Try waking up every morning to no sweet, warm glow of sunlight peeping through your window into your room, but just complete and utter darkness-no sun, no artificial light, just pure blackness around. To many people, that would be just the ultimate nightmare. Yet, there are those people who do this to themselves for reasons such as curiosity, necessity, or a challenge to oneself. Living in complete darkness continuously for 30 days might be considered the most extreme test of human endurance, but what would be the consequence for a person staying continuously in complete darkness for 30 days?
This article will delve into the psychological and physical effects of living in complete darkness for 30 days, exploring the experience from the perspective of someone who took on the challenge. Through this lens, we’ll uncover the impact on the body, mind, and overall perception of reality as one endures the profound and eerie isolation that comes with total darkness.
The Challenge: Living in Complete Darkness
Living in complete darkness for 30 days is not a decision taken lightly. An experiment of this nature requires superhuman mental fortitude and the will to bear both the physical and psychological tolls it may impose. The setup for the man is simple: he is put in a room where no light is admitted to it, nor even a crack of light below the door or the smallest glow of a streetlamp nearby. No clocks, natural indications of daytime or nighttime, or electronic gadgets will light up the space.
This sounds very much like a form of severe sensory deprivation, and it is. A person living in darkness must rely completely on his own senses-touch, hearing, and smell-to describe the world around him. But what does that do to a person, day after day, with no other external stimuli other than the constant state of blackness?
The First Few Days: An Unsettling Adjustment
One can sense how disorientation would be prone to set in rather easily for the person early within the experiment. Our bodies and brains are tuned according to the dark and light, the circadian rhythm as it has come to be known – basically an internal clock by means of which our sleep and wakefulness take place, along with many other bodily processes. It is in total darkness that this internal rhythm gets thrown completely off kilter. Without natural daylight to give cues as to sleeping or rising times, the person may be in extreme difficulties regarding the sense of time. They are usually stronger during the first days. It is as if, since the beginning, the body were in alert status, waiting for some kind of sign from the outside that would reassure it. Anxiety may arise due to the lack of light; the mind seems untied, floating in some sort of alien, unrecognizable space.
Complementing this would be the general lack of stimuli that heighten the awareness of all the other senses; the sounds that may have been previously ignored in a normal setting, like the hum of a fan or breathing, now seem louder. Even the rhythm of one’s own heartbeat may intrude as the mind tries to fill in the dark, empty void with something, anything, that will connect with the outside world.
Physical Effects: Circadian Rhythm Disruption and Sleep Deprivation
Human beings are diurnal, biologically set to be awake during the day and asleep at night. That is mainly controlled by the circadian rhythms, determined by how much light we expose ourselves to. Without any light, the rhythms start breaking down.
Without natural sunlight, and with the signals passing on to our bodies, our bodies may rise in protest.
It mostly begins with sleepless nights, and the inbuilt watch inside the human body seems to go haywire. One cannot know when it is daytime or night, and sleep may turn erratic. The person can experience spurts of moments wherein he may be super alert and suddenly become exhausted-for no plausible rhyme or reason that makes any sense. Those who have experienced such trials report that they are groggy or disoriented during the day, and that they cannot sustain a high level of focus as they had before the experiment. Sleep deprivation starts to set in as days wear on.
Sleep has been proved to be an important component of cognitive function, memory consolidation, and general mental health. In the absence of light or normal rhythm of sleep-wake cycle, as time elapses he will be afflicted with sleeping disorders. Sleeping disorders enhance his irritability, making him edgy and developing anxiety feelings. They may eventually reach the point whereby they become sloppy physically as all their muscles will become stiffer with reduced coordination. Most importantly, light regulates the production of melatonin in the body regulating sleep. In the absence of such a signal, the melatonin surges and falls at random, thus further damaging the rest pattern that the human body adapts to.
The Psychological Effects: Isolation and Hallucinations
While total darkness produces some radical physical effects, perhaps the most powerful is the psychological assault. Humans are social beings by nature, and the feeling of isolation in total darkness-within which one cannot even see another person’s face or communicate visually-can lead to extreme feelings of loneliness and disconnection.
Just to be continuously living in states where either day or night will remain undistinguishable can only make the human mind go insane.
Without visual stimuli- such as sunlit days and uniform surroundings-serving as real reminders of one’s experience, it is not a problem for their thought of time to be changed; days melt into days and give the individual an impression that he has been in darkness way more than actual timing. Their sense of “self” might become blurred and distorted. Time, usually thought of in structured, linear fashion, is a highly abstract concept when no visual markers are present. Perhaps the most startling psychological side effect that some people report subsequent to being in total darkness for a very extended period of time are hallucinations.
The brain, deprived of the usual input of vision, compensates by creating its own. The phenomenon has come to be called “sensory deprivation hallucinations.” These could be visual, auditory, or even tactile, created by the mind. Subjects have reported shapes, figures, and faces in the dark; flashes of light, shadows, ghost-like apparitions. Others have heard voices or sounds that are not there, which may confuse and give rise to fear. These can be very frightening at times and often take the form of disturbing images or voices that seem to reinforce feelings of isolation and vulnerability of the experience. The longer one stays in complete darkness, the more extreme these hallucinations become in some instances, leaving a person to feel deeply disconnected from reality.
The Psychological Burden: Anxiety and Depression
Other possible emotional changes after a long time in the dark: The emotional process of being alone, not knowing anything around, the disturbed sleep-wake cycle may create anxiety with a feeling of sadness that is overwhelming. Some even say that they feel the presence of despair and a complete sense of hopelessness. These feelings, over some time, tend to worsen while the mind enters into a no-end cycle of darkness without light and contact with the outside world.
Emotional strain can appear in the body as musculoskeletal tension, headache, and gastrointestinal problems.
Lack of natural cues regulating the emotional state of the mind does not allow such persons to reach a state of peace or balance. Of course, irritation will set in sooner or later because there is no chance of interacting with the environment in any natural way. Hunting for food or, for that matter, just walking inside the room-all these things become huge challenges when one is unable to view the objects present in the room. Some of them even contemplate suicide when the effects of isolation, sleep deprivation, and sensory deprivation start adding up. The feelings at this stage are overwhelming; added to this is a sense of no hope of leaving the situation.
Long-Term Effects: Recovery and Reflection
By the end of these 30 days spent in complete darkness, the person will have been subjected to a physically and psychically unimaginable journey. Disturbances in sleep have been recorded well after such isolation is over, which it takes a number of weeks for the body to get back fully into the normal rhythm of light and darkness. The psyche takes its sweet time for recovery due to the fact that the emotional effects of such an isolation from or deprivation of the normal sensory inputs last a very long time.
Anyway, this weird and heavy experience is not without its payback.
Many speak of a new clarity in thought and vision. Coming into the world anew after having spent a month in utter darkness, they really do seem to look deeper in their selves and at everything happening around them. The experience actually strips life’s distractions and burdens and brings them face-to-face with thoughts, fears, and feelings without anything or anybody from outside affecting them. For some, it can be a very therapeutic process wherein personal growth comes along with emotional healing. —-
This is a human endurance challenge and the power of the mind-to live in continuous darkness for 30 days.
The physical effects and their psychic correlates are so deep-seated that the relation to the world is reshaped. Not an experience everybody would want to endure, but it reminds us very well how much our senses-and our connection with light-shape our reality, our sense of self, and our place in the world.