What is the dumbest thing sleep deprivation made you do?

Spoon wet dog food into my coffee cup instead of my dog's bowl.

I pulled out of my parking lot at work, blinked, and suddenly found myself half way home with no memory of how I got there. I was so freaked out I pulled over to check my car for damage (there wasn't any). My route home involved a highway and several stop signs and lights at very busy junctions, goodness knows if I stopped for any of them. Drove very carefully the rest of the way home and swore never to drive tired again. I'd just pulled a 14 hour shift, and had a newborn at home so wasn't getting much sleep to begin with.

My brain switched yawning with moaning. Lets just say that wasn't the proudest day of my adult work life

Took some nyquil because I wasn't feeling well, I had stayed up until like 4 and I was too tired to realize that the drowsiness wouldn't wear off before I woke up. Got up feeling almost drunk and drove to work. I feel asleep on the road and woke up with just enough time to slow down before rear ending someone at 50 mph.

These comments are starting to make me think that driving tired is as bad or worse than drunk driving.

Attempt to drive home after being awake for ~2 days. Flipped my vehicle several times and luckily came away with no serious physical injuries.

My story is less destruction and more funny.

So, while very tired, I managed to find myself at a local coffee shop. I ordered my coffee, went over to the stand where the milk/sugar and stuff is.

What I intended to do next was to get a couple of sugar packets and put them into my coffee, and throw away the paper package, as usual.

What I actually did was, grab two sugar packets, tear them open and dump their contents directly into.... the trash. Yep. My brain skipped over the part where this step requires putting the package contents into my coffee.

I stood there for a minute while my brain tried to process what I had just done.

Once my brain caught up, I mentally facepalmed, dropped the now empty packets into the garbage, grabbed my coffee and went to sit down and drink it. I punished myself with drinking black coffee because I was too tired and stupid to deserve my coffee any other way.

I have to pick only one?

1. Hallucinate
2. Put a laptop in the fridge
3. Slur my words
4. Feeling myself being dumb just because i was tired.

Not going to sleep even harder

After pulling an all-nighter and working for around 22 hours, I went to the school I was then teaching at. I thought I was doing my usual thing, i.e. sitting at my workstation that was hooked up to a projector und demonstrating something while explaining what I was doing when one of my students interrupted me to tell me that I wasn't doing anything that made any sense and on top of that I was slurring my words. I asked the other students whether that was true and they reluctantly agreed. I excused myself and went to the toilet where I had a cry, which is extremely unusual for me. After that, I aborted the lesson and went home where I slept for more than 12 hours. Not a good memory.

It's a toss up.

My favorite time was when I tried to pour myself a bowl of cereal. Got the bowl, milk, and cereal out. Poured the cereal into the milk jug. Put away the milk, cereal, and bowl. Walked away for some reason. Came back and couldn't find the bowl of cereal I just made. Looked all over for it. Finally gave up and got the milk, bowl, and cereal out to try again. Poured the cereal into the bowl this time. Poured the milk. Cereal is coming out of the milk jug. Suddenly flash back to a few minutes ago when I was picking up spilled cereal off the counter and shoving it into the milk jug because it missed when I tried to pour.

The worst time I was so sleep-deprived that I managed to throw some trash in the toilet and then I peed in the trash can.

I hallucinated a werewolf and slammed on the brakes of an 8 ton military vehicle in rural Afghanistan, causing a patrol to go on alert for an attack.

Sometimes I like to sprinkle a little cinnamon or nutmeg into the morning coffee grinds before adding water. One day I accidentally added dried garlic flakes instead.

Pour applejuice in my coffee instead of milk.

5 years after I left the Army, I still had some stuff put away where it used to be. Woke up after a night of drinking and 3 hours sleep, put on my PT uniform, and wondered why it was so tight.

Put my phone in the washing machine with my clothes.

It didn't survive, RIP Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, you were a pretty good phone back in the day.

While suffering insomnia, I changed my phone's passcode. Ended up having to nuke the OS the next day.

Had a bad spout of insomnia mainly due to extremely high stress levels. I was sleeping 1-3 hours max every night for months. I somehow still got the minimum amount of work done but I was a zombie and have basically no recollection of what I did during that time. I ended up having sleep depravation psychosis essentially and when I would sleep and have any thought or dream, I thought it was absolutely real.

