Longest I've ever gone without sleep was three days when when I was 13, here's irony for you, I wasn't TRYING to stay awake for three days but everytime I even tried to sleep my body just kept kicking in the adreniline or something because it just wouldn't relax at all.
I of course Lied to my folks and told them I was sleeping so they wouldn't take me to the doctor but by the end of day three I was so tired I actually just sort of laid down in the middle of my living room and didn't wake up until my parents woke me the next afternoon and I was still exausted and when I went to bed again that night I slept til around noon the next day too.
The reason lack of sleep can kill you is because REM sleep is far more necessary then people seem to think (that's why people who were anestatized(SP?) are still so tired when they come too) because it is a time where your mind sort of dumps all the excess baggage of the day and "reboots" I guess you could say.
Because the lack of sleep starts to effect your brain it also starts to effect your body of course (as the two are intertwined) so when your brain starts going gahgah your body starts losing it's "direction" and eventually it just says enough and stops altogether resulting in death.
Or so I've heard I don't actually know if any of that is medically accurate or not but I'm sure one of the smart folks here has the info
