Isolation Tanked: My time in a sensory deprivation chamber

The everyday routine of my banal existence was becoming increasingly unbearable by the minute. Work. School. Intolerable relatives. Nagging love interests. Mass culture. You get the idea. It was a tired and absurd act of redundancy which resembled the darker side of a dextromethorphan trip. Drastic action was needed. My sanity had to be saved and my mind cleansed of the rubbish which had been piling up in it.

Some time in an isolation tank seemed a plausible remedy for my ennui-induced melancholia. An isolation tank—or sensory deprivation chamber—is quite simply a large metallic box partially filled with water dense enough with Epsom salt so that the person in it can float on his back. The device is soundproof and inside it is blacker than Dick Cheney’s soul, and the only sense of touch is the feeling of water. The idea is to deprive the brain of external stimuli as much as possible.

Climbing into a tank was not my idea. Wolfgang had been ranting about its wonders for a good long while. Initially I thought the whole idea ridiculous, but on that dreary spring afternoon his incessant declamations about sensory deprivation and drug-less hallucination won me over. We drove to Auburn, Massachusetts over an hour away so we could fork over $50 apiece so we could each spend an hour in this devilish contraption. But, truth be told, I felt it was a small price to pay to satisfy a deviant curiosity. Most of all I wanted to see if I would hallucinate. I sure hoped so, as sometimes when the brain is deprived of stimuli, it can generate its own and make “realities” to fill the void; hence the “drug-less hallucinations.”

A brief aside: I would like to mention how Dr. John Lilly—who is elsewhere mentioned on this site—was a pioneer of the isolation tank. Lilly was fond of injecting himself with Ketamine and LSD before crawling into his chamber in what had to have been a pretty maddening ride. Now, surely most members of the general public would regard this endeavor as not only ridiculous, but indicative of an extremely disturbing and dangerous pathology. But rather than be cause for stigmatization, Lilly’s research and insights should garner him praise—at least among the enlightened. Indeed, social ostracism is often an indication of true genius.

When we arrived at the building where the tank was, I saw that the place was called the Crystalline Matrix. I carefully inspected the outside of the establishment, which looked like a dive. But when we went inside, we were greeted by fine interior decorating and colorful burning candles emitting peach-scented wisps of smoke. Suddenly, a vixen-looking woman emerged from an adjacent room. She had funky-looking eyes which seemed to be hiding some hideous secret. At that moment if she had told me she had just finished strangling three children with piano wire in the other room, I would have believed her wholeheartedly.

Wolf told the vixen that he had called earlier to let the place know we were coming. She said—in the creepiest manner possible—that she had been expecting us, and that she was positive we were going to enjoy our “time in isolation.” This is it, I thought. This is how it’s going to end. I'm in a real-life horror film and I’m going to be dead quite shortly. The vixen will never let us out of this place alive.

As I was coming to terms with my impending demise, another woman walked in. She was older and was definitely lacking adequate dental care. Her face was rough and tired; her whole being seemed frail. The vixen began talking to the hag and said, “You must be Destiny’s mother,” to which the older woman replied, “Yes.”

This exchange disturbed me more than the imminent death I thought was soon coming. While “destiny” could very well have been an actual person that the two women were referring to, I got the spine-chilling sense that they were not talking about a person, but rather, destiny, in the abstract. It was all so madcap and surreal. I thought, Am I tripping? Because this is definitely the kind of shit that happens when an alien substance is taking your brain out to the woodshed. Destiny’s mother? What the fuck? As if destiny itself weren’t already a scary enough prospect. I knew nothing of destiny then, nor do I now. But I tell you this. Although none of us may know what destiny is or what it holds for us, on that fateful spring day Wolf and I saw its mother; and destiny’s mother isn’t pretty. The fruit may not fall far from the tree.

After some uneasy small talk with the vixen proprietor, she briefed us on the basics of the tank. All this time, I was peeking over my shoulder to make sure no demons were sneaking up on me to rip my soul away. She then brought us to the tank room where I stripped down to a bathing suit I had on under my jeans, crawled in, and shut the door.

The Epsom-saturated water was piss warm. In a deprivation tank it has to be because if it’s too cold the tanker (one who is in an isolation tank; I just made that up) will be too focused on being cold. A successful tank experience begins with the understanding that you shouldn’t focus on anything while you’re in the tank. Thoughts should be kept to a minimum. Let the sights and the sounds and the smells come to you.

After what I estimated to be about thirty minutes in the tank, I began hearing what sounded like the tenor saxophone solo from Prokofiev’s score to Romeo and Juliet. It gradually became clearer and clearer, with the rest of the ensemble joining in to play the entire piece. I was angry because at that moment I assumed someone was playing music that I could somehow hear in the tank. The music was accompanied by rapid and intermittent flashes of yellow spots which I could “see” as I “looked” upward. While this was going on, I for some reason considered the possibility that I was no longer at the isolation chamber place, but somewhere else. But how could that be possible? If I’m in this tank, how could I not be at the place with the tank in good old Auburn? Where has this contraption taken me? Will I be able to return? How isolated is this isolation tank?

These were the thoughts racing through my mind when suddenly on my chamber door there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—only this and nothing more."

Only it wasn't a visitor, (nor a Raven) but the Vixen who then opened my chamber door. “Your time is up,” she said cryptically.

After I got out, dried off, and put my shirt and pants back on, I told Wolf that I was pissed that someone had decided to play music and provide me with an audible stimulus. He was perplexed. “What music?” he asked.
“That classical music they were playing. Prokofiev.”
“There was no music.”
“I heard it.”
“Dude, I was right here the whole time. I would’ve heard it. Besides, you were in a soundproof fucking tank.”
“Huh.”

Apparently my brain had made the whole piece up. Well, it hadn’t made it up, but it replayed it based on its previous hearings of it, which had been some time before—definitely over a year. The music had been a “real” hallucination, as of course had the flashing yellow spots.

So that’s what happened to me in the tank. I won’t say that it was wild or crazy or anything like that. Rather, the experience was pleasantly and calmly surrealistic. When I emerged from that tank I felt as refreshed as I had in months. I was rejuvenated and wanted a tank of my own. I still do.

-Max