At this point it should not surprise you to discover that mental states like depression and anxiety are associated with very specific biochemical secretions, or that going into a float tank has a dramatic effect on the biochemicals associated with depression and anxiety. This makes sense, since the place where external events—such as a divorce or an airplane flight—are translated into physiological/internal events is in the visceral brain, particularly through the actions of the hypothalamus and pituitary; and it is in exactly that part of the brain that the experience and sensation of floating in an isolation tank has its most direct influence.
Depression
We have discussed at some length the stress reaction known as the fight-or-flight response. Far back in evolutionary history, animals developed the ability to deal with a threat to their security by activating the sympathetic system, thus preparing themselves to fight or to flee. The sympathetic system is activated through a rapid secretion of catecholamines (i.e., epinephrine, norepinephrine, and dopamine). However, scientists have recently come to believe that during recent evolution a new reaction has been added to the catecholamine fight-or-flight response—a “third way,” which involves the release of ACTH and cortisol, and has been necessitated by the complex social environment in which higher animals must live, where neither fighting nor active flight is a practical option. This alternative to fight or flight is described by Dr. James Henry of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Southern California School of Medicine:
In the ethological context, the ACTH-corticosterone mechanism is involved when the decision is made not to respond to challenge with fight or flight but to pursue this third alternative. In a social situation in which there is a hierarchy with a single dominant or an establishment group in control, this third option is of utmost importance. It involves submitting to the demands of the dominant animal or to the establishment and involves inhibiting previous patterns of behavior. When there is conflict instead of aggression or flight … the individual may gain much by submission and by experiencing depression associated with the loss of control. The depressed animal with high ACTH no longer competes but accepts the unpleasantness of frustration.98
Humans are clearly the supreme example of animals living in a highly evolved and complex social situation, often with both a single dominant animal (such as the boss) and an establishment group in control. Humans are also frequently unable to give in to aggression or flight, and must accept internal conflict and the unpleasantness of frustration; for example, the fight-or-flight response is of no use when the boss tells you your job is on the line. Humans may gain much by this submission, but they also experience frequent bouts of the depression, and the elevated levels of such biochemicals as ACTH and cortisol, that go along with it.
Many recent studies have shown, in Dr. Henry’s words, that “helplessness is a crucial determinant of depression. Individuals who are most vulnerable to depression and who show the greatest response are those who find that their efforts to cope are consistently failing.” Helplessness has been demonstrated in a number of laboratory studies to lead to a great rise in plasma cortisol. On the other hand, tests have also determined that while submission and helplessness are associated with elevated ACTH and cortisol, dominance and confidence are associated with lower baseline cortisol values.
Numerous studies have established conclusively that depression is associated with higher levels of cortisol and ACTH. There is also overwhelming evidence that humans who exhibit Type A behavior (aggressive, competitive, struggling against time) are more susceptible to depression under stress, and also reveal abnormally high levels of cortisol and ACTH. Also, as Dr. Henry points out, in a recent study by Earl Ursin of humans subjected to stressful situations: “Cortisol correlated negatively with performance and positively with fear and was related to the Freudian defense pattern. Ursin perceived a relationship between cortical hormone and specific psychopathological processes, i.e., depression and defective immune response mechanisms.” 98
These consistent linkings of depression with elevated pituitary-adrenal activity (i.e., plasma cortisol and ACTH) are striking and important. Float tank researchers John Turner and Thomas Fine have measured the effects of floating on these chemicals: Testing two groups over eight sessions, Fine and Turner found significant decreases in plasma cortisol and plasma ACTH among the floaters. “We also saw,” says Turner, “that the REST group maintained this reduction in cortisol over a five-day period after the floating. That is, five days after their last float, their plasma cortisol levels were still significantly below their baseline and significantly below the control levels.” Among their conclusions: Floating is “associated with specific decreases in pituitary-adrenal activity.”252
So, completing the links: Depression is associated with helplessness and submission, and all three are linked to elevated levels of pituitary-adrenal activity. Floating causes dramatic and long-term decreases in pituitary-adrenal activity. The equation is clear: By sharply reducing the biochemicals associated with depression, floating should reduce or alleviate depression. I say “should” because no one has yet done a controlled study of the specific effect of floating on depression, but it seems apparent that at least in the types of depression linked with helplessness and elevated ACTH and cortisol, the effect of floating must be decidedly beneficial. A number of controlled studies in which subjects were evaluated as to mood and emotion demonstrated that floaters experienced a definite elevation in mood and an increased feeling of well-being. (The type of depression we are dealing with here is the common sort caused by life stresses and events. This does not include the most severe types of depression caused by genetic or other long-term biochemical imbalances. Indications are that these severe biochemical depressions are not helped by floating.)
