#(theyre just the routine ones so i tend towards them on automatic)

[clanoffelidae]

Finally remembered I have a fuckton of frozen veggies lol

Munch munch peas and broccoli

#also havin some fimsh and cheesy potats #i have a hard time getting myself to MAKE food but im actually a fairly healthy eater after that hurdle #not even out of a conscious choice i just genuinely like fruits and veggies #and if i dont eat a green thing for more than 48 hours my body will notify me lol #ill feel like dogshit till i give it the desired nutrition #i literally had to restrain myself from scarfing the peas down like a starving dog lol #cause they were the first thing ready #and its the neurodivergent conundrum of i actually really like peas but theyre not part of my routine #bc they werent a common dish in my house growing up #so i rarely think to buy them when im in automatic mode at the store #and i even struggle to remember to MAKE them once i have them #bc again theyre not part of my usual routine #(id say spinach broccoli and green beans dominate my usual veggies - but again those arent the only ones i like) #(theyre just the routine ones so i tend towards them on automatic) #so whenever i DO remember to buy/make them its always like ‘god i havent had these in forever’ #and i just go feral on them lol #i love peas <3 #also havin some brogle #bc lately i havent had much its been mostly spinnach and grean beans #which im far from complaining about bc i like both those things but yknow #variety #im rlly fucking lucky that i just LIKE healthier foods by both nature and nurture #bc i have a hard time making myself eat stuff i dont like lol #but thankfully i DO like many fruits and veggies so i dont have to worry about it lol #just gotta get over that hurdle of making the veggies #instead of just trying to live off fruit cheese and crackers bc executive dysfunction lol

[scripttorture]

Sleep Deprivation

It’s really past time we talked about sleep deprivation. It’s a mainstay of modern torture and it’s been used for hundreds of years.

It’s also one of the clean (non-scarring) tortures that’s most regularly dismissed. The damage it causes is downplayed. And we often don’t even recognise it when it’s shown in fiction.

Sleep is a physiological need, like eating, drinking and breathing. Deprived of it we start to become ill and eventually die.

I’m breaking this down into sections, we’ll start with ‘normal’ sleep, talk about what sleep deprivation does to physical and mental health and then talk about how torturers deprive victims of sleep.

I’ll finish up by talking about how the long term symptoms of torture can impact sleep.

How much sleep is enough and what is normal sleep?

There is some variation in sleep patterns between individuals but if you let someone sleep for as long as they like most people sleep for around 7-9 hours a night. When we’re ill we tend to sleep more.

If you plot life expectancy against average hours of sleep a night you get a sort of U shaped graph. People who routinely sleep less then 7-9 hours a night have shorter lives and so do people who sleep more.

But there’s no evidence that sleeping too much actually causes poor health. People who sleep more on average may have underlying health conditions that shorten their lives.

And we have a lot of evidence that sleeping less causes poor health.

Sleep is divided into two types, REM and NREM sleep. That stands for Rapid Eye Movement sleep and Non Rapid Eye Movement sleep. Most people know REM sleep as dreaming sleep. Both are essential for human health.

All animals that have been tested sleep but only birds and mammals have been shown to dream. There’s also considerable variation in how long different species need to sleep for, most animals seem to need more than humans.

We sleep in cycles, chunks of time roughly an hour and a half long when we go through different stages of sleep. The initial cycles focus heavily on NREM sleep and as the night goes on we have more REM sleep, but every cycle contains a little of both.

The time of day we’re most likely to naturally fall asleep and naturally wake up varies with age in a non-linear fashion. Young children wake up early and tire early. Teenagers famously stay up late and sleep in late. The elderly wake up incredibly early and sleep incredibly early. This variation, along with individual variation, is thought to serve a protective function: humans are pack animals and varied sleep patterns within a group ensure that someone is awake most of the time in case of emergency.

It’s perfectly healthy for the time we want to go to sleep to vary, but the amount we need to sleep is more or less consistent after infancy.

Drugs, including caffeine, may effect our ability to fall asleep or our perception of how sleepy we are but they do not fulfil our need for sleep.

Keep in mind that even a character who is voluntarily depriving themselves of sleep will feel the effects. Repeated experiments have shown that we can be consciously aware we’re sleep deprived and aware of the effects of sleep deprivation but can not compensate for them.

Your character can’t get around the effects of sleep deprivation by willpower any more then a drunk can get around the effects of alcohol. Stimulants might keep them awake and raise their reaction time but they don’t effect other symptoms and may make some symptoms worse.

We need sleep after roughly sixteen hours of being awake. After that point our ability to function well starts to drop.

Effects of sleep deprivation

We’re still in the process of pinning down all the effects of sleep deprivation. Some of these effects are things we know happen but we don’t know why.

The more sleep deprived a character is the more symptoms they’d have, both physical and mental. Some of these symptoms are apparent after just one night of poor sleep (for the purposes of this post five hours sleep the previous night). I’m going to mark these early symptoms with an asterix (*) so you can easily recognise them.

Keep in mind that these effects are cumulative.

A character who gets into a pattern of not sleeping enough will get worse rather then staying at a steady level. The longer the character isn’t sleeping the more symptoms they should develop.

