The strange story of Peter Tripp (Sleep deprivation)

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14 mins total

A couple of clips I uploaded from an interesting documentary on sleep, Not an obviously drug related issue, but when viewed from a pharmacological perspective it obviously implicates the creation of endogenous psychoactive compounds that cause these altered states of consciousness after severe sleep deprivation (see part two at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R8jNJFFzS0) The clips are about a radio DJ who tried (and succeeded) to brake the world record for staying awake for the longest time, over 201 hours. What happened to him is quite fascinating, and no-one really knows how or why this happens when people are deprived of sleep. We spend nearly a third of our lives in this altered state of consciousness, and no-one really knows why. Sleep is one of the greatest mysteries that science has struggled with. For example, why has nothing evolved to not need sleep? evolution should have chosen an animal that does not sleep and yet still performs, but EVERY animal in the world shows a peridic lack of/decrease in awareness of environmental stimuli (sleep). This indicates that sleep and dreaming, for whatever reason, are very important, so much so that they seem to be uber-evolutionary.


A brief overview of Peter Tripps case: The first major change to Tripp was after three days or so. He started to show signs of mild psychosis, he would get irritable with everyone, he was so rude to his barber (who had been his barber for more than twenty years) that he went away crying and never cut his hair again. The second major change was his body temperature dropped. And it continued to drop throughout the whole course of the experiment, as time went on he would ask for more and more layers of clothes, until he looked like an Eskimo compared to everyone else around just wearing T-shirts. The lower it went, the crazier he became. Then, after about the fourth day he began to hallucinate. He saw cobwebs on his shoes. He saw mice and kittens that weren't there. He rummaged through drawers looking for money that never existed. He thought a technician had come to bury him. He was truly trippin' (probably where the term comes from )

The scientists were puzzled by the hallucinations, as this sort of thing had not been recorded back then, but then they made a surprising finding. They discovered that when he was going through particularly bad periods of hallucinations, although being awake, the hallucinations were shadowing the 90 minute REM cycle of dream sleep. It was as if he was having dreams, even though he was awake. Strangely though, whenever Tripp had to go on air to do his show the hallucinations would completely disappear, and listeners to the show said they couldn't really hear any difference.

By the last day he was completely out of it. He thought although everyone thought he was Peter Tripp, he wasn't, he was actually an impostor pretending to be Peter Tripp. He didn't recognise his wife, and the hallucinations were getting worse. Finally, on the last day after 200 hours his brain waves were monitored, and the doctors found that although he was awake, his brain waves were fully that of a person asleep. This was despite him being fully awake, and him knowing that he was awake. TheEEG showed he was fully asleep, yet he was walking around functionally with his eyes open and talking to people,

After this he went to bed and slept for 24 hours. He claimed after this that he felt fine and there were no long term effects, but his wife didn't think so, and they divorced a while later. He also lost his job, and his friends said he was never the same again.


So the moral of this story is; get sleep, and plenty of it! Its obviously very important for keeping people sane, for whatever reason. Does anyone have any ideas about why these sort of effects occur in sleep deprived people? what drugs may be implicated? It would certainly help if we had the slightest clue why everything sleeps in the first place.


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good find