And short-term sleep deprivation doesn’t require you to have one crazy night. Even just a week and a half’s worth of sleeping six hours a night (instead of seven to nine) can, according to the Division of Sleep Medicine, “result in the same level of impairment on the tenth day as being awake for the previous 24 hours straight”—which is to say that it can induce “impairments in performance equivalent to those induced by a blood-alcohol level of 0.10 percent, beyond the legal limit for alcohol intoxication in the United States.”
