Comments

1
If you're not going to use the rest of your waking nightmare coupons, I've been looking for a horrifying psychological ordeal to go through.
2
Why does the staff at The Stranger hate Paul Constant so much? I really like his posts/articles. You all (and I'm thinking of you Cienna when I say that) could learn a thing or two from Paul.
3
I'm guessing you never saw Altered States.
4
@3, I know, right? I'm always afraid if I get into one of those tanks I'll emerge wanting to make passionate love to Blair Brown.
5
Yes, watching "Altered States" should be a necessary precursor to this experience...
6
@2, Your concern for Paul's feelings is admirable but he's one of my best friends, not in small part because he knows how to take a joke.

@3, No, but now that Goldy's been talking about it in the office for the last half hour, I feel like I have.
7
I'd like to try it, but I think the tinnitus would defeat the purpose.
8
@6: I'm fond of Paul Constant's writing myself, and I must say that while he's laughing with you on the outside, inside he's probably crying and wondering what he did to make you all abuse him so.
9
My only complaint about Paul is that I have to be in the right infantile frame of mind to appreciate his writing.
10
I have heard good things about floating, and at the same place, but I like your story better.
11
per Fringe, you should try it on acid.
12
@3, for some reason I always have trouble remembering the name of that film/novel.

Non-physical form of proto-consciousness here I come.
13
Paul goes to such lengths to endear himself to SLOG's hard-hitting feminist bureau, and where does it get him?

The "friend zone".
14
Get help.
15
$90 to float in water for an hour? WTF
16
This story terrified me almost as much as the one about spiders. Seriously, please stop.
17
I did it once, and found that the density of my head must be greater than most other people (ha), because my head did not float. I had to still engage my neck muscles to keep it up. So, it wasn't that relaxing, although I did have some interesting visual things happening when I was in the tank...
18
Clearly a case of penis envy.
19
Or, you could read the 1983 OMNI interview with John Lilly (if you can get past the yellow background)

H: The Ken Russell/Paddy Chayefsky film Altered States closely resembles your life. What did you think of it?

L: I think they did a good job. The hallucination scenes are much better then anything ever produced before. I understand that some of the crew, the actors, and the producers were trained on K. The tank scenes were fine--except that in reality there are no vertical tanks, only horizontal ones--and the film implied that use of the tank itself would cause those out-of-the-body trips, which it doesn't.
http://www.mysticbroadcast.net/boyd/john…
20
Or, you could watch the Friday's skit, "Altered Statesman"

Part 1
http://youtu.be/JJCSRY-zzEM
And part 2
http://youtu.be/D-uvuFM_RVw

My wife went a while back, and got a membership. It's "relaxing", and great for "the best sleep."
21
Wait. They actually close the lid? And you are in the dark inside a giant clam with the lid closed? Good grief. They CLOSE THE LID???? Aren't you afraid of giant clams? Didn't you ever read Mrs. Piggle Wiggle?? What is the matter with people????

Now I'm going to have a spate of recurring giant clam nightmares.
22
Oh yeah I remember when this was big back in the 1970s -- even then it struck me as something that would be more claustrophobic nightmare, than "relaxing."

And that was before I'd seen "Altered States" on a big screen.
23
According to the dream dictionaries...

Snakes in a dream state represent hidden fears and worries. To see a baby snake in your dream means that you are underestimating some threat in your waking life. If you see the snakes in your bed, the fear is related to something of a sexual or intimate nature.

Murdering someone you know in a dream state is usually a sign of depression. It may be the manifestation of repressed rage that you have turned inward against yourself or an internal struggle against an old habit, addiction or pattern of thinking. Consider that you may be trying to kill an aspect of yourself that is represented by the person killed in your dream.

The redemption story that transformed you from villain to hero by resurrecting Paul would seem like an attempt at absolution of your guilt or fear on your own terms, which is a way to avoid the process of dealing honestly with what's really bothering you because you cannot control all aspects of the process or its outcome.

Feeling vertigo is common when you are anxious or uncertain.

The sense of being burned when you inadvertently touched the chamber with your arm is simply your anxiety translated into an alert signal to your brain about something that you can no longer pretend is not happening or is not there - could be the actual chamber, your experience in it or something else entirely.

The flatulence may also be indicative of passive aggression, either you towards another or another towards you or you towards you. You or someone in your life is not being completely honest. Try a more direct approach.

If sincerely recounted, the association between George Washington's challenging set of teeth and your own and your chosen solidarity with his acceptance of the state of things, may be an attempt to accept something about yourself that previously caused you embarrassment or loss of self-confidence. Of course, some dreams about teeth have to do with something we've said and regretted.

If you left out some details or embellished a few, consider reconciling the complete experience with meanings common to other people's dream. Try DreamMoods.com or Google "Dream Dictionary" for similar resources to see how close your experiences are being translated to images in a dream state that are similar to others.

Sleep better, kiddo.
24
I have some new noisy and noisome neighbors who moved in downstairs (Swisher Sweet smoking and Downy Dryer sheets).

I bought an industrial strength $165 drum fan from Lowe's. This is the kind the guys who polyurethane your hardwood floors use. And it's loud, but in a really pleasant white noise way.

