West Memphis Three’s Damien Echols Offers Tips for Surviving Isolation
For many, being cooped up inside your home during this period of self-isolation is a new experience that it taking a different discipline. Damien Echols, who was wrongly imprisoned for years and eventually set free as detailed in the Paradise Lost documentaries, is now sharing his experiences on how to survive solitary confinement via his new YouTube channel.
Echols recalls upon arriving in prison and being greeted by an inmate who had become ordained while serving his sentence. The man offered a piece of advice that stuck with him, which was, "You can either sit in that cell and slowly stagnate and go insane like the vast majority of the people in here or you can turn that cell into a monastery where you can continue to grow and evolve and learn."
Echols adds, "One of the first things I realized in there if you want to be productive and constructive in any environment ... you have to create something within that void [of time] to give yourself something to live for, to give yourself a reason to keep moving forward and the first thing you need when you're living in a void in order to create something is a schedule so you stick to that schedule and you create time for yourself."
For Echols, cleaning became his primary source of keeping himself occupied. "It just makes you feel a lot better about the environment you live in," he explains, while also revealing some cleaning alternatives while the rush for products is happening.
With the current crisis going on in the world, Echols adds, "I just want to say thank you to all the essential workers that are still out there beating yourselves to death just to keep up with the demand just so that everybody can stay in quarantine. Thank you so much for the effort that you're putting in."
Check out the video in full below.
Damien Echols Offers Tips on How to Survive Confinement
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