Sleep deprivation

What is sleep deprivation?

Sleep deprivation is the deliberate withholding of sleep, in BDSM usually as part of training, an ongoing scenario or an interrogation scene. It causes no pain; what it takes away is the ability to notice something unexpected and adjust a plan. It is the one form of deprivation where the clock itself is the tool.

How sleep deprivation is used in a scene

Rarely on its own, almost always as a base under something else.

The most common form is the long night. Someone may only sleep once a task is done, or is woken at set times and sent away again. That fits rules and service: sleep does not become the subject but the price. The second form is the scenario, where staying awake is part of the story. An interrogation scene leans on it heavily, because an exhausted suspect is exactly the picture that game works toward.

A typical run: start Friday evening, through the night with short tasks, and around five o’clock something changes. Slower, a brief laugh where nothing funny happens, answers that land just off the question. That point usually falls between eighteen and twenty-four hours awake. Exactly the moment when many couples think the game is only now beginning.

What sleep deprivation measurably does

It does not break what you would expect. Yvonne Harrison and James Horne summarized the research on sleep loss and decision-making in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. Complex, rule-based and logical tasks largely hold up under short-term sleep loss, because people make extra effort as soon as a task interests them. What does break despite that effort is dealing with the unexpected: coming up with new solutions, revising a plan, resisting distraction and communicating clearly.

Read that list with a scene in mind. Following orders works for hours longer than you would think; noticing that something is off drops away first. What remains is obeying, what disappears is stepping in.

Then comes perception. Flavie Waters, Vivian Chiu, Amanda Atkinson and Jan Dirk Blom went through 21 studies with 760 participants for Frontiers in Psychiatry and found a fixed order. Within 24 to 48 hours without sleep, perceptual disturbances, anxiety, irritability, depersonalization and a distorted sense of time begin. Between 48 and 90 hours, hallucinations and confused thinking are added, after 72 hours delusions, and after that the picture resembles an acute psychosis.

Why people seek sleep deprivation

Because the brakes come off without anyone having to touch anything.

The appeal is in the soft start. No whip, no rope, no moment where you have to decide whether you want this; there is simply no sleeping, and somewhere in the night you notice you have less inhibition. For anyone who lets go with difficulty, that is a detour that works.

• For the one who undergoes it, sleep deprivation brings a surrender that does not have to be arranged: the resistance drains away on its own.
• For the one who imposes it, sleep deprivation brings a slowly building effect without anything spectacular having to happen.
• For the two of you together, it brings one continuous night instead of separate scenes with breaks between them.

Sleep deprivation removes nothing. Anyone who already sleeps badly, worries or takes medication that acts on the nervous system does not get looser from this but unstable. This is the edgeplay whose effect runs on longest after you have stopped.

How people do sleep deprivation in practice

Usually in one night, with an arrangement about the morning.

Anyone who does it carefully ties the sleep to something concrete, a task, a number, a time, and keeps food and drink going. Staying awake and not eating is the mistake that really makes people ill.

In length it varies: one night with the morning as the end, or a whole weekend with short naps in between. That second is less heavy than it sounds, because an hour’s nap sets the clock partly back, but it makes the build-up unpredictable, because no one knows anymore how many hours are on the counter.

Misconceptions about sleep deprivation

“Sleep deprivation makes someone more obedient.” Obeying is exactly what keeps working longest; what disappears is the arguing back, the noticing and the adjusting. Anyone who calls that obedience confuses willingness with exhaustion.

“It’s the same as deprivation.” No. Deprivation removes stimuli while you are awake; sleep deprivation removes the sleep while the stimuli continue.

“It’s safe, because nothing happens to the body.” Plenty happens, just not visibly. A.M. Williamson and Anne-Marie Feyer had 39 people stay awake for 28 hours in Occupational and Environmental Medicine and set that beside their performance after alcohol. After 17 to 19 hours without sleep they scored on part of the tests equal to or worse than at 0.05 percent blood alcohol, the Dutch driving limit of 0.5 per mille, with reaction times up to fifty percent slower. Longer awake brought them to 0.1 percent.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, at home in BDSM for more than twenty-five years and trained as a psychotherapist. Sleep deprivation is not part of what I offer: I come for an evening, and this asks a night that costs a day afterward.