But when it got cooler I missed the sound and so turned it on in the center of the room. This set up a small cyclone of loose papers, but when they settled, also created a pulsating low resonance. Conducive to mediation, I left it on for quite a while, lay on the couch, and astral planed across memory.
25
shut your cakehole about Paul Constant, @13. Paul is happily married to the luckiest woman in the world, and if he hadn't married her, i would have BEGGED him to marry me.
26
@24, sometimes reading your posts feels like having a phone conversation with my mom. She rants on about noisy neighbors, expensive appliances, living in the suburbs, that socialist Obama and the scary brown teenage thugs at the supermarket.
Wait...MOM?!
27
HULK LIKE FLOAT WITH FRIEND MOLLY! OTHERWISE, IS RATHER TEPID EXPERIENCE...
28
The tank I floated in was larger and round, so I floated into the sides every so often. I got salt in my eyes and the membranes of my nose which burned, and I ended up with a bacterial ear infection from it a few days later.
I was so excited to try it and it ended up being quite a disappointment.
29
I've spent a lot of time, money, and emotional energy on therapy to help me essentially govern my response to memories. I have zero desire to let my memories have their way with me.
30
i presume you have never practiced vipassana meditation.
31
@26

For some stupid reason, when I refer to him with the initials SRTU, I hate myself, I hate the look of it, I hate when others type SRTU. So I ask you, may I have your permission to call him McBomber's Mom?
32
"Didn't work? Sometimes it takes a while to kick in. Buy more!"

Classic snake-oil salesman. Or that kid in high school who sold you fake acid.
33
You weren't paranoid.

The snakes are real.
34
@31, I'll allow it until my mom starts reading SLOG.
35
Warning to Paul Constant: if Cienna gives you a wooden alligator, beware! It is filled with poisonous snakes she is trying to kill you with!
36
You're too kind, Gracias. Hopefully it won't be needed much.

37
@21 ("Now I'm going to have a spate of recurring giant clam nightmares"):

Imagine what it's like for the gay guys.
38
#26

Here's that information you requested:

Wind Power Makes Fuel For German Gas Grid

What we have in Falkenhagen, really, is a way to store wind power. Instead of turning off the turbines at a nearby wind farm when demand is low (as it can be at night, when the wind tends to blow strongest), or using the power to move water up a hill (effective but site-specific and expensive pumped hydro) or charge a battery (expensive), or try to find a buyer for the power far away (requiring costly transmission), the power is used to turn water into hydrogen by electrolysis. The hydrogen is then shot straight into the area’s natural gas system. displacing a fossil fuel.


http://www.earthtechling.com/2013/09/win…
39
You are so much braver than me. Pretty sure I'd hallucinate about Riddick and get really narcissistically focused on my own morally questionable decisions.
40

#31, 34

Maybe you need to try and play more with the kids outside instead of staying home and watching so much tv.

42
I guess Matt Stangel's a little more psychiatrically stable than you, Cienna. Probably not a huge surprise.
43
Any chance those other free floats will become a contest prize on SLOG? I'd love to try it out, but $90 is a little too pricey for my budget...
44
Best post ever.
45
@40

Maybe. Another stellar suggestion from you.
46
true story: some experimental psychologists back in the 50s or 60s doing sens dep experiments with college students (can't remember which university) carried holstered handguns due to fear the subjects could become extremely psychotic and violent. Unfortunately, this caused some subjects to become very paranoid and not enjoy the sens dep experience.
47
I've been using float tanks off and on for years now, and the new Fremont business has the nicest operation I've seen, including the table intro video. They even offer mood lighting and music, which I used for the brackets of the first ten and last five minutes to get me in and out of the right mental state.

Honestly, you do need to try it more than once to understand why people do it. The initial disorientation is just a natural response by the brain, and it always happens to some extent because the brain is used to filling in sensory gaps with your imagination. The practice that makes it work is mindfulness meditation, being able to observe your own thoughts without being entrained in them. Just watch them pass by.

I don't want to make a "true Scotsman" argument, but I think there's a real gap in marketing for these businesses now that they're trying to appeal to the average professional with money to spend on relaxation.
48
*tablet.

Anyway, the actual mental state that this thing is supposed to launch your brain straight into is theta wave state, which is basically that of expert level Zen meditation or the window between sleep and alertness.
49
Please forward me all the rest of your coupons. Thank you!
50
This made me so claustrophobic my skin was crawling.

However, your farting snakes made everything better. Bravo!
51
Self obsessed hipsters and people who can't find thought beyond arbitrary media references shouldn't be using these tanks. Or lsd. Ever. Stick to happy hour, it suits you better <3
52
@30 hit the nail on the head.
53
@51 gold star. ;)
54
Now I have an irrational fear of sensory-deprivation tanks.
55
$90?????????????????
56
I did it too. Feels like laying in a vat of lukewarm saliva.
57
I wish I had friends like you :) you're pretty awesome
58
You need to have an education, an open mind and some sense of humility to fully understand the concept of floating. Seems you lack all three. Sad individual.
59
I was in one of these tanks in 1981 and halucinated that the devil was in the tank with ne. That was the ony time the devil or anything resembling evil had ever entered my mind in dreams or otherwise. I never did it again and do not recommend it. It is not for everyone.
60
Kinda gross thinking about you farting. YUCK.

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