If you’d asked me prior to 2018 if I still knew all the music I listened to during my teenage years, I’d have answered, “Sure, I remember those bands.” Asked whether I remembered whole albums, I would have looked at you like you were crazy.
But then I spent 73 days completely isolated in the Canadian wilderness on Alone season 6. It turns out, I realized to my chagrin, not only albums, but the lyrics to every song on them were etched into the dark furrows of my brain, just waiting to be recalled.
What I longed for on Alone was a deep connection to nature, and meditative timelessness. What I got, played over and over in my head until I could hardly take another chorus, was Pearl Jam’s 1991 album Ten, and The Pixies’ 1988 album Surfer Rosa, among others. I later learned that having your old favorite music play on repeat in your brain was a very common phenomenon for Alone participants who were able to spend weeks living by themselves.
The human nervous system is hard-wired to be social. From the almost humorous to the truly torturous, being plunked into unknown wilderness in total isolation—which is what happens on Alone—results in all manner of strange mental phenomenon.
Add extreme calorie deprivation, and you’ve got a formula that pushes participants to the very brink of mental, emotional, and physical endurance. While participants are armed with an array of cameras and the goal of “documenting absolutely everything,” the most poignant parts of the experience really can’t be captured on film.
The First Test: Hunger
For most people, hunger is the first challenge. It begins slowly then ramps up as it passes through several predictable and increasingly distressing stages.
First is the hunger of habit—our bellies grumble and ache on cue, according to our regular meal schedule. We are still flush with calories, but this early hunger can actually feel more uncomfortable than later stages as we adjust to the sudden change in our circumstances.
In three to seven days we use up all the stored sugar in our body and switch to running on fat, a metabolic state known as ketosis. For some the shift can be blessedly asymptomatic, for others it comes with headaches, dizziness, nausea, diarrhea and more.
If they can stick it out, many find that their hunger actually lessens in ketosis, and their strength returns. This stage on Alone season 6 was euphoric for me. Part 2 of my memoir Never Alone: A Solo Arctic Survival Journey is titled “Living on Beauty.” I wasn’t eating, besides an occasional handful of watery crow berries, but the wilderness around me was so jaw-droppingly beautiful that I felt deeply nourished by it, body and soul.
Unfortunately, without food starting to come in, the reprieve for participants is short lived and we move into the stage I call deep hunger.
In deep hunger we may or may not feel an empty, aching belly, but our body knows something is amiss and it sends red flags to the mind. We become obsessed with thoughts of food. During Alone’s 12th season, Kelsey Loper’s long litany of food fantasies on day 14 was the perfect example. It may sound like just an amusing way to pass the time, but it is torture.
I did my best to control my mind on season 6 and to only fantasize about foods that were potentially obtainable out there: juicy moose steaks and crispy beaver fat. On Alone: Frozen, however, I became utterly fixated on clotted cream. Mind you, I’ve never been to the U.K. and didn’t even know what clotted cream was. I just knew that it sounded like the richest food on the planet. I would probably have traded my sleeping bag for some if I could have.
The mental agony of this hunger triggers deeper loneliness. Our loved ones are out there somewhere, perhaps needing us, and many feel a relentless pull towards home. They must either adapt or tap. The strange shift from using “I” to “we” pronouns can occur, as Kelsey demonstrated on season 12. My theory is that it’s our mind helping us handle the isolation by considering ourselves a crowd. It makes us feel less alone on Alone. While use of the royal “we” may make us seem a little unhinged to the viewers, I think it gives us an advantage.
When Hunger Becomes Starvation
Somewhere between day 20 and 25 or so we reach another critical hunger threshold. At this point, the average person has used up every calorie stored in their body. It’s no longer deep hunger, it’s starvation. Without more food coming in, the only way to keep going is to digest one’s own muscles. Viewers can see the weight loss and the faltering strength but there is no way to capture the deep toll starvation takes on every part of the body. Fatigue, breathlessness, shaking legs, muscle cramps, the heart beating in one’s ears. Some feel their slow decline keenly, some are less phased by it.
