Abe: You know, I've never considered myself claustrophobic... but I started sweating and I, I couldn't find the right flow rate on the tank... and I was breathing a lot differently than I was when I was testing it on the outside. Eventually, I settled down, and... I don't know, maybe, maybe it was the Dramamine kicking in, but I remember this moment in there, in the dark with the reverberation of the machine. It was maybe the most content I've ever been. [Primer, 2004 time travel film]

Today, I took the plunge... and I floated for the first time.

It wasn’t quite a time-traveling experience, but then again, I couldn’t honestly say it wasn’t. There was no way to tell or gauge anything about yourself or your surroundings, and I realize now that this was the whole point.

Let’s start with your senses, real and virtual:

Sight: Forget about sight; you don’t need it. No photon of light can penetrate the tank. You are in total, complete darkness and quiet for quite some time. After about thirty minutes, your eyes WILL begin to play tricks on you. I saw (or imagined?) concentric circles of light originating in places I couldn’t even identify. Later, swarms of light beams ebbed above my face as if reflected from water that didn’t exist... yet my vision was blinded by perfect dark inside the tank for one hour. What’s true is that you’ll see things no differently with your eyes open or closed. There is no hope of your eyes adjusting until you can do so. I’m curious as to if the imaginary things I saw were just my mind playing tricks on me or attempting to just SEE ANYTHING because that’s what it’s been programmed to do.

Touch: You won’t need this either. You’re floating without gravity in a tank filed with one foot of water and 800 lbs. of epsom salt. There is no chance of you sinking to the bottom, so you’ll only feel water - and that’s IT. You’re stark naked in there and the water is silently heated to 96 degrees. Unless you flap your arms about or touch the inside of the tank (which is impossible to see so you never know when you might accidentally touch it), then you won’t feel anything much more than heat and weightlessness.

Hearing: This was the trickiest sense to forget about. I wore earplug throughout the entire process, but the pressure from the water still makes a sounds inside my head. Though, when I sat up and removed the earplugs at the end of the experience, I was amazed at how LOUD everything was - especially my breathing. My regular, quiet breathing sounded like something I couldn’t replicated without breathing heavily into a microphone and then listening to the playback on headphones at a high volume.

Smell/taste: There was no way to turn off these senses in your brain - you will taste and smell salt in the air no matter what.

Other virtual senses: Gravity, sense of space, any sense of being... these all go out the window. Forget them, gravity being the most important. You can float in practically any position you’d like to in with the limited amount of space you’re given.

I understand that some people work up to lasting eight hours in calm silence inside these tanks, forgoing bathroom breaks and meals. This shows incredible discipline and stamina. We’ll see if I get that far.

A few last thoughts:

1. 1.Spending time in the blackness of the tank is probably the closest you can get to being back in the womb, floating in solitariness.
   

2. 2.My fingers failed to wrinkle after all that time, perhaps because of the 800 lbs. of salt inside the tank.
   

3. 3.It wasn’t as relaxing being in the tank as I had originally expected it to be, but ten minutes after returning to reality, I really started to feel it. Hours later as I type this, I still feel different than I did when I woke up.
   

4. 4.Though my sense of hearing was diminished, I feel like the overall experience would have been amplified if I listened to Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” underwater for sixty minutes.
   

5. 5.Upon returning home, I lied down, turned on a classic album (one obvious guess as to which one), and had one of the most relaxing naps ever.
   

6. 6.My good friend, who also spent time in a tank of his own, came to an understanding with the universe during his time in there. He was in such a calm and relaxed and meditative and lucid and translucent and transparent state that he thought, ‘I’m moving around, and I’m bumping into the walls even though I’m trying to stay still.’ This, to him, proved that the world around him isn’t going to change - he has to change to meet his world’s demands.
   

7. 7.I recommend this to pretty much anyone who thinks it’s worth the money. If you go in thinking that your time in the tank is worth the amount of work you put in to afford a trip to the tank, then it’ll be worth it. Otherwise, it probably won’t be worth it to you, monetarily speaking... but I’d say that every living person can benefit from having spent a little time in the tank every so often.
   

I should sleep well tonight.