Still Gitmo Questions Abound

What happens if you are left alone in the dark in solitary confinement for days on end? The result is called sensory deprivation and the human mind struggles to cope with it.

Six volunteers who agreed to be shut inside a cell in a nuclear bunker, all alone and in the dark. Within half an hour of lock up, at the start of the experiment, all of the subjects lie down and go to sleep. But the real mind games begin when they wake up and find they have no idea what time it is.
As the hours pass, seeing and hearing nothing, they become increasingly disoriented, subjects have been encouraged to describe how they are feeling after 24 hours, but know that while their words may be heard, no one will respond.

"This behaviour of pacing up and down is something we see in animals as well as people when they are kept in confinement," says Prof Ian Robbins, a clinical psychologist at St George's Hospital who is supervising the experiment. "It could be just seen as something you can do without thinking about it, it may be in part attempting to exercise, but I think it is reaction to the lack of input and you provide the input physically."

Subject Brian Keenan is all too familiar with some of what they are experiencing: "The nothingness, that was extremely hard. Because the question in your head is how am I going to get through the next 10 minutes? Or months later, how am I going to get through the next day? Is there enough left in my head?"adding, "I remember one occasion waking up and having to squeeze my face and my chest and thinking to myself 'Am I still alive?'

Subject Adam Bloom, experienced, after just 30 hours, he is in trouble. "I'm hallucinating! I thought I could see a pile of oyster shells, five thousand oyster shells, empty, to represent all the nice food I could have eaten while I was inside here."

Prof Ian Robbins an insight into "what can happen to people kept in solitary confinement over possibly many months and even years". "Evidence that has accumulated in those places must be considered very unreliable because people will after a while start to take on board the views of their interrogators," he says. "Our volunteers were in a sensory deprivation environment for 48 hours and being treated humanely."

After just 48 hours, Adam wanted to kiss the man who opened the door to let him out. "I was let outside and saw the sun and the sky, for the first time in 48 hours. My senses were overwhelmed totally and utterly by the sights, sounds and smells.

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