During season 6 I was desperately hungry, but so driven and in love with the experience that I did not feel the symptoms as I slipped into starvation. I was shocked when, on one of the routine medical checks, someone asked if sleeping was harder now that I was so bony. I didn’t understand the question. With temperatures well below zero Fahrenheit, I hadn’t taken off my long underwear in weeks so I chose to believe I was still as robust as I felt. (I was wrong. Seeing my shrunken cheeks and bulging eyes in the mirror on the day I left my site was the biggest shock of my life.)
What I couldn’t deny were the deep, bloody cracks in my fingers that made even the simplest daily tasks excruciating. Without calories coming in, the skin loses the ability to create the lubricating oils that keep it supple or to repair minor cuts.
While watching season 12, I saw how Katie Rydge’s lips became so swollen and chapped that she couldn’t stop licking them. Skin that can’t heal invites infection. What would have been a minor inconvenience in regular life can become life threatening during starvation.
The Emotional Toll
As we lose the physical buffers of body fat, intact skin, and muscle mass, we lose our emotional buffer as well. We become raw and have less ability to edit ourselves. Time slows and our awareness stretches out. Most experience wide swings of emotion—joy so profound it brings tears and grief that blindsides us. It can be a beautiful or a terrifying experience.
Most participants spend the weeks leading up to launch agonizing over our gear and wardrobe choices. As the weeks tick off on Alone, we learn that it does, indeed, come down to what we have brought out there with us. Not our ten items, but what we carry inside.
Upon returning to civilization, I pondered the particular songs that had played on repeat out there. No doubt part of it was just my brain trying to distract me from my discomfort and fill the empty space. It wasn’t just mindless popsongs I had been hearing though, it was the angsty music that accompanied the gut-wrenching years of my puberty, first loves, and high school social struggles. There was unresolved trauma in that soundtrack, waiting for enough spaciousness and silence to rear its head. I clearly moved through it, because fascinatingly, my second Alone adventure had an entirely different soundtrack, that of my much earlier childhood—largely broadway musicals and seventies love ballads. This was the background music to the years surrounding my parents’ divorce.
We can’t tough our way through Alone with the stoneface arm flexing of Rambo and other Hollywood survival stars. All of our life experience comes with us and demands our attention. Whether this breaks us down or brings us healing is up to us.
If we understand that life requires hard work and are thankful for all we have instead of focusing on what we don’t, we can find enough beauty and joy to keep us going. If we feel entitled to comfort or the things we need to live, we may feel victimized and angry when we experience true deprivation. If we haven’t come to grips with our own shadows or we wall off our emotions, we will likely find them waiting in the darkness to wallop us. Extreme discomfort is inevitable out there, but whether we experience it as suffering is up to us.
There is a reason why most traditional cultures incorporate some measure of fasting or time alone in the wilderness as a rite of passage. Long term stays on Alone take these experiences and multiply them manyfold.
Approaching the brink of death, even merely glimpsing the edge, is an inherently transformative experience. I could see it in the faces of those who made it past the month marker on season 12. A deep peace and stillness. An inner knowing. A full acceptance of self. Making it this far on Alone is a tremendous achievement of body and spirit. You cannot do it without incredible strength and tenacity.
Season 12, set in a new corner of the world and an entirely different environment, was a departure from the usual Alone formula, but the journey clearly retained the heart of what makes the show one of the most grueling and deeply rewarding adventures there is.
Woniya Thibeault was the first woman to win Alone, and between her two seasons, holds the record for the most cumulative days on the show. An author, educator, and speaker, she chronicled her time on Alone Season 6 in her memoir, Never Alone, A Solo Arctic Survival Journey. She teaches ancestral, wilderness, and survival skills and offers consultation for Alone hopefuls, writers, and filmmakers. Learn more at www.woniyathibeault.com or join her on Patreon for exclusive content and early access to her writing and classes.
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