David Blaine Started Hallucinating During His "Frozen in Time" Stunt

So you first get on television, you first do these things, and then your magic evolves. And your magic goes from being just magic to some of the more insane things you've done, like standing in a block of ice. For how long did you do it for? Seventy? Like 63 hours. 63 hours. I'm always late, so I showed up late. So I missed like the length of time I was supposed to do, so that's all. But I'm always late. I made it here on time though, didn't I? You were early. Perfect. I rode the motorcycle here and was flying because I wanted to be on time. So I flew. You were on time. Yeah. The ice thing, what made you decide to stand in a block of ice for 60 plus hours? Well, so I'll tell you that, so you were saying how do you go from the magic tricks? To these extreme physical endurance and mind things. So studying Houdini and all that stuff. And then there's a poster of Houdini that I loved where he was buried alive, but he never did the stunt. He died before he got to do it, but he was going to be buried alive underground in a coffin. So I stare at, I love that poster since I was a kid. It's like in the magic books you see that poster. Yeah. And anyway, so Bill, again, the guy told you about Bill Kalush, comes up to me and he's like, what about this? And he shows me an image of Indian fakir that was buried alive for a month. He's like, what if you pretend to be buried alive in Central Park? We'll sneak you out and you'll come back a month later. And I was like, I always wanted to do Houdini-like things. But I never wanted to copy, but that one he never did. So I was kind of like, well, that's interesting. But what if instead of doing it the way he did it, what if I did it and everybody could see that I was buried alive? So what if I was really just buried alive? Like, it can't be that hard. He's like, yeah, you can't do that. And I was staying at his place. So we got a coffin from Queens where actually Houdini was buried. I bought a coffin. We brought it back to his house. And then I would just practice sleeping in the coffin. Then suddenly I would... Yeah, but I know, but then suddenly I realized he'd only... Eat food. And then if you have a little thing to go to the bathroom, I did four days like nothing. So I'm like, okay, I can do a week. And that was it. And then I pushed the idea of doing the buried alive and convinced people to let me do it publicly. And what's funny is like firemen and stuff, like would come to the stunt in the middle of the night and they would shine like holograms at me and their lights and stuff. And they... Oh, that's the ice. And then they would assume that I wasn't actually in there. Okay, so here. So back to this one. Well... Well, let's not jump around. So the buried alive thing. Where did you do it physically? That was in New York City on the west side. Trump had like this bunch of properties that he was developing. And I was like, I want to be buried alive on one of your properties. Is that possible? He's like, sure. He just sent me his driver and I went around and that's where I did my first stunt. And it was... How could they see you though? And then Jimmy Nito and who I do who like... Oh, there it is like that. Yeah, so it was see-through. But right now... And then we put six tons of water on top of it. So that's basically it. And then so is there. And how are you getting oxygen? There was holes... See those two big holes? So the oxygen was being... See the holes above my head right there? So the air was being blown in and out. But it's pretty straightforward. That one's not to me not that impressive. Like if I said to you... You just laid there for a week. Yeah. But you know what? The hard part... I mean, sure, body and you lose weight and all that. But the hard part of it is... You would never anticipate this being the hard part. But if you're not used to peeing while standing in front of lots of people staring at you, it's actually really hard. So I'd be buried alive and I had the trucker's tube on and all that stuff, which is like a con with a cat or whatever. And people are there the whole time. It suddenly became an event. So there was never... And they were like, oh, we'll cover it so no one can see. I'm like, no. Then people are gonna think I'm sneaking in and out. So I had to learn. So I would close my eyes. Like when you were a kid sleeping and you'd have those dreams, I'd have matches in front of them. And it would take me hours and I'd finally be able to pee, right? But that... And by the way, I didn't eat for a few weeks before, so I had no food, so the other wasn't an issue. But what happened by midway through the stunt, I'd be waving and smiling and peeing. And it was like nothing, you know? These are things that you don't consider when you're practicing in your coffin in your house. So you didn't eat for how long? Two weeks beforehand? Yeah. But I was always into fasting. I read Siddhartha as a kid and I had done like a week with just water and knew the bodies really good with that. So you were comfortable with the fact that you were able to fast and that wouldn't be an issue. Yeah. And you were comfortable with the fact that you were getting air. Yeah. And where are you drinking water from? How are you getting water? I had like a little bit of water in there that I could suck to a thing like that and that was fine. It was like, it was enough. How much water do you think you drank over the week that you were in there? I don't know. They always say it was like just a little bit, but it was a good amount. It was like, I don't know, probably three liters a day or something. Oh, okay. Yeah. So it's real water. They say you did tablespoons of water, but no, it was like a normal amount. So was the real... And then by the way, I did 44 days with nothing but water and I did nothing but pure