Who Needs Sleep?

I know a lot of you have been waiting on the next question in my Q&A series as well as my opinion on the first question, and I really am gonna try to get that up soon. I've been really busy with work and everything lately, and just haven't had time to type that up. However, I had an interesting thought today about sleep and just wanted to do a quick post about it.

Last night, Micah and I pulled an all-nighter by the fire at the dude ranch (Canaan and Kendall tried to do it with us, but they didn't quite make it), and while it was a lot of fun, it surprised me at how hard it was. After being up for about 30 hours I couldn't take it any more and had to crash for about 5 hours. I spoke with Micah about 30 minutes ago, and he was still going which puts him at around 36 or 37 hours.

I was just thinking about how much of an effect sleep has on a persons mind. The longest I've gone without sleep is 96 hours during an experiment in college (which was NOT fun, by the way), and for probably the last 10 hours or so of it I was absolutely out of my mind (hallucinations, delusions, you name it...). Even on our ride back from the dude ranch early this morning it was obvious that the lack of sleep was affecting the way our minds worked, I mean most of our conversations were absolutely ridiculous (but awesome) from free coffee to swimming deep at low altitudes. Anyway, if you have been awake for an extended period of time I don't recommend getting in a car. It's torture.

I wonder what it would be like if we didn't have to sleep, and it was just optional. I think I would love that. I mean, I like to sleep just fine. But if we didn't have to sleep there would be so much more time to do fun stuff.

What's the longest you have ever gone without sleep, and why did you do it? Did anything crazy happen as a result of your sleep deprivation? I want to hear some good stories about staying awake for a long time, or maybe just sleep in general that would be good too (sleepwalking, strange dreams, talking in your sleep).