I achieved what I can only describe as pure euphoria while going without sleep for extended months in my 20s. I've actually been thinking about doing it again recently. It really should only be done if you don't need to drive and have no worry about failing deadlines at work.
That's interesting, I actually used to find something similar. I have chronic fatigue syndrome (chronic = persistent, fatigue = tired, syndrome = god knows why). The upshot of this is when I am under any amount of stress I become very prone to poor / low sleep. For example I have a deadline coming up and I am writing this at 3am.
During particularly bad periods I did find that hours awake from midnight to ~5am were both very productive and very happy. No idea what that's about. Fortunately I don't drive so sleep deprivation is not such a dangerous issue.
