to be gone.
I got into an accident in a cab last week and it almost happened again this week.Oh well... what should I say?
I think those guys are more tired than me. (Although most of them are just cretins.) I actually feel much better now and even Ben seems to be gone.Maybe he fell asleep... BTW, is he Jewish? If he starts talking about his brother Joseph, and their stay in Egypt during the Pharaohs, let us know...
Wow, just saw this George and I hope you’re home by now or soon to be. I remember you posting about your insomnia earlier but this is potentially life threatening. Sounds like you need a serious sleep aid, administered by a doc of course!
Cap’t Jack
Hallucinations vary depending on the conditions. There are some hallucinations that just overlay on reality and there are others that replace reality. Before the new laws came into being about 20 years ago residents often worked shifts lasting at times more than 36 hours during which they might get no sleep at all under very stressful life or death conditions. On one such occasion I was up for 40 hours straight on an ICU rotation before I had my patients “tucked in” and was able to leave. When i got home my wife was making dinner and I decided to lay down on the couch for a few minutes until dinner was ready. Thats the last I remember. My wife came into the living room to see me sitting on the couch staring into space. She says she tried to get me to lay down but I started yelling that I was running a code and needed to draw a blood gas at which point i shoved her out of the way so I could get to my imaginary patient. She eventually got me to lay down and go to sleep which i did for about 14 hours but that visual hallucination was apparently pretty real at the time.
Working. And I will have to drive once I am done, but Benjamin (the voice talking to me) says he'll keep an eye on me.Please, give us your route and the time you plan to start. I don't want to be anywhere near those areas.
I ended up taking the train, Lois. I was going to drive but when I started up the car I knew I couldn’t do it.
Good decision, George. Sweet dreams.
Yipes when I started reading this thread I was going to toss in something cutzie like: It’s All In Your Head,
but, then the threat of driving popped up and trouble with that is that the traffic and road are outside your head and solid as hell.
Driving tired is dang scary - I’ve done it too often to not feel ashamed about it - but I do try real hard to force myself to pull over and take a power nap over the steering wheel (easier to do on rural roads that in those big cities), then a short walk around the car and off I go, with a pat on my back for heeding my better instincts rather than the time-clock.
I ended up taking the train, Lois. I was going to drive but when I started up the car I knew I couldn't do it.Glad to hear it. You are unusual, though. Too many people in that condition convince themselves that they can drive better than ever. Lois
That would have been like trying to convince myself I can fly. I really couldn’t do it. The interesting thing is I didn’t fall asleep on the train, although I have no recollection of the ride whatsoever. I only remember the sound of my phone alarm bringing me “back to reality.”
But here I go again. Got only two hours of sleep last night and won’t probably get much more tonight. Two more weeks of this madness. (Sorry for turning this forum into my personal blog.)
Take care, George. Apart from the problems with driving, long term sleep deprivation is bad for your health.
That would have been like trying to convince myself I can fly. I really couldn't do it. The interesting thing is I didn't fall asleep on the train, although I have no recollection of the ride whatsoever. I only remember the sound of my phone alarm bringing me "back to reality." But here I go again. Got only two hours of sleep last night and won't probably get much more tonight. Two more weeks of this madness. (Sorry for turning this forum into my personal blog.)I only wonder why you're doing this? Is any job worth risking your health and safety? I don't know if you have a wife and kids but if you do you're putting them in danger, too.
Yes, I have a family and this is the time of the year when I design annual reports. Only fifteen years back we would get up to six months to produce a report. These days, thanks to the speedy emails, PDFs, etc., we get about six weeks. When I needed an image only a decade ago, I had to call an image agency, usually in NYC, explain to them what type of an imagine I was looking for and they would send me a bunch of transparencies. I would then select one, send it to have it scanned, place it in my layout, send it out again for laser printing, and only then send it, by a courier, to my client. Now I simply download as many photos as I need from Getty, select the one I like and send my client a PDF. What used to take weeks, now takes minutes. Out clients know this, and push the schedule as close to the deadline as possible.
And it gets worse. Nobody prints thousands of copies of their reports anymore, since all you need is either a PDF or an online report. When we used to print tens of thousands of copies, the printing markup was big enough to allow us keep a production manager. We can’t do that anymore and I am now in charge of the production of all the reports–on top of everything else.
The new technology is killing us. We obviously designe websites and online reports, but the money we make on these is nowhere close to what we used to make in the 90s. The less money, the less designers we can afford, the less sleep we all get. The good thing is it only lasts about a month or two.
Take care, George. Apart from the problems with driving, long term sleep deprivation is bad for your health.Thanks, Doug. And yes, I am aware of risk I am taking, but not much I can do about it.
I don’t know if this is possible, George, but you mentioned that you used to have six months to design the reports. Are there any parts of all these reports that are either boilerplate or standard so you could set up as much of the structure as possible prior to the time the companies ask for the reports? Then you might be able to plug in the needed data and have less time pressure on yourself and your company.
Occam
The designing part is not the problem, Occam; actually, that’s the fun part. It’s everything else–like getting rid of double spaces between sentences in client’s copy 
--that makes our lives living hell for the two months.