Last year, it was these very days that the news of Sepideh Farahan’s suicide, a former political prisoner, made headlines. A suspicious and shocking death that, according to her friends, was a voluntary suicide. Sepideh had said in her interviews that during her time in Evin Prison, the detention center of the Ministry of Intelligence, they would give her pills for a long time that later turned out to contain morphine and addictive substances.

For me, hearing about the distribution of addictive substances among prisoners was strange and unbelievable until I myself was detained.

In 1401, during the uprising of “Women, Life, Freedom”, I was arrested and transferred to Ward 209 of the Ministry of Intelligence. The individual cells were two-person cells, with rooms measuring only two by three meters and lacking even the most basic amenities. In a six-meter cell, there were nine of us sleeping until the day I was released. The LED lights with their bright and disturbing white light were on 24 hours a day, and for someone like me who cannot tolerate even the slightest light when trying to sleep, it was the biggest form of torture. In the few nights I was there, I slept for less than three hours, as the light and overcrowding in the room prevented me from sleeping, and just as my eyes were getting warm enough to fall asleep, they would call for me to be interrogated.

Interrogations were held in inhumane conditions. The population of detainees was so high that they were forced to sit in rows in the hallways of the building they called “school” (later we found out it was an administrative building affiliated with Imam Baqir University) and were interrogated with blindfolds on, facing the walls.

I had heard that they behave much worse towards men and even resort to physical violence. One of my cellmates described her arrest and said that her husband’s leg was broken and she was beaten during interrogation. I also heard from one of the girls, who was about twenty years old, that the interrogator used vulgar sexual language and hit her with a rosary on her face, leaving bruises.

Every day, I spent nearly 8 hours in the chaos and busyness of interrogation, and even though they brought me lunch during that time, I had no desire to eat. I imagined that getting medication, especially alprazolam, clonazepam, and trazodone, from the doctor would be difficult, but on the very first day when I asked, they easily gave it to me. Despite taking alprazolam, I still couldn’t sleep.

One of my cellmates was a woman in her thirties who was addicted to opium. She had easy access to the syrup and kept it in the fridge. When I saw the syrup in the fridge, I asked one of the guards in surprise, “Aren’t you afraid that she might take it all one night and overdose?” Their response shocked me, showing how humanity and dignity can die within people: “It’s better! We get rid of her complaints and moaning!”

We had another cellmate who had been detained intermittently for years. One night, they told him that his wife had requested a visit. Usually, people in 209 are allowed in-person visits if their detention is long-term. He waited all day, but there was no news. Finally, in the middle of the night, they called his name and told him that they had also detained his husband. But later it became clear that they had lied in order to put him under more pressure.

On the third day of my detention, they brought a woman to our eight-person cell who had a history of being hospitalized in Evin prison. The threat of being transferred to Evin hospital has practically become a tool for extracting confessions from political and ideological prisoners. She described how her days and nights there were spent in vain and meaningless, and how they would drug her with colorful pills to make her dazed and sleepy so she wouldn’t realize the passing of time. Eventually, her mind became completely disturbed and she developed severe schizophrenia. The woman was around 50 years old. She said that when she wasn’t tied to her bed and could walk around in the ward, she would hear the screams of girls asking for help.

Many civil activists have been afflicted with various neurological and psychological disorders by being transferred to psychiatric hospitals, or have been marginalized and isolated through this means. The accounts of imprisoned women about psychological torture in the book “White Torture” are horrifying. Interrogators do not hesitate to use any psychological tactics against the accused to force a confession. Public executions and their dramatization are one of the dozens and certainly the most terrible evidence used by the authorities to obtain confessions from the accused. Sometimes they threaten to release nude images of the accused in public. Sometimes they give him a false but unpleasant news, like what they did to me and said that your father is in bad condition and in the hospital to make me confess that I was leading all the university gatherings. Or in my recent detention, I was threatened to be taken somewhere where no one would ever hear from me again.

At that time, I did not take any anti-stress or anti-depression medication. However, I became severely affected by alopecia areata (a stress-induced autoimmune disease) which continues to this day. The conditions for prisoners in Qarchak prison were much more tragic. The majority of female prisoners in Qarchak are from the lower class of society, imprisoned for petty crimes. But during the protests and mass arrests of 1401, the situation in this prison was particularly dire. I had heard the term “happiness stroller” before Vida Rabani’s open letter in response to the news agency of the judiciary’s labeling of her as a “mentally ill patient”. The “happiness stroller” referred to a cart containing pills and medications that the prison guards would bring around at certain times and give to prisoners upon request, without any supervision from a specialist doctor. They said that the number of detainees was so high that sometimes they would use the “religious visitation

During my recent detention, I also followed up on the health and medical situation of women prisoners in Evin. As before, nerve and mental pills like sweets were available to prisoners. Most prisoners were elderly and could not tolerate imprisonment. Cigarettes were the only thing I could trust to relieve some of my daily stress. But during my detention and transfer to Evin, the right side of my body became paralyzed, which I later found out, with the advice of a doctor, was due to a mild stroke. On the wall of the women’s phone corridor, there was a banner with the contact number for counseling, social work, and communication with a psychologist. But when I asked around, none of the prisoners trusted the psychologist or social worker, as they were seen as working with the interrogators and possibly using private information against the prisoners in their cases. They also didn’t say anything helpful. In ward 209, there was a social work department that would sign a prisoner’s release confirmation

Vida Rabani had said in his letters to the judiciary: “How can you use these methods to humiliate people? Do you want to say that the person we have imprisoned is insane? You have said that he has a history of mental illness, but you also say that this history began after the bloody November and the threats from the Revolutionary Guards, after the plane crash and the Amirkabir gathering, and the detention by the Ministry of Intelligence. In the past four years, you have arrested me four times at home, to the point where every phone call makes me jump, you have summoned me multiple times and threatened me over the phone, you have kept me in solitary confinement, and in the detention center, you have left me to my own devices for days without any interrogation, because you know that detention, solitary confinement, ignorance, and so on, are all forms of torture that are both damaging and invisible.”

Therefore, it is not surprising that prisoners are pessimistic towards helpers and prison counselors. In Evin, the general practitioner was present, who had more medical and pharmaceutical information than me, a final year dental student. Psychiatrists rarely came to Evin, while the presence of a trusted psychiatrist and psychologist is among the necessities of a prison, especially for political and security prisoners. The failure of the judicial system and the reliance on the reports and files of the interrogators and security institutions, and the confessions obtained under white torture and the tolerance of threats and security pressures on the families and acquaintances, even after the release, affects the mental health of prisoners. Seeking therapy and treatment from a psychiatrist, if necessary, is one of the necessities after detention or even after being summoned to security institutions. The guilt and conscience of a released prisoner from the bondage and imprisonment, where “he is free and his friends are still prisoners,” is one of the many reasons for seeking a psychologist. This heavy and

Of course, in terms of security, it is possible that for a prisoner, these very presence and prominence in society and communities can be threatening. However, use the smallest opportunity to be present among friends and loved ones and enjoy. Exercise and take daily walks. If, like me, you are deprived of education, try to keep yourself busy by reading books and studying subjects related to your field. Follow the news with the aim of analyzing them and avoid reading them for entertainment. Because the bombardment of information will only strengthen the feeling of isolation and seclusion in you. Not belonging to a group and becoming secluded is exactly what security institutions are looking for in order to prevent political activists from being released from prison. Do not give them the opportunity to succeed. And finally… “Live” because it is the greatest struggle in itself.