H2O. So it's not even like it had minerals in it and body was full recovery. And my starvation expert, who's like one of the top guys in the world in London, my doctor at the end thought that I was cheating. So they put me on an IV. So you used distilled water? So it was a company called H2O and they're things that's just pure. Yeah, just exactly. Distilled. Right. So it had... Right. Which is irrelevant by the way, but so I had nothing but pure H2O for 44 days, lost 60 pounds, bone mass index dropped, 33%... Yeah, people came... That's what I was giving. Yeah, no, no, it was bad. No, it wasn't good. Yeah, it wasn't good. But the doctor thought I was cheating because he's a magician. By the way, my friends that were with me that are magicians and the guy building, they're like, you need to take these vitamins. They hand me a handful of sugary vitamins. And I'm like, no. It's just because if I'm going to do it, I want to actually do it, right? Right. So I would have taken those vitamins. I feel like my metabolism wouldn't have gone into starvation mode and I might have had irreversible damage from it. So the fact that I actually did it, I went into starvation mode and the body protects itself. That's interesting. But what I was saying is the starvation expert that now I have a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine with him, which I'm pretty proud about, but he didn't believe me. So he put me on an IV and right away the phosphate levels reacted and I almost went into shock. So I almost actually did die when they refit fed me. So his paper is called the refeeding syndrome. They say like after World War II, when they rescued from the camps, the Jews and everybody was starving the camps and a lot of soldiers gave them like candy bars and stuff and all of a sudden their systems went into shock and they died from not being refed the right way. So what is the correct way to refeed someone if they haven't eaten in the almost days? You have to slowly bring them back so that you don't have what happened to me, which is phosphate levels go all crazy. So very small amounts of food. Yeah, but then two days later, somebody sent me a trunk from Harrods full of food in London like a friend and I was giving it to all the nurses and doctors because I knew I shouldn't eat it and I was trying to do it right then like in the middle of the night I woke up and had like a bag of potato chips and then a bag of a creature and I was wrecked. It was like the most pink. I also didn't go to the bathroom for a month and a half. What? Think about that. So how long does it take you to recover from one of these things? That one I feel like I never fully recovered from but like I don't know, I wouldn't recommend anybody does that like goes like super, super long with no food. But by the way, so the recovery. When you say you don't think you ever recovered, what do you mean by that? My body always goes like this now. It's always confused when I like train, I go up, down really quick, really easy and it was since that. So your body freaked out because it went into starvation mode. Yeah, I feel like that. But there's no way to prove that. That's a common thing though with people who cut weight for fights. Really? Yeah, they get to a certain point when they have kidney failure and then their body. Exactly. That's what happened to me and I keep having problems with my kidneys. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, and I have a spot on my kidney right now. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. Yeah, that's a real common one with guys. Daniel Carmier actually had to drop out of the Olympics because of that. I didn't know that. His kidneys failed. Yeah, kidney failure is a big one with fighters. Kidney stones too for a lot of guys who cut weight. So that was probably, in your opinion, the one that damaged you the most or left the most residual damage. So the most difficult one was the ice by far. The ice was a monster and the reason why was because ... And now there's also something great about it. So it was a warm November so the air coming through was like ... It happened to be a 68 degree three day spread which led to the ice keep dripping the cold on me and it's radiating this way. But I'm also standing up in one spot completely still and you can't sleep because if you fall asleep and you're present on ice you get frostbite. You have to cut your skin off, right? So I'm staying completely awake the entire time and it's a difficult situation. On hour 55, exactly ... I look back at all of it and my friends knew my eyes just go out and I'm now hallucinating like you could never ever ... No hallucinogenic drug will ever give you those kind of hallucinations. What was it? First of all, it's amazing but it's also when it goes into that nightmare part, it's scary. But there's also that amazing part of it and if you have people after that stunt, now whenever I hallucinate on stunts I have friends there that I say I'm going to start hallucinating, just talk me through it. So here's when I started realizing that I was hallucinating because you don't know when you are, right? And by the way, the one stunt I never did was sleep deprivation. If you remind me, I'll explain that whole thing but I'll forget. So what happens is when I started realizing it is I need to know what time it is because I'm done at 10 p.m. because it was live on ABC. So I'm like, I need to know how much longer I got to go through this because it's getting tough. It's there. By the way, and my doorman would come and like news or whatever, Fox News said David Blaine is not really in the eye. They did a special on it, an hour long special on Fox saying that I was never in the ice and I had a double of me that was in the ice and I was switching up and down with him while eating burgers and reading the news. Fox News did