Many of you right now will be watching this in a room in your house or apartment.
If you aren’t, just imagine you are.
You have that comfortable sofa of yours.
You have a giant TV, a laptop, and you have your phone.
You have access to endless knowledge and entertainment through those devices.
You are warm and comfortable and you think you might just order a pizza and wash it down
with a bottle of fine red wine.
Now just imagine you had to stay in this pleasant space, not just one day, but days on end,
for a month, a year, and your buddies couldn’t come and visit.
Your luxury solitary confinement would drive you mad.
On that rationale, how could anyone survive solitary in some of the grimmest places on
Earth?
Day 1 It’s your first day in solitary confinement.
You are not doing a stint in solitary for a small transgression, such as tattooing someone
or showing insolence towards a guard.
You haven’t been accused of what is sometimes called “reckless eyeballing” or for having
too many postage stamps.
Nope, you’ve been accused of being a danger to other people.
Your time in the Special Housing Unit, aka, the SHU, the hole, will be indefinite.
This already drives you crazy, because you believe you are innocent and are not a danger
at all.
So, that first day you sit in anger, feeling depressed and hard done by.
You look around your spartan cell, which is approximately 8 x 10 feet or 2.4 x 3 meters.
Tens of thousands of others in the prison system in the USA are also doing time in the
SHU, but this is all new to you.
You’re still young.
You are scared, and you don’t mind admitting that to yourself.
You look around, and you remember your living room in your old pad.
Sitting on that giant sofa, laughing with your girlfriend, surfing channel after channel
and complaining that TV sucks.
What you’d do right now to be sitting there with her.
You can almost smell her, feel her warm breath on your cheek as she cuddles you.
You’ll get back to her soon enough.
This will all be over.
You’re a strong guy, and have a positive outlook.
You’ll get through it.
Looking around you take stock of what you have.
A concrete slab that serves as a bed.
A small shelf.
It’s empty right now.
There’s a concrete stool at the far side of the cell, close to a steel toilet that
is connected to the wall.
There’s a sink next to that.
There are no windows in this place.
It’s quiet, and that felt like a relief at first.
This feeling didn’t last long, though.
The relief soon turned into boredom.
You hear a slat open and a tray is carelessly slammed down.
Some of the food hits the floor.
The guards will give you no special treatment, seeing as you’ve been accused of being violent
and dangerous.
You wonder at that moment, who would you tell if you had a problem in here?
What if a guard just decided to hurt you?
You feel vulnerable like never before.
You’ll later discover that this guard purposefully dumps your food like this.
The food is terrible, but no worse than in the general population.
Only you eat by yourself.
You’ve been told that you have no commissary privileges, so no snacking on the things you
used to hate but now love.
Oh, for the love of God, what you’d do for a pack of cookies.
What you’d do just to chat with someone.
The day is drawing to an end.
You thought you’d get some yard time, but for some reason that didn’t happen.
No one has told you why.
You’ve sat all day just thinking about the past, the mistakes you’ve made.
You feel half-crazy already from being this isolated, and you’ve only just got there.
You assumed you’d have been on the floor doing exercises, making use of this time,
but you were too depressed to move.
As the day closes you wonder how people spent years like this…how long will you be here?
The not knowing part is like a barb that sits in your stomach.
Day 2 You woke up feeling more positive, but that
positivity lasted only a few minutes.
For some reason you thought you could plan for the day, and then you looked around, and
you knew it would be more of the same.
You’re starting to stink, too, but haven’t yet been taken to the shower room.
You understand you’ll get to use that room three times a week.
That’s not great since it’s summer and you are really hot.
This isn’t the kind of prison that has AC.
Later this day you get your first exercise, and you are taken to the yard in waist restraints
and also shackles.
You’re said to be dangerous, remember.
On the way to the yard you don’t see another person.
It’s eerily quiet, which only adds to the feeling of isolation.
The yard is basically a bit of space surrounded by high concrete walls.
You just walk around like a caged animal, still in those restraints.
After about 45 minutes the guard collects you.
You still have no privileges, and that means no books.
You weren’t even a big reader on the outside, but what you’d give now to read something,
anything, the back of a cereal box would be better than looking at the blank spaces on
the wall.
Surely it must get better than this?
Maybe they forgot to give you some things…
Day 15 Still no privileges.
You hardly know how long you’ve been in this place.
The only thing you look forward to are the breaks in the day, the food arriving, the
45 minutes on the yard.
That only seems to happen three times a week.
Day 20 You finally got a phone call and you called
your mother.
You didn’t want to sound upset, but the moment you heard her voice something happened
that shocked you.
You just wanted to burst into tears.
You almost collapsed with sadness.
The sound of her voice meant more to you than anything in the world.
You had no idea it would have that effect.
You told her you wanted some books to read, but were unsure when or if you would get this
privilege.
You told her you were holding up, but asked her if there was anything she could do?
What was going on with your case, the crime in prison you’d been accused of?
When could you get a visit?
“What, they didn’t tell you?” she said.
“No,” you tell her, you’ve basically only had contact with the guard and he doesn’t
know much.
She wants you to write to her, but you won’t be getting writing material where you are,
not ever.
You can’t communicate with letters or even just write your own thoughts down.
