#1. Flotation Tank
Where no one can hear you scream (except the staff)
I’d love to be launched into space.
Floating through eternal nothingness, ten million miles from the nearest person, I could finally be alone with my thoughts (are beans sprouts beans or sprouts? is cream cheese cream or cheese? why have I never felt truly loved? etc.).
It would certainly be easier to write (assuming I could still use a keyboard through my space mitts).
This is the free (i.e., lame) version of this article. Paying members can access the exclusive director’s cut here. This week, you’ll also get an exclusive photo of me in the flotation tank.
Yes, I am pathologically introverted – I was once the least talkative person at a book club – but also, the world these days is really annoying. Plan a simple trip to the supermarket, and Google Maps will tell you to watch out for the rain, your car will beep in various tones if you forget your seatbelt or drive too close to (or far from) the curb, and the stickers in the supermarket will admonish things like, ‘Don’t open the freezer door until you’ve chosen what you want!’
I am sick to death of being cajoled, prodded, and nudged every minute of the day.
So, as I prepared my list of activities for the year, I scribbled ‘flotation tank’ at the top, far before anything else. In my mind, it would be the ultimate paradise, a velveteen moment of epicurean luxury.
It was basically a walled bathtub in the back of a terraced house.
As I twisted out of my clothes in the foot-wide changing area next to it, I marvelled at this guy’s business acumen. I was paying a not-insignificant amount to sit in his tub of saltwater for an hour, with very little effort on his part. It’s practically a license to print money; he was the car park of the wellness world. With the loot I figured he must be raking in, I was surprised he couldn’t afford clean towels.
Regardless, I put aside my reservations, stepped into the tank, and shut the door.
I wouldn’t exactly call this sensory deprivation, I thought, as light peeped in through the cracks in the door, and there was a faint stench not a million miles away from sewage (which, I was pretty sure, was nothing to do with me). Floating in the water, hearing the waves splash against the side of the tank, I began to feel slightly seasick (or was that the sewage?). Maybe they should call it a sensory inundation tank, I chuckled smugly to myself.
But when the welcome music stopped, and I closed my eyes, submerged my ears, and loosened my shoulders, I was finally alone with my thoughts.
Unfortunately, they were horrible.
A study in the journal Science found that many people (two thirds of men and a quarter of women) would rather give themselves electric shocks than sit in silence with their thoughts for fifteen minutes. There’s a reason people lose themselves daily in religions, or alcohol, or TikToks. Our minds are haunted by fears we’d rather not confront.
In the flotation tank, I couldn’t pull up Twitter or munch on a biscuit whenever my thoughts made me squirm. Instead, I found myself pushing my feet against the bottom so that I’d float into the wall, giving my skull a reassuring thump. It wasn’t hard enough to do any damage, but it was certainly distracting enough from whatever uncomfortable thoughts I didn’t want to face.
Eventually though, I had to face them. Like Theseus hunting the Minotaur deep in the guts of the labyrinth, without my earthly distractions I had no choice but to stare down some of my darkest fears. Above all, I recognised my failings as a father. But in wrestling with these feelings, I was able to process them, and make plans for the future. Once I’d faced my anxieties, I could see they were not so scary after all: I had pulled off the monster’s rubber mask to reveal it was just the old hotel manager after all (zoinks!). I let go of a lot of stress.
Before I knew it, the welcome muzak returned. Although I’d been in there for an hour, it felt more like fifteen minutes. I had fallen into a sort-of wormhole (not that kind), and I was glad for it.
I practically skipped back to my car. The streetlights seemed brighter; the bird song seemed clearer. Coming out of the salty, wet blackness, it’s like I had been reborn. I felt literally rejuvenated. It had been like a massage for my brain - overcoming my anxieties had undone the knots of my mind. Without the incessant beeps and dings of daily life, I had given my brain room to breathe.
Then, I stepped into the car, switched on my phone, and checked Twitter.