A man who went without sleep for an incredible eight days has shared the effects it had on his body after spending a month in the hospital.
In March 2021, Tommy Graves embarked on a mission to raise funds for a homeless charity via a livestream. His intense dedication resulted in him not sleeping for over a week.
“I was working on a project to raise some money for a local homeless charity. There were going to be musicians, actors and performers,” he explained.
“I just got really excited about it and worked tirelessly on it. The more I worked on it the more stressed I became, the more ideas came into my head and the harder I found it to sleep.”
Tommy couldn’t disconnect from his work, and soon it turned into several days without rest.
As the sleepless hours mounted, Tommy noted that his ideas became ‘more extreme’.
He continued: “By day six of not sleeping the idea had gone from raising £100 to raising £66million.”
His family grew increasingly worried, leading to Tommy’s admission to a mental health hospital. Once there, his ideas became even more extreme.
“I had a plan to end racism, end sexism, end wars, cure cancer, all of these amazing things,” Tommy shared. “By this point I didn’t even know where I was. I thought I was in a television studio, like The Truman Show.
“One of the nurses told me I would get an Oscar if I carried on like this. Most people would have seen that as sarcasm but I thought I’d love to get an Oscar.”
Tommy felt completely detached from reality and even believed he was going to meet the queen at one stage.
“I was performing to these cameras at the mental health hospital and I was trying to engage and entertain the audience,” he said. “There was singing, dancing, cartwheels, running up walls. I leaped over a nurse.”
After receiving a significant amount of medication, Tommy was able to sleep again and spent four weeks in the mental health hospital following a ‘manic episode’.
Since that challenging period in 2021, Tommy has become a qualified sleep coach and encourages others to prioritize their sleep habits.
“The experience I had of being a lad living in the UK, it is the norm for weekends to be dedicated to late nights and for weekdays to be more early mornings,” he noted.
“You end up in this vicious cycle of exhaustion – you’re trying to get over the late nights from the weekend and you go into a week of early mornings, and then it’s back to the late nights again.
“As soon as I learned to sleep better my brain started working, my productivity got higher, I experienced what life feels like when you’re fully rested.”