My picture comes from the conversations afterward, and two things keep coming back. The first: people remember the night differently from how it went. The stretch she thinks lasted hours was forty minutes, so afterward the two of you discuss two different nights.

The second is the drive home. That is where it goes wrong, not in the playroom. Anyone who gets in the car after a night like that does so with the reaction time of someone who has had too much to drink. No figure of speech, but the measurement above.

What you can do yourself

• Agree on an end time and set an alarm for it. Negotiating how much longer this lasts no longer works once you are in it.
• Arrange the next day before the night begins. No car, no work, no responsibility for anyone else.
• Don’t let sleep deprivation run past the second night. That is where the picture tips from tiredness to perceptual disturbances, and you cannot see it on anyone.
• Don’t do this with someone you barely know. Noticing that something is off drops away first in the one who undergoes it, so it has to sit with the other.
• Skip sleep deprivation with sleep problems, psychological vulnerability, epilepsy, diabetes or medication that acts on the nervous system. Here a doctor’s judgment weighs heavier than a kinklist.
• Discuss the night only after a full night’s sleep. What is said at breakfast is not what is meant.

More reading on sleep deprivation

On this site, edgeplay lays out the category sleep deprivation falls under, and interrogation describes the scenario where it is used most.

Beyond this site, the review by Waters and colleagues is the best starting point: it describes the timeline hour by hour instead of only the end state. Williamson and Feyer is shorter and more concrete, on what staying awake does to driving.

Where this fits on this site

Sleep deprivation is not on my list: an appointment with me runs over an evening, and this asks a night plus the day after. How power exchange does get built up is on the BDSM date; what I do and don’t do is in my house rules.

Sources

• Severe Sleep Deprivation Causes Hallucinations and a Gradual Progression Toward Psychosis With Increasing Time Awake. Flavie Waters, Vivian Chiu, Amanda Atkinson & Jan Dirk Blom, Frontiers in Psychiatry 9, article 303, 10 July 2018 (DOI 10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00303, PMID 30042701; author names and journal data checked separately at Crossref, open access, full text read). A review of 21 studies with 760 participants in total, with sleep loss from 24 hours to eleven nights. Gives the order in which the phenomena appear: perceptual disturbances, anxiety, irritability, depersonalization and a distorted sense of time within 24 to 48 hours; complex hallucinations and confused thinking after 48 to 90 hours; delusions after 72 hours; and after that a picture resembling an acute psychosis or a toxic delirium.
• The impact of sleep deprivation on decision making: a review. Yvonne Harrison & James A. Horne, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 6(3), 236–249, 2000 (DOI 10.1037/1076-898X.6.3.236, PMID 11014055; full first names via Crossref, abstract read word for word via PubMed’s eutils API). Gives the core that takes the shine off this term: complex, rule-based and logical tasks largely stay intact under short-term sleep loss because participants make extra effort, while dealing with the unexpected is exactly what suffers. Coming up with new solutions, revising plans, resisting distraction and communicating clearly.
• Moderate sleep deprivation produces impairments in cognitive and motor performance equivalent to legally prescribed levels of alcohol intoxication. A.M. Williamson & Anne-Marie Feyer, Occupational and Environmental Medicine 57(10), 649–655, October 2000 (DOI 10.1136/oem.57.10.649, PMID 10984335; abstract retrieved via the Europe PMC REST service because the PMC page itself gave a reCAPTCHA). Thirty-nine participants, 28 hours awake, compared with the same people after alcohol to about 0.1 percent blood alcohol. Gives that after 17 to 19 hours without sleep, performance on part of the tests was equal to or worse than at 0.05 percent blood alcohol, with reaction times up to fifty percent slower, and that staying awake longer reached the level of 0.1 percent. Note: Crossref gives only initials for the first author, so her first name is deliberately not stated here.

Related terms

• Edgeplay. The category sleep deprivation falls under, with the reason “safe” is not the right word here.
• Deprivation. The removal of sensory stimuli, which this word often gets confused with.
• Sensory deprivation. The same term under its formal name, with the court case where it turned up.
• Interrogation. The scenario where staying awake is used most.
• Rules. The form sleep is usually handled in within an ongoing arrangement.
• Safeword. The agreement you have to keep repeating out loud through this night.
• 24/7. The time form these arrangements are usually made in.