Descent into Madness

Here's a hypothetical for you all.

Let's say you've been locked in a plain room for so long you've lost all track of time. The lighting is your standard fluorescent lights and they are never turned off. In your room you have a single mattress which is one piece of thick foam. no blankets or sheets or comfort of any kind.
You may be provided some kind of stimulus very occasionally which will be taken away the moment you fall asleep. Your food is sporadic and sometimes you go for days without it, sometimes you get a few meals at once. You only have an hour to eat them.

There is no way to escape.

How do you pass the time? Do you descend into madness? how deep do you go?

I'm doing this as research into a film project, hoping for some interesting answers.

everyone is different, but it typically depends on if that person has a way of mentally escaping their circumstance. it might be something as simple as talking to yourself. it mostly depends on if you are able to get along with yourself or not; if you are typically your own worst company in life than you won't do well in the box.

if food is scarce then most people in those circumstances would sleep, a lot (or meditate). if you aren't starving, then you might spend your time focused on a goal or set of goals like working out, plots and schemes, or maybe engage in something faith-based like prayer.

some people off themselves. others find their escape in daydreams, or other forms of hagakure. most go nuts eventually, and begin to lose forms of reasoning that separate dream from reality.

whats the character arc?

No real arc. We don't know why he's there, only that he's early 20 something (because they're the easiest to find actors for).
The film has to be less than 10 minutes so by the end of it I'm hoping that the audience begins to question their own sanity

Okay, I will write this from my perspective.  I hope that how I surmise my reactions would be will help.

Losing track of time and irregular food will tell me that you are trying to get into my head.  So I will fight it.  I will become surly, argumentative and aggressive.  Despite my defiance, my mind will become more and more distanced from reality.  I will become unable to distinguish reality from the fantasies that will play out in my head.  I will have conversations with myself and I will start to see imaginary spiders.  My moods will cycle through anger, despair, joy, austerity and repentance.  I will begin to see the irregular food arrivals as a reward for whatever behaviour I had been doing prior to being fed and will gradually repeat that behaviour until it becomes ritualised and essential to me.  I would begin to do self destructive things like plucking out my eyelashes and hair, marking my skin or causing deliberate harm to myself in some way.  Eventually I would look to my captors for salvation and see them as some form of punitive deity whom I will beg forgiveness from.  In the final stages I would withdraw completely, disengage from reality and even cease to eat, preferring to die than to endure the torment any longer.  At this stage my will would be broken and I would be a malleable tool.

This may not be how it would be for everyone, but this is one way that isolation and loss of time can affect the psyche.  I hope it helps you to have some more ideas.  Oh and the spiders thing, I really to see imaginary spiders - it is a disturbing symptom of my bipolar

I can imagine things getting quite poopy quite fast.

anto_capone wrote:

most go nuts eventually, and begin to lose forms of reasoning that separate dream from reality.

Man, I must've been nuts since the day I was born, then.

Bekah that was an amazing response and I'll be able to use a lot from that. Thank you so much!

Hmm sounds a lot like ranger school accept you only get 5 mins to eat meals and your not locked in a room just left outside all the time in the elements. Rain, cold, heat,dew you name it. Constantly being belittled. Also your not allowed to sleep. Much... People when I went through did lose it.

I would recommend watching the film Oldboy if you haven't already. It shows the protagonist who is locked in a motel room for 15 years, sporadically given alcohol and fed only takeaway Chinese food. He is occasionally allowed to watch the TV which shows news clippings showing he was framed for the murder of his wife. It is a great film, quite a mindfuck though.

I'll see if I can track it down. Thanks!