that? Yeah, no, Fox. Fox, the TV station. Oh. Yeah, yeah. So they did, but they did a one hour special that I was never in there. So my doorman- How did they get away with doing that? No, I don't care. But listen, so my doorman who comes to- this is the funny part though. So my doorman that comes to see me, he knows me so well. He was buried alive and he's so nice, right? So he comes to visit me in New York and he walks up to the ice and he sees me and he's looking at me all weird. I wasn't hallucinating it. He's looking at me all weird and he leaves. But I go back. I was like, what's up? He's like, are you sure that that was you and ice? Could that have been you? I was like, what do you mean, Eddie? He's like, okay, well, it's, you know, so we go on. That special airs. Now he's convinced that it wasn't me and I have- The special airs while you're still in the ice. No, no, no, no. That's after. But he already thinks because he doesn't believe it. My friends, my best friends when I was buried alive, they didn't think I was really doing it. They thought it was a trick. So he asked me, was that really you? Because they said that you were a double of yourself and you were switching. And I was like, Eddie, but you looked at me. If I have a twin brother, where is that identical twin brother? Why would I switch up? So anyway, so back to when I get to 55 hours. So I'm looking around and I need the time. So I go like this, like, what time is it? And the guy goes- 4.02? Yeah. So he shows me 4.02. So I'm like, okay, that means we have like another six hours or whatever it is, right? By the way, my time estimations are, so I'm like, okay, wait. I might've been too- wait, wait, wait. And I wait and I'm in door. It's hard. I'm like, things are moving. Everything's weird. Spiders are walking up. People are like sitting in the ice. I'm waiting, waiting. Voices are talking to me that I'm talking back to, right? But I'm waiting and I'm waiting and I wait for like a few hours before I ask anybody the time again. And I see somebody and I'm like- and the guy goes- 4.03. Oh no. And that's when it all crashed out. It was like when that connection and then the hallucinations were just rampant and my eyes were all crazy when the chain saw was coming through, I tried to grab it. Yeah. So- Yeah, see? Look at that. Oh, you're gone. But okay, but now that I've learned that sleep deprivation is one of the most amazing ways if it's controlled to go to another place. It's like the native- I've heard that. Yeah. But I want to get to that. Like while you're in there, what are you doing to occupy your mind? Like how are you- did you have- were you using meditation? Were you just thinking? Were you just winging it? Like- So okay, so for some of them when I do a big- first of all, yeah, a lot of things you get to- you have free time to think. Like there's no phones, no distractions. So aside from the physical- but the one thing that I use with everything is kind of like a breakdown of numbers. I'm like, okay, I have this much, I have to get to this point, then when I get to this point- even when I run on a treadmill, I'm like, okay, I have to get to this point, which means let me get to the halfway point and I'll consider that. When I'm holding my breath, I do the same thing. Like, okay, I need to get to 15 minutes, so let me get to seven and I'll start at seven. Then at seven, I'm like, okay, I'm at seven left, I have to get to another three and a half, then three and a half. And then what I always do is whenever I'm training, I always go past it, so it's the same thing. So like when I'm running a treadmill, I'm like, if I have to do, let's say like, you know, 3.1, whatever it is, I set that as my target, but then I always go like another half a mile past it because I won't- you can't quit before because then you'll be in the mindset that, okay, I can stop before. So like anything that I do, I use numbers to get there, I get halfway and then I push the goal further every single time no matter what. Which is- so it's a mathematical system, ironically. So you don't necessarily have any sort of meditative techniques, you're just concentrating on the numbers. Meditation for breath holding all the time. Every time I do a breath hold, it's all meditative. No, the ice was kind of like- there was like a breathing thing and I didn't really know much about it back then, but I was like more like fighting it. Like- What is it like on your ankles or your knees and your back? Everything swells up like a demon really bad and all that stuff and the pain is excruciating and unbearable, but yeah, it's- I mean, you're waiting. And you didn't have any residual effects of that? Just my ankles and legs were really swollen. Just for a few days or so? Yeah, longer than that, but yeah. Yeah. Now, has anybody ever tried to break that? I don't know, I hope not. Not because I don't care about how- I just don't want anybody to hurt themselves. But I would imagine like someone does something so high profile like you did that, that people would be like, hmm, I'm gonna try that. I mean, I think it's too weird, so people aren't really like, oh, I want to do that. But there's billions of people. I would imagine that someone would step in and try to emulate that. Obviously it was so- I pray not and that's why I pray my daughter never becomes a magician even though she's so amazing at it. Because if she started doing these things, I like if she's gonna bump her knee of like I have a heart attack, you know? Well, that's the problem with being a parent, right? The things that make you amazing are your ability to overcome adversity and then you shelter your children from adversity. It's all my favorite people. They all came from a very tumultuous childhood. And it all came from turmoil and no one wants that for their child. You want to protect your children. Yeah. It's weird. Yeah.