But while there have as yet been no rigorous scientific studies of floating and depression, there is much anecdotal evidence that floating is an effective way to eliminate or alleviate depression. If depression is consistently linked with helplessness and submission, floating has been consistently linked with feelings of control, coping, and dominance. (As noted above, dominance is linked to lower levels of cortisol, and floating decreases cortisol.)
Other behavioral symptoms linked to depression include insomnia, dread, loss of appetite, loss of interest in sex, difficulty in concentrating, fatigue, suicidal thoughts, feelings of hopelessness. In my interviews with floaters, and in the experience of float center operators and medical professionals who use float tanks, the normal response to floating is the opposite of these depression symptoms: increased interest and pleasure in sex, better sleep, increased sensory enjoyment, clearer and more effective thinking, increased vigor and gusto, feelings of optimism. This evidence is compelling but not scientifically conclusive, since it does not come from controlled studies of depression sufferers. However, in studies using a sensory deprivation chamber, Canadian researchers H. Azima and F.J. Cramer placed psychiatric patients in the chamber for periods of from two to six days (the length depending on the patients’ own wishes and responses) and found the symptoms of depression sufferers dramatically improved.7 As described by Princeton psychologist Patricia Carrington: “This improvement lasted after they came out of the isolation chamber and did not disappear. These patients now showed greater motivation, more socialization with other patients, and great self-assertiveness. Some of them responded so well to sensory isolation, in fact, that they improved to the point of being discharged from the hospital. This was particularly interesting in light of the fact that some of those who could be discharged in this manner had been long-standing chronic ‘incurable’ hospitalized patients.”45
Anxiety
Tight chest, sweaty palms, pounding heart, dread, feelings of loss of control or impending panic, butterflies in the stomach, irritability, restlessness, trembling hands, fear, a sense of foreboding—we have all experienced one or more of these symptoms of anxiety. In many cases anxiety is an appropriate response to a specific threat. But when it spirals out of control into panic, or is not associated with a specific cause or object and becomes a chronic “free-floating” anxiety, or is irrationally triggered by some specific object or situation and becomes a phobia, anxiety is a life-disrupting, debilitating illness. It is an illness that seems to have reached epidemic proportions in our culture.
Like depression, anxiety is an illness with specific physical and hormonal effects, including muscular tension, elevated blood pressure, heart rate, and pulse; and extremely high levels of norepinephrine, epinephrine, and cortisol. Numerous controlled studies of the physiological effects of floating have proved conclusively that it reduces muscular tension, blood pressure, heart rate, and pulse (e.g., O’Leary and Heilbronner;176 Stanley, Francis, and Berres;228 Belden and Jacobs19), and studies by Fine and Turner have shown significant decreases in the anxiety-related biochemicals. Another significant contributor to anxiety is lactic acid; laboratory and clinical tests show that an infusion (slow injection) of this chemical into the bloodstream will cause intense anxiety and panic attacks in 75 percent of those with a history of anxiety problems. Floating’s ability to lower lactic acid must have powerful anxiety-relief or anxiety-prevention effects. Studies in which subjects were evaluated for anxiety (e.g., O’Leary and Heilbronner) have shown that floating decreases subjective feelings of anxiety.
