The Strange Case of Peter Tripp

On a documentary channel a few weeks ago, a story was told that immediately grabbed my attention. I have no recollection of the incident because it occurred when I was very young.

In the 1950s, a radio disc jockey by the name of Peter Tripp engaged on what was (and still is), a popular radio amusement, the "stunt." (Nowadays, it's just about the norm for wacky antics to pervade radio stations across the nation.)

In Peter's case, his objective was to break the world's record for staying awake. He didn't sleep for days and days while he played records and bantered with his audience from a glass booth in Times Square. He was on the air for about 3 hours per day. The rest of the time, he was kept awake by nurses who nudged him when he began to drop off. Doctors and scientists who were studying him also played games with him, asked him questions continually, and did everything they could to keep his attention.

In all, he was able to stay awake for a total of 201 hours before he simply passed out. That's over eight days! But it came with a price.

During the wake-a-thon, and after only a couple of days, Peter Tripp began to hallucinate. He saw cobwebs on his shoes. He saw mice and kittens that weren't there. He rummaged through drawers looking for money that never existed. He also accused a technician of dropping a hot electrode into his shoe. Basically, he had totally "flipped out."

When he finally ended the ordeal, he went to sleep for over 13 hours.

But that's not exactly the end of the story. Unfortunately he was also involved in the infamous "Payola" scandal, and disgraced, reverted to lowly radio jobs and bounced around the business world in several occupations. He was married and divorced four times and died in Los Angeles a few years ago in relative obscurity.

Peter Tripp's first spouse and closest friends said that after the sleep deprivation stunt, he was never quite the same again.

The National Sleep Foundation's "Sleep in America" Poll released earlier this year revealed that the average American gets only 6.9 hours of sleep per night, with shiftworkers getting about 6.5 hours. (That seems high to me, since I never got more than 5 hours of sleep when I worked night shifts.) The poll also indicated that these numbers have been trending downward over the last five years.

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