Day 45 You are getting used to it and at the same
time not getting used to it.
You are exercising in the cell daily, but that hardly fills the day.
The strangest things have been happening to you.
You go into these fantasy worlds, places far from reality.
The real people in your life have been receding to the extent that you’re not even sure
some of them exist anymore.
You’ve long forgotten that nice sofa and the touch of your lover.
These real memories have been replaced by those fantasies.
You’ve been creating relationships in your head with people that don’t exist.
At times you’ve found yourself talking to them.
On occasions you could have sworn you actually heard them speak.
You’ve been going on dates with this person, choosing items off menus.
You’ve told her funny jokes, and actually found yourself laughing in the cell.
Then you come out of it.
That’s the worst part, when the four walls replace this fantasy.
Is this madness you wonder?
Am I going crazy?
These thoughts of losing it come like panic attacks.
When they happen you feel like your heart is going to explode.
You pace around the cell, breathing heavily.
Every now again you just have this urge to hit your head against the wall.
Day 80 You’ve been granted some privileges, but
still no commissary.
Once a week you’re allowed into the pod and you can watch TV for one hour.
You can even change the channel, which stupidly feels like freedom.
It’s the most control you have had other than the option to hurt yourself or not eat.
You had one visit with your mother, and you don’t know when the next one will be.
The strange thing is, you weren’t that person that felt like crying on the phone.
For a long time now, your family is becoming less real.
Life on the outside doesn’t feel real.
The fantasies in your head seem to have consumed you.
You’re glad to see her, but something has changed and you can’t quite figure out what
it is.
You at least were able to get hold of a book.
Just one at a time, a paperback.
This felt like a relief.
It didn’t matter what the story was about.
What mattered was that you had some place else to go for a few hours a day.
Day 300 Holidays and birthdays and whatever else have
come and gone.
That’s not something you think about now.
The outside is a ghost to you and the reality is this cell.
Nothing seems real anymore, except your thoughts.
Some days you don’t even go to the yard when you get the chance.
It sometimes feels like you want to be stuck alone with your thoughts.
The voices you hear now are louder.
If you close your eyes you can hear those people clearly.
You see them painted under your eyelids.
Sometimes you hear people outside the cell, talking about you.
You bang on the door, but nothing happens.
2 years You haven’t made a phone call or received
a visit in months.
You say months, you hardly can keep track of time now.
The other day one of your teeth just came out.
Your toothbrush is finished and you haven’t been able to get a new one.
You no longer even talk to the guard.
You live in this world of yours and you don’t want anyone to interrupt it.
You have started refusing to go out on the yard most times you get the offer.
A psyche doctor came to your cell the other day and you just didn’t know what to say.
You could hardly talk, as if your vocal cords weren’t functioning.
She gave you some advice you think, but her voice seemed distorted, too.
You weren’t really sure what was happening.
You aren’t sure what state you are in.
Are you mentally unwell?
You don’t know.
You just ARE.
This is it.
Unwell or well don’t exist anymore.
You aren’t fully you; you feel like a stranger in someone else’s photograph.
10 years You received some information that your mother
passed away.
That was it.
Done.
She’s gone.
You don’t really know what happened next, but there was blood.
You were lying on the floor next to the toilet bowl.
You wanted to die, there and then.
The walls had finally closed in.
The image of yourself finally dissolved.
You were removed and soulless and there was nothing else left.
You felt inhuman.
They take you away.
In the psyche ward you don’t speak.
People talk to you, but what they say comes out garbled.
10.5 years They tell you that you’re going back to
the general population.
You don’t want that, you say.
You want to be alone.
You don’t have a choice in the matter that’s for sure.
You might have recovered some of your sanity, but just being near people gives you anxiety.
The noises, the commotion, you keep feeling that something is unsafe.
You aren’t the same man as before.
Whatever you were has been expunged from this life.
How can a non-entity communicate with the world?
You have nothing to say.
At first you might come out of your cell only when it seems no one is around.
Then you run right back in.
But too many people just gets to you.
The sounds of hundreds of men eating, talking, it feels like a war zone.
You just want to be alone.
You’ll never be right again.
Released after 14 years You are better, kind of.
On the outside you still get anxious in crowds.
You still hear things.
People try to be friendly, but they don’t understand that you are not the same person.
Something snapped in that cell, and you won’t ever get it back.
You’ll be in stores and things will suddenly become too much.
The one thing you do every time is rush to the restroom and lock yourself in a cubicle.
Sometimes at home you close the bathroom door and turn off the lights, and just sit there
for hours in the darkness.
You know there’s a lot of work to do.
At times you just want to disappear, just as you’d disappeared before, but there are
good days, and if there are those days, surely there must be more.
Will you make it out of this?
Can you ever be normal again?
You hope so.
You want some of your humanity back.
You can’t be a tortured animal forever.
Now that we’re at the end, this show was based on real-life experiences, much of it
about one man that served over two decades in solitary confinement.
Now you probably want to hear more prison stories, go watch one of these two videos:
"I Spent My Whole Life In Prison" or Death Row Prisoners Crazy Last Meals.
They are both super interesting and you’re going to love them!
Thanks for watching!
See you next time!