Physical symptoms

Shakes

Headaches*

Muscular pain

Increased blood pressure*

Reduced alertness*

Lower immune response leading to:

Increased infections

Longer recovery times

Longer reaction times*

Worse reflexes*

Lower natural testosterone levels and lower sperm counts

Abnormal menstrual cycles and lower fertility levels

Hunger*

Poor coordination*

Increased chance of accidents*

Subtle changes to physical appearance that cause a character to appear unhealthy*

Microsleeps (short periods of unconsciousness)

Psychological symptoms

Agitation

Reduced ability to interpret other people’s emotions*

Increased feelings of distrust towards other people*

Paranoia

Hallucinations

Increased chance of substance abuse

Confusion*

Memory loss*

Impaired ability to learn*

Increased risk of developing false memories

Suicidal thoughts and urges

Delirium

Markedly reduced concentration*

Consistently underestimating their level of impairment*

Impaired ability to think logically*

Increase in depressive and anxious symptoms, possibly inducing depression and anxiety

Reduced creativity*

Reduced problem solving ability*

Reduced ability to plan*

Increased risk of violent behaviour

Symptoms similar to psychosis in the long term

Long term effects

These aren’t symptoms exactly, these are a list of conditions people who are chronically sleep deprived are more likely to get. They develop several years later, usually in the 40-50s at the earliest.

Any amount of sleep deprivation is thought to increase the chances of these conditions but the longer and more consistently a character is sleep deprived the more likely they are.

Diabetes

Cancer (various kinds)

Heart failure (and coronary heart disease)

Strokes

Dementia, especially Alzheimer’s

Higher miscarriage rates

Vaccines may be less effective if the person was sleep deprived before the vaccine was administered because the immune response is suppressed. Research on this isn’t quite as thorough yet and it isn’t clear if the smaller immune response actually equates to less immunity against the real disease.

Sleep deprivation is also thought to increase weight gain. It makes people feel hungrier and crave unhealthy foods. While not nearly as serious as the other effects here it is a noted long term effect and as such I felt it needed to be included. Especially since there is a correlation between higher weight and sleep disorders.

How torturers deprive people of sleep.

Sleep deprivation is sometimes portrayed as a ‘modern’ innovation. This is untrue. Scottish witch trials used it heavily in attempts to force confessions and the Spanish Inquisition explicitly forbid its use (they thought the delirium and hallucinations would prevent victims from truly confessing and repenting their sins).

Not all of these methods would result in total sleep deprivation (ie absolutely no sleep in 24 hours). Some of them would lead to less sleep, poor sleep or disrupted sleep. This is still profoundly harmful.

Some of these methods could fit easily with a historical setting. Some wouldn’t. Some would work better in a pseudo-interrogation or forced confession scenario. If you’re planning on using sleep deprivation in your story pick a method that you feel fits your plot and setting best.

And if you’re not planning on using sleep deprivation but you see something you have used on this list take a moment to think about what you might be implying.  

Poor cell conditions including:

-Constant light

-Constant noise

-Insufficient room to sleep

-Wet cells

-Extreme temperatures in cells

-Lack of beds and bedding

Stress positions such as forced standing. These are generally used for between 24-48 hours continuously meaning they’re automatically combined with sleep deprivation.

Constant use of restraints, especially if the restraints stop the character from fully extending their limbs or fully lowering their limbs.

Forced exercise such as forced walking (this was used in Scottish witch trials).

Forced labour for prolonged periods.

Guards disturbing the sleep of prisoners. For example shaking people awake every few minutes.

Prolonged interrogation without rest such as relay interrogation. Relay interrogation involves switching interrogators regularly so that prisoners can be kept in interrogation for over 24 hours at a time.

Starvation, hunger reduces our ability to sleep well and get as much sleep as we need. When combined with poor cell conditions poor sleep becomes inevitable.

Denying medical treatment to injured characters.

Poor sleep in survivors

Most of the long term symptoms of torture have the potential to disrupt sleep.

Depression, anxiety, hypervigilance and suicidal thoughts can all prevent survivors getting to sleep and disrupt sleep.

PTSD often involves intense nightmares which can both disturb sleep and make a survivor dread falling asleep. The majority of PTSD sufferers have difficulty sleeping.

Chronic pain can prevent sleep and many of the drugs commonly used to treat it can also lead to disturbed sleep. Like commonly abused addictive drugs pain medication can lead to poor quality sleep.

This doesn’t necessarily mean every survivor will have trouble sleep or be sleep deprived. While a lot of people with mental health problems have poorer sleep not everyone does. Medication for depression and anxiety can sometimes help people sleep and this in turn can reduce the intensity of symptoms.

Think about the combination of symptoms you’ve chosen for your character and consider whether they could lead to long term sleep loss.

Our need for sleep isn’t something we can debate, bribe or drug away. It’s a fundamental part of our biology.

Losing sleep is serious, being actively deprived of it is abusive. Be aware of what your story is doing and be prepared to show the consequences.

Sources

Why Torture doesn’t work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation by S O’Mara, Harvard University Press, 2015

Why We Sleep by M Walker, Penguin, 2017 - This book contains references to a lot of sleep research papers and is a very good introduction to the subject. Walker and Jagust conducted research together on the link between lack of sleep and Alzheimer’s. He also recommends D Dinges’ (University of Pennsylvania) body of work on sleep and concentration, response time and car accidents.

The Mystery of Sleep by M Kryger, Yale University Press, 2017

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

#tw torture #sleep deprivation #sleep #mental health #insomnia #masterpost #effects of sleep deprivation