After 27 days of sleep deprivation, I’m totally exhausted and annihilated.  This got me wondering how long it will take me to catch up and recover.  The most recent studies suggest that sleep debt can’t be repaid in one or two nights of longer snoozes.  The average American gets 6.9 hours of sleep.  Subjects restricted to 7 hours of sleep had slower response times during cognitive testing.  Those restricted to 6 hours of sleep performed so poorly after several days of limited sleep they actually fell into micro sleeps during simple ten minute cognitive tests.   Folks performed consistently well on tests with 8-9 hours of sleep, though I feel best with a luxurious full ten.  This is one of the main reasons I’m not interested in children.  Children steal sleep. With my cognitive capabilities greatly diminished by the chronic sleep deprivation, this math may be be wrong.  By my calculations, I have 108 hours of sleep to recover.  How much sleep do you owe yourself?  Are folks bitchy or just tired?