What If You Spend Your Life In Solitary Confinement? | Unveiled

What If You Spent Your Life in Solitary Confinement?

Humans are social beings, and we’re often told of the benefits that can come from leading an active social life… That seeing, speaking to and sharing experiences with other people is something we should all try to do. So, what would happen if the opposite were true, and you were forced into isolation from everyone forever?

This is Unveiled and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; What if you spent your life in solitary confinement?

Isolation; Permanent Lockdown; the Hole; Solitary Confinement… they’re all phrases used for the same punishment: placing prisoners in a small, empty cell with little to no human contact. Generally, it lasts from 22 to 24 hours a day and restrictions sometimes include bans on the making of phone calls and family visits, as well as restricted reading material. In fact, solitary confinement officially fits the definition of “torture” according to some international human rights treaties… but it’s still widely used, with America alone having multiple facilities specifically designed for long-term isolation, most notably the ADX Florence “supermax” prison in Colorado.

Broadly speaking, the loneliness and lack of stimulation that living in isolation can trigger could also cause adverse health effects like insomnia, confusion, hypersensitivity and auditory and visual hallucinations. Many inmates also experience high anxiety and panic attacks, disordered thinking, the development of compulsive behaviour, and dulled cognitive function. In fact, despite reading often being the only form of entertainment available to them, some inmates stop doing even that - claiming that they could no longer remember what they had just read.

One of the longest verifiable stretches in solitary confinement was dealt to Albert Woodfox, one of the so-called Angola Three - a trio of prisoners infamously held in isolation in Louisiana across the 1970s, ‘80s ‘90s and 2000s. Woodfox was initially imprisoned for armed robbery but he, along with Herman Wallace and Robert King, were later also charged with the death of a prison guard - despite reported doubts over the evidence. Woodfox maintained his innocence, but nonetheless spent more than 43 years in isolation. Miraculously he was able to survive, and even went on to write a book about his experience, in which he campaigned for prison reform. Meanwhile, Robert King, who ended up spending 29 years in isolation as part of the Three, summed up the mental effects, telling the Society for Neuroscience in 2018 that; “[when you’re] placed in a six by nine by twelve–foot cell for 23 hours a day, no matter how you appear on the outside, you are not sane.”

While this hypothetical would undoubtedly cause major damage to your physical wellbeing, perhaps it is the mental toll that’d be the most shocking if you had to spend your entire life in solitary. If you were thrown in at the age of eighteen, and remained there until you died, how would it change you? First, you’d encounter the most common effects felt by someone deprived of human interaction; feelings of anxiety, panic, restlessness, and aggression. After just a few months there’s increased irritability, you’re unable to sleep, and you’d already be losing track of the day and night cycles. Previous inmates have reported talking to themselves just to hear the sound of a voice, while the inescapable lack of stimuli could start causing your brain to essentially make up its own, prompting extreme, obsessive thoughts where your focus rests on the simplest and most fundamental aspects of your severely limited life experience - like the pattern of your own breathing or the growth of your own fingernails, perhaps.

The soon-to-be chronic stress could next harm your brain’s memory centre, the hippocampus, leading to memory loss and increasing cognitive decline. Soon you’d find yourself forgetting recent things or unable to work out simple problems easily. All of which leads to further, increasingly deep-rooted issues, with past prisoners showing signs of severe depression, looking to self-harm and losing the ability to recognise faces. In the event that those kept in solitary are one day released, there have also been reports of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, an inability to navigate even basic journeys, and a general disinclination or fear of going outside. As punishments go, this one has a permanent impact.

Even the actual process of solitary confinement comes in grades of severity, though… so what if you’re subjected to sensory deprivation as well? Sensory deprivation is again the taking away of all social contact, but also of all natural light and even minor auditory cues, providing even less in the way of stimulation for your senses. It’s an idea that overlaps with a form of torture called “white torture,” which is so intense that it’s said it can cause people to lose their sense of personal identity. White torture involves placing a prisoner in an all-white room, with a white bed, white sheets, and white walls. The prisoner eats only white foods like rice, served on white plates; they wear only white clothes; they’re not allowed to talk; and the guards overseeing them wear padded shoes to make as little noise as possible. Extreme sensory deprivation is essentially as near to total isolation as it’s possible to get, and it’s allegedly used in multiple countries around the world.

Now imagine spending your whole life in solitary confinement under sensory deprivation conditions, with no sound and no light. You wouldn’t even have a day/night cycle to “lose track of” and your circadian rhythms would have nothing to align with. The serious biological problems would mount up and up, triggered not only by your confinement but also by a basic and unvaried diet… Your hair and skin would be damaged and would struggle to grow back; your general appearance would deteriorate; your muscles could waste; your vision could blur; and, over a lifetime, the experience could even damage your very DNA.

In truth, just 15 minutes of complete sensory deprivation has led to subjects reporting dizziness, headaches, paranoia, and anhedonia - or the inability to feel pleasure. After even a mildly extended period of time, you’d likely succumb to psychosis, lose touch with reality and begin hallucinating images, sounds, smells… anything to convince your brain that something, anything is there, to provide even a scrap of hope that the ordeal might end.

Your experience would be totally dependent on only the thoughts you have… but, given all of the cognitive challenges we’ve already outlined, you’d wind up stuck in an alternate reality of sorts, where anything your brain imagines could possibly make an appearance. And here’s when that loss of personal identity truly sets in. And that’s what would happen if you spent your life in solitary confinement.