Strangest thing I did during that time was probably dropping my kids off at school and leaving them (this was during summer break). That was eye opening for me.

I’m thankfully in a much better place now. Still high stress job and a lot of anxiety that I carry with me home but I’m working on it!

Put sneakers in the fridge.

Was up for ~24 hours when I decided to drive two hours to go to my parents house. This was a mistake. I had spray water at my face to keep my eyes open to drive. Made it to my dest. without incident. Never again.

I poured cereal onto a paper plate. Luckily, I caught myself before pouring milk. After that, I almost put the milk in the cupboard and the cereal in the fridge.

When I was 18, I flew over to Australia from London via LA, stayed up all day and arranged to meet with some people that is meet on the plane for a beer, all good, having a drink in a pub out at Coogee Bay.

I was sat on a bar stool, closed my eyes, woke up standing next to the pool table having flicked all of the "next game" reservation coins onto the table. A very large Australian guy was saying "I hope you know where all those came from"

My new friend hustled me out of there, thankfully.

I've put a plastic bowl full with liquid chocolate on the stove instead of the coffee maker.

Also, once I microwaved butter in aluminum foil for like 5-6 seconds and wondered why is there firework inside.

I can have trouble sleeping and have to battle fatigue at times. Not long ago I crunched the bumper of my car into the side of the garage because I was too mentally fatigued to drive. Didn't do a lot of damage, scratched the bumper and did minor damage to the the wall, but something I would have never done if I was properly rested and alert. Mental fatigue is a strange thing, it can make you fail in performing simple tasks you do routinely.

When my son was just a couple months old I was still suffering pretty heavily from sleep deprivation. I don't think that really passed until he was a year or so old. Here's some fun ones:

• accidentally put his diaper on backwards a handful of times.. Which always led to pee everywhere, or worse.
• dumped a couple scoops of baby formula into my coffee instead of sugar, a few times
• caught a diaper blowout of baby poo with my bare hands because I couldn't react fast enough to grab a baby wipe instead (in my defense, I had just laundered the bed but he was sitting on it with me and my immediate thought was just "OH god not again")

Not really sleep deprived but in a groggy morning state.

I wear contact lenses. The morning time process of putting them on is very similar to the night time process of taking them off. On several occasions I confused these two processes and it always happened in the morning. I basically attempt to remove my contacts even though they're not in. I take my thumb and index finger and grip my bare eyeball in a gentle pinching motion. i do this multiple times before realizing my mistake. Lol turns out you can touch your bare eye with zero pain or discomfort

TIL: I’m just dumb. I do/have done many of the things, people are listing here, not sleep deprived.

I love how there are so many replies that have to do with coffee, whether putting dog kibble into the coffee or forgetting to put the sugar in before tossing the sugar packets. I guess coffee and sleep deprivation go together.

I don't love how there are so many replies that have to do with commuting to and from work while sleepy. I guess work and sleep deprivation go together too. :/

Once I almost flew around half the planet, but stopped half way and hitchhiked back.

... Don't ask.

Trying to go into work to perform a server upgrade was probably the dumbest thing I ever tried to do despite sleep deprivation. Thank god I never clicked OK when I was asked to because that would've been a bad news, career terminated mistake.

Crash my car into a rock wall at 30 km/h. I'm glad I had dropped off my passenger because the passenger side no longer had leg space.

Was in a hotel. Hadn't slept in a week. Woke up, leaned over to get out of bed. Still asleep, slipped crashed hard into sharp bed table corner. Even asleep, quick reflexes meant I didn't cave my skull in. Instead, I found myself in a ball on the floor, my arm split open , entire forearm blue black and purple, gushing blood. Still have a scar from it 2 years later.

This was back when I was in the military, I finished my shift, went to our dormitories, pissed with the door open while someone was taking a shower and went to my room, found out I sad in the girl's dormitories.

Think to myself "I'll go to bed in ten minutes, after I read this one Reddit/Lemmy post."

Not go to bed and get some sleep.

It's a vicious cycle, at some point the sleep deprivation kills any executive function I may have had left. Which prevents me from actually going to bed instead of seeking quick dopamine hits.