Man who didn’t sleep for EIGHT DAYS reveals his slow descent into madness: ‘I only slept after I was sectioned’

Tommy Graves smiled a big smile and did a perfect somersault; But although he believed his stunts were broadcast to millions, the only people actually listening were the nurses watching him in the psychiatric ward.

Mr Graves, now 32, from Bermondsey, London, found himself being treated in a mental health unit after eight days without sleep and spiraling into a deep psychosis in which he believed he was living a life like Jim Carrey’s character in The Truman Show.

He said: ‘My family sent me. [to a mental health hospital] He was in the ambulance because they knew something was wrong.

‘I was extremely consistent but not logical.

‘I had a plan to end racism, end sexism, end wars, cure cancer, and end all these wonderful things.

‘I didn’t even know where I was at this point. ‘I thought I was in a television studio like the Truman Show.’

In the iconic 1998 film, Carrey plays a man who is unaware that his entire life is being recorded on camera and broadcast to the world.

Mr Graves’ sleep deprivation began while he was working on a project to raise money for a homeless charity.

‘There would be musicians, actors and artists,’ he said.

‘I was really excited about it and worked tirelessly on it. The more I worked on it, the more stressed I became, the more ideas came to my mind, and the harder it was to sleep.

‘No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t sleep because my brain wouldn’t shut down. As the days went by the ideas became more extreme and elaborate, some people might say they were delusions.

By the sixth day of not sleeping, the idea had changed from raising £100 to raising £66 million.

‘I was later admitted to a mental health hospital.’

Mr. Graves spent four weeks in a mental health hospital, but was in such poor shape that he became convinced that it was a television studio, like The Truman Show, and that he should entertain the audience through the facility’s cameras.

Believing she would ‘win an Oscar’ for her performance, she sang, danced and did somersaults in front of the cameras until she was finally able to sleep with medication.

‘One of the nurses told me if I kept going like this I’d get an Oscar. “Most people would see it as sarcasm, but I thought, ‘I’d love to win an Oscar,'” he said.

Now works as a sleep coach

Doctors reportedly told Mr Graves he had a manic episode with psychosis and spent the next four weeks ‘returning to reality’.

Mr Graves said: ‘I left planet Earth completely, I had no idea what reality was; I was hearing, thinking, and seeing things that weren’t real.

‘I was performing for these cameras in the mental health hospital and trying to entertain the audience.

‘There was singing, dancing, doing somersaults, climbing the walls. I jumped over a nurse.

‘After giving me all kinds of medication they finally managed to put me to sleep. I spent the next four weeks in a mental hospital, returning to the real world.

‘What I experienced was a psychotic manic episode caused by stress and sleep deprivation.

‘I was on the highest level of care you can get. I never thought this could happen to me. That was enough to scare me into picking up a book and figuring out how to sleep well.’

When he was discharged a month later, Mr Graves’ life was in tatters and he was under no illusions that his sanity might slip through his fingers again if he wasn’t careful about sleep.

He said: ‘I was very sad when I was discharged. My life had just fallen apart. I was incredibly embarrassed.

‘My doctor said I needed to learn how to sleep or I risked losing my sense of reality again.

‘When I learned to sleep better, my brain started working, my productivity increased, I experienced what life was like when I was fully rested.’

Mr Graves spent the next two years learning how to sleep properly and qualified as a sleep coach in April 2025.

He no longer stays out late on weekends and instead has a specific ‘bedtime’ and ‘wake-up’ time that he tries to adhere to.

He now wants to make it ‘cool’ to have a set bedtime every day to improve sleep quality and runs workshops for businesses and communities to teach people about the importance of sleep and how to do it.

‘My experience as a teenager living in the UK is that it has become the norm for weekends to be reserved for late nights and weekdays for early mornings.

‘You end up in this vicious cycle; You’re trying to get through the late nights of the weekend, get into the early mornings one week, and then back into the late nights again.

‘Approximately one in three people in the UK suffer from insomnia. Having a consistent bedtime and wake-up time is so important, it’s the most important thing you can do.

‘The biggest thing is on the weekends, you get social jet lag basically every weekend, which is like flying two to three hours a week.

‘I’m on a mission to make bedtime cool. I will go out at noon and stay out until 9 pm. It is also possible to make the most of the day.

‘The important thing is not to have less fun, the important thing is to do it at a time that will not tire you.’

‘I want to spread awareness that sleep is linked to every major mental health condition, whether it’s making symptoms worse or being a key driver of the problem that exists in the first place.’

Poor sleep has been linked to a number of health problems, including cancer, stroke and infertility.

But experts have long suggested that waking up throughout the night doesn’t necessarily mean you have insomnia, with figures affecting 14 million Britons.

Insomnia can be caused by stress, anxiety, alcohol, caffeine or nicotine, noise, shift work and jet lag.

If you have trouble sleeping regularly, there are simple ways to improve your sleep hygiene.

This includes keeping regular bedtimes, staying active during the day, and creating a restful, quiet space to sleep.