"The most awful thing was not knowing how much time had passed. You didn't know what day it was, or if it was day or night. The anxiety is unbearable. You start to think of ways to get out, dead or alive."

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Warning: This post contains mentions of violence, drugs, and suicide.

"The guards are pretty sadistic. I understand that they have to be tough, but they were not professional. I was eventually bailed out, and my legal case got resolved."

"I've seen people purposely clog toilets to get staff in riot gear to come to their cell. But they spend about 6–10 hours covering their entire floor with soap very heavily. When the riot team tries to come in, they will start throwing their feces at them and cups of pee. The floor is slippery, and the riot team falls as they try to enter the cell with the guy in the back of the cell. They continuously spray pepper spray throughout the cell, which then spreads to the unit and other cells, and it's really annoying. Some guys are on suicide watch, and the jail needs to pay someone to sit outside their door all day. It's a dark, dark place."

"I will say I caused a lot of issues while I was there and got a full release at five months on a 12-month sentence to an external drug rehab (when I never did drugs lol)."

"(My mom decided jail would help my mental issues instead of therapy). Given my mental illness, I was again stuck in that horrible cell alone. For me, it was torture. I can't sleep with the lights on, and wasn't allowed to cover my face with the blanket. The cameras made me paranoid — that feeling of being watched eats at you; in fact, to this day, if I'm alone in, say, my bedroom, I get antsy because I feel that feeling of being watched. It's surprising how long it stays with you. Being allowed to keep books was a lifesaver, but I was a fast reader and could easily finish my two books long before I'd get new ones. I'd spend a lot of time lying on my bed or pacing the small room, trying to breathe, and digging my nails into my arms. I am claustrophobic; I was trying to stop feeling like the room was going to fall in around me. I'm 27 now, and so glad I will never be in jail again. I stay out of trouble because I'm damned if I'm going back to that kind of hell."

"The view I had was of a junkyard that was next to the JDC (Juvenile Detention Center), and I still can clearly picture it in my head. There was also a bird's nest on the outside ledge of the window, and that helped keep me company.

They gave me two books on my first night — one was one of those books you would use to introduce first graders to reading, and was about Star Wars. The other was a mystery novel called Split Second. I read both of those multiple times until my fifth day, when the guards decided to open up all the cell doors in the solitary block (to give us a treat because we were all on good behavior), and I traded books with the dude in the cell next to me.

Outside of my cell, I got between two and four hours of rec time with these two other kids that were also in solitary (we became pretty good friends, and we still keep in touch). On days when we got four hours, we had two different sections of rec time. We could either: watch a movie and then play basketball outside, watch two movies, or play basketball for four hours. We all would vote, and it almost always ended up being a movie and basketball.

Food was awful. Breakfast was at what I would estimate to be about 5:30 a.m. Normally, generic brand cereal and milk with a muffin or something. Lunch at maybe 10:30 or 11:00 a.m., which was always a ham-and-cheese sandwich. Dinner at about 4:30 p.m., which was just like the kind of lunch you'd get at school. A snack at about 7:00 p.m., which was a pack of peanut butter crackers. I remember losing my snack one day on the basketball court when this other kid and I were playing H.O.R.S.E. and agreed that the loser had to give the winner his snack. I, of course, lost and was starving until breakfast. That was the only time I did that."

"Eventually lunch came, and I was chowing down on a plain wheat bread with what was supposed to be bologna. I had taken maybe four bites when dinner was served. I figured...WTF. But OK, this guy's a jerk, so expect this. I got tired of being in my mind, making up worlds and characters (I used to play D&D a lot), and fell asleep. I wake up to banging on my door, and a deputy says, 'Free time!' Like an idiot, I get up and wait for the door to click open. Never does. Nothing I can do. I go back to sleep.

Again, I am woken up to lunch. No idea what happened to breakfast. But OK. I just eat it and try not to let it get to me. Well, it does eventually. I completely lost track of time, messed up my sleep schedule, and made me worry about my sanity in general. What if I were flushing my meals? Was I eating without remembering? Sometimes the deputy in question would wake me up, tell me to gather my stuff, which I had nothing because they wouldn't let me take anything, and lead me out, only to put me in another solitary cell. I could hear him giggle when he walked away.

Yeah, I admit, I did end up yelling like mad, but not for very long; my voice gave out. Eventually, I did get out. I would have bet my life I was in there for months if not longer, but turns out, it was only a little over three weeks. As others have said, I will never go back in there, I don't care the cost."