How Long Could Mankind Stay Awake?

Question by Ze Couves: How long could mankind stay awake?
If all of a sudden everyone who fell asleep didn’t woke up, how long, how many days would it take for every single human to fall asleep?
Taking into consideration the following aspects:

Half of mankind would immediately died without realizing what was happening.
The other half, more or less, would panic and, obviously, everyone would try to stay awake as long as possible.
People would resort to caffeine, drugs, and other crazy stuff.
There are sleeping disorders which allow some people to stay without sleeping for many many days.

Please try to come up with an approximate number of days with scientific reasoning and proofs, thank you!

Remember, what I want to know is when the last survivor falls asleep, the one who resorted to the most effective drugs and probably already had a sleeping disorder to begin with.
@Volzotan Smeik

Thank you, your answer was very interesting and helpful. Unfortunately I just found some new information: the world guinness record for most time awake is eleven days (without resorting to any stimulant), a little more than what you said, nevertheless I appreciate your contribute, because you gave more information than just a time.

The question still remains more or less, can someone stay awake for even more than eleven days?

Best answer:

Answer by Volzotan Smeik
Well,
from a scientific point of view most people can stay awake about 3-4 days, using
“normal” drugs such as caffeine, taurine, sugars andf energetic food and beverages etc…
I have seen a documentary in which they tried to estimate the maximum amount of days/hours a person could stay awake and everybody fell asleep on the evening of the fourth day.
I guess, using “special medication” like for example consuming cocaine or crystal meth you would be able to elongate this stay-awake phase for some hours in the end, but of course you can’t force your body to metabolize tons and tons of crystal meth every day without risking a sudden dead (e.g. hearth attack ).

Neverthelees, I think the problem isn’t just our body. Psychological pressure and structures prevent us from staying awake much longer than 4 days, too. Most of the people in this documentary I have seen almost went nuts on the last days: hallucinations, hysterical attacks, unexplained fears. They see animals or unknown creatures chasing them, can’t focus on anything…etc. Meditation or self-hypnosis could elongate the awake-phase a little bit more on a psychological level. by delaying the surfacing of hallucinations. Masters of meditation can perform miracles in improving their physical energy and performance just by modyfing their own mental structures. AND YES! meditation and self-hypnosis is a scientifically known effect and no abrakadabra-magic stuff… 😀

As a summary:
Without any drugs: 2 days
With usual (legal) drugs: 4 days
With other(illegal) drugs 6 days
With every kind of drugs + mental training: maybe ONE WEEK +-1 day

I don’t think that more than one week is possible without collapsing physically or falling asleep immediately.

Hope this was helpful and my English i ok. 🙂

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!