LSO, November 2007
13 JUNE, 2004, FOXWOODS CASINO, LEDYARD, CONNECTICUT, USA
I knew I was in trouble when I got lost on my way back from the toilets. Or more accurately, I should have known I was in trouble but did not immediately make the connection, for the very same reason I went astray in the first place: I was losing my mind. Getting lost in an unfamiliar place is not surprising. Getting lost in plain sight of where you want to go, just 30 metres away, when you are intimately familiar with the route, is something altogether different. Something crazy.
It was a security guard who first noticed my plight, perhaps sympathetic to my confused and vacant expression. Or more likely he was alarmed by what could only be construed as signs of madness, signs he must have surely seen before, given his place of employment. After all, this was Foxwoods, the world’s largest casino, a self-contained city, a labyrinth of booze, bad behaviour and flashing lights that never, ever closes.
“Can I help you?” he offered suspiciously.
“I’m trying to find the poker room,” I stammered by way of reply, and then recognition dawned on his face.
“Oh, you’re the world record guy! Sure, let me show you the way!” I followed his eager footsteps, and when we were within a few steps of the table, my friend Joe Kresse rushed towards me in a panic.
“Where have you been?”
“I got lost.”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Someone who could not walk in a straight line for 30 seconds to a place that had become a second home had some serious issues. At the moment, my most serious issue was sleep, or rather lack thereof. It had been nearly 70 hours since I had last closed my eyes. That might not sound like so long until you think of it as two full days, meaning days and nights, plus another half-day tacked on for good measure. Then add seven more hours. If you are reading this on Sunday evening, think about staying up until midday Wednesday. And you would still not be done. But you would be tired, confused and probably hallucinating as well. I was.
I had begun playing poker at the Foxwoods Casino in Mashuntucket, Connecticut, at 1 PM on Thursday 10 June, 2004. I had already been up for more than six hours when I first started playing, because I had gone into Hartford to appear on the local morning television news show. After returning to the casino I had played all day Thursday, through Thursday night, then all day Friday and Friday night, and then all day Saturday. It was now somewhere around four in the morning on Saturday night, or Sunday morning depending on your perspective, and I was tired, more tired than I could imagine anyone has ever been. I was beyond any measure of exhaustion I had ever known or even conceived of, not just physically but also mentally. To put it in the simplest terms, my brain had stopped working.
I once did a 24-hour mountain bike ride, an arduous physical feat through an entire night in the woods. On many of my trips as a journalist, such as flying to and from Asia, I have been severely jet lagged and sleep deprived. On several occasions, I have flown overnight to Europe without sleep after a full day of work, and then worked through another long day and late until the following night. I pulled college all-nighters, and in those years also had a bit of practise with booze and the occasional mind-altering substance. But none of those experiences could even remotely compare to the state of disconnect I achieved at Foxwoods simply by staying awake. I avoided alcohol altogether, drank ample water, and lots of coffee, but by hour 48, I started to have visual distortions, and by the time I got lost en route from the toilets, I had progressed to full-blown hallucinations of the mirage-in-the-desert variety. That was hour 70 without sleep and hour 64 of poker playing, with just over eight remaining. The past 12 hours had been the worst: every time I glanced up from the table, things looked markedly different. The room itself changed size and shape with alarming frequency, the walls expanding and contracting, alternatingly creating a space so vast it seemed to go on forever and so small I seemed to be playing cards in someone’s garage. Ditto for the table and its surroundings, which began morphing by the minute. At one point I became absolutely convinced that the table was set in a white gazebo elevated above all the other gaming tables on the casino floor. The players, many of whom had been by my side for eight hours or more, suddenly were unfamiliar and unrecognizable. At one point I looked around at their faces and abruptly became convinced I was at the wrong table, because everyone and everything looked so alien. Panicked, I stood up and tried to leave, desperate to get to where I felt I should be, but the dealer begged me to stay, knowing I was in the right place - or at least where I was supposed to be. The truly right place was probably a psychiatric hospital. Mentally, I did not think it could get any worse. But I had yet to hit bottom.
How did I get to this point? What madness compelled me to risk my physical and mental health? Why would I - or anyone - think playing poker for days without a break was a good idea? The answer is simple: to set a Guinness World Record.
2005, LONDON, FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS
When the Guinness record book reached its half-century mark, its editors celebrated with parties, TV specials, record-breaking events and a special edition of the book, covered in shiny metallic gold. My name is in that book, and will be, forever. Fittingly, this was the result of a 2003 visit to Ireland, the birthplace of all things Guinness: it was an article in a local newspaper that first rekindled my boyhood interest in the record book. I knew the book, of course, everyone does, but I had no idea it had such a rich history. Most impressive was its unique status as the world’s all-time number one copyrighted best seller, having sold well over 100 million copies in 37 different languages. The article described a book that became a phenomenon, and spawned a global entertainment empire of television shows, literally hundreds of spin-off book titles, a widely syndicated cartoon of records and a global collection of museums. In addition, records were plastered on paper cups, greeting cards, T-shirts, even a boardgame. Record mania, according to the article, showed no signs of slowing down: every single year, like clockwork, the book sells more than a million copies in the US, and 3.5 million worldwide, annually making the best-seller lists here and abroad.
Surely, I thought, as the freelance journalist inside me pondered the ramifications, there has to be something worth writing about in all this. There was, and fewer than two years later, I would be reading about myself in the pages of Guinness World Records. But I still had a lot to learn.
JUNE 2006, HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, USA
“HE is in the Guinness Book of World Records!” a slightly tipsy reveller tells her date, just a bit too loudly. I’m at a dinner party and wine is flowing freely. I know what’s coming next. A hush descends around the table and ignoring it will not end the silence. I am not going to get out of this room without recounting at least one of my Guinness record-setting endeavours and answering the identical questions that inevitably follow. Did you get paid? What was the record before? How did you do that? Why did you do that? How did you think of that? Why poker? Why golf? Why Australia? Why 72 hours? What’s next? Were you on TV? Does it have anything to do with the beer?
People of every age and background have an insatiable thirst for all things Guinness, and I’ve learned that once the topic of world records comes up, the genie is out of the bottle: like it or not, I become the centre of undivided attention. The bottom line is that the book has a glorifying effect on all its record holders, which is why people are so eager to get into it. Guinness World Records is a collection of celebrities, famous