Please Enjoy This Collection of True Stories That Prove You Can’t Be Trusted When You’re Tired

Being sleep-deprived does wild things to your brain. Beyond the standard images of folks passing out on their desks or stark warnings of the dangers of driving while tired, if you talk to everyday people about the kinds of things they have done while sleepy, chances are you will get a pretty wild selection of anecdotes.

I, for one, have left my keys in my front door overnight after stumbling into my apartment so tired I basically collapsed into bed. My housemate wasn’t impressed. And I could hardly believe I had done something so dumb. But the fact is that without sufficient sleep, your brain and body struggle; causing everything from memory function to your ability to make judgement calls to become wobbly.

And yet, the desire to push through (despite total exhaustion) is felt by many. As our Head of Editorial Mel pointed out, we are far quicker to service the battery in our phones than the one in our own bodies.

With that considered, we thought we’d ask a few people to share some of the most ridiculous things they have done while tired. The stories are about as hilarious as you’d expect.

The most ridiculous things people have done while sleepy

Here we go. A collection of wild true stories of things people actually did while super sleepy.

• “I was painting a piece that took me about 6 hours to complete from start to finish. On the 5th consecutive hour, instead of putting all my paint brushes into water, I dunked them into my tea and almost drank from the paint water.” – Ky
• “We once locked my mother (who was in a wheelchair) and aunt on the balcony. They went out for a smoke and my daughter locked the balcony door and went to sleep. I was woken by a man knocking on my bedroom window telling me in broken English ‘ladies on balcony.’” – Bianca
• “The other day, I shouted ‘sponsor!’ at my Alexa when my alarm was going off instead of “snooze.’” – Amy
• “Sometimes, I’m so tired I legit forget I have a child. She toddles into the room and genuinely surprises me.” – Josie
•  “Walking to the lounge after making a coffee on very minimal sleep, I had my hands full and aimed to put my coffee on the ottoman and phone on the lounge….but I threw my mug (with coffee) onto the lounge and then almost put my phone on the ottoman before I realised OH SHIT.” – Asha
• “Once I was so tired coming off the plane from Australia to Los Angeles I thought that chicken & waffles was a good idea.” – Lauren
• “Not my personal story, but my very tired dad once called my mum by his dead dog’s name before falling into a deep, deep sleep.” – Anonymous
• “When I was 14, I was playing RuneScape at 2:00 in the morning, tired AF. I ended up getting scammed by another player (offering tonnes of gold) and lost all of my bank. :(” – Zac
• “I put my phone in the fridge once.” – Adriana
• “Dead on my feet after covering a multi-day convention with precious little sleep, I finally lay down and conked out. An hour later, out of a dead, dreamless sleep, I awoke with every alarm in my brain wailing, screeching, that I had just ingested something dangerous, maybe even poisonous. I was down the hall and standing over the toilet with my fingers down my throat before a single, rational thought started to poke through the fog: What the FUCK am I doing?” – David
• “There are really too many stories to share but recently, I was awake before my brain was ready to be and for breakfast, I put the actual packet of hashbrowns in the air fryer and put the hashbrowns in the bin. I realised my mistake when I started smelling burnt plastic and left for work hungry and still tired.” – Ella”
• Accidentally yeeted my Airpods down our rubbish shoot one night after a massive day at work. Not a fun time.” – Anonymous
• “Not so much being tired as much as it is being asleep, but when I was really young, from like 4-5, I used to always wake up feeling really really tired and no one knew why. So my parents decided to stay up and figure out if I wasn’t sleeping right or what I was doing, turns out, every few nights I’d get out of bed, put my running shoes on and do laps of the house outside, looking back it wasn’t a very large house but as a tiny little human if felt like a full marathon. Never even knew I was doing it. Would wake up at like 11, put on some shoes and go for a jog, come back in, shoes off and then back to bed. Low key the Usain Bolt of 4-year-olds, but I’m just built different, I guess.” – William
• “Not a morning person – more times than I’d like to admit I have made a coffee, placed it down somewhere around my house, then forgotten I had done that already and made another one, only to end up with two hot coffees.” – Anonymous
• “When I was working in events, I spent the day at this venue setting things up. Started early in the morning and left late that night. When I went to get an uber home at the end of the night, I hopped in some random man’s car. I was juggling an armful of stuff. It must have been an excruciating two minutes for this man as I got settled with all that junk and only after I’d gotten everything in and was buckled in did I register he was saying it wasn’t an uber. lol.” – Ellie

Have you ever done anything ridiculous while sleepy? Pop your story in the comments section for us. We’d love to read it/laugh at it with you.