Even more impressive are the figures gathered by Dr. Allen Belden and Gregg Jacobs of St. Elizabeth Hospital, Appleton, Wisconsin. The hospital has used a float tank as part of its outpatient stress management program for several years, and psychiatrist Belden says they have found that most of the patients they have treated for various complaints have been suffering from anxiety. It is, he says, the “common key,” superimposed on most other problems. In a one-year statistical study, Belden and Jacobs found that the float tank was impressive in reducing anxiety: In all subjects, floating reduced intensity of anxiety by 74 percent, frequency of anxiety by 65 percent, psychophysiological symptoms of anxiety by 65 percent.19
Dr. Melvin Thrash, director of Ambulatory Service at New York’s Bellevue Hospital, and associate professor of psychiatry at New York University/Bellevue Medical Center, believes that perhaps the greatest value of the float tank is its anxiety-reducing effect: “The hallmark of every psychiatric disorder is anxiety … and that’s my major interest here, the person who comes in who lives every day in terror, and the terror has no specific reasons—this vague, free-floating anxiety. If I can help that person spend an hour a day away from that terror, then I’ve made an inroad that will enable me to help that person divorce himself from that, and in time not be crippled by this kind of anxiety.”
Thrash told me that he believes the tank “absolutely” reduces anxiety, and does so in part by increasing the floater’s “sense of well-being.” “Most people who are psychiatrically diagnosable are people who’ve never felt good about themselves; and this cycle feeds on itself. And if you can interrupt that cycle just for a couple of hours with something that allows them for once to experience what it’s like to feel good, then you have something to build on.’’
The immense importance of the tank as a natural anti-anxiety tool can be appreciated in considering the widespread use of anti-anxiety drugs in our society. Valium and other similar drugs account for a sizable number of emergency-room incidents, along with a growing problem in addiction. The reason Valium, Librium, and related drugs known generically as benzodiazepine are so effective in relieving anxiety is that the brain has certain receptor sites into which benzodiazepine fits exactly, just as heroin fits into opiate receptors. These binding sites, discovered in 1977 and quickly dubbed “Valium receptors” by neuroscientists, indicate that the body must create its own natural anti-anxiety substances (still undiscovered), just as it creates endorphins to fit into the opiate receptors. And just as opiate receptors accept external substitutes such as heroin and morphine, but at the cost of decreasing the body’s own opiates and number of opiate receptors, which can lead to addiction, so scientists now have demonstrated that excessive use of external benzodiazepine causes a diminishing of the body’s own ability to counteract anxiety. Thus the addictive nature of Valium—a user’s natural ability to produce an anti-anxiety neurochemical (or the number of receptor sites for such a neurochemical) atrophies, and when the user stops taking the drug, he or she will experience extremely high levels of anxiety for weeks or months, until the body can restore its innate capabilities.
Also frightening is what happens to babies born to women who are taking Valium. Neuroscientist Candace Pert has pointed out: “If you give a pregnant rat one shot of Valium, for example, its babies will have half as many Valium receptors [as normal] when they grow up. This raises frightening questions about current obstetrical practices.”102 It’s possible that pregnant women who take Valium are condemning their babies to a lifetime of high levels of anxiety.
Even more frightening are the studies by Dr. David Horrobin (corroborated by Dr. Rashid Karmali of New York’s Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) that rats treated with small quantities of Valium (at low dosage comparable to a human dosage of only five milligrams per day) developed three times as many cancerous breast tumors as did rats who did not receive Valium.254 Statistics indicate that more than two thirds of the users of Valium are women, and the incidence of breast cancer has risen sharply in recent years. While such figures are only suggestive, there can be no doubt that anti-anxiety drugs are dangerous. We live in an anxiety-producing world, and it’s imperative that we find safe ways of relieving anxiety. The existence of Valium receptors in the brain indicates that we produce our own natural anti-anxiety substance. Every test used to measure the anxiety levels of subjects before and after floating has demonstrated that floating dramatically reduces anxiety. Though it has not yet been proved, it seems probable that, just as floating apparently increases the secretion of endorphins, so it increases the secretion of the still-undiscovered natural anti-anxiety substance. And it is probable that just as we can learn to pump up our endorphin levels through conscious self-regulation in the float tank, we can learn to increase our levels of natural Valium. The float tank begins to look more and more like an essential health maintenance tool.
Phobias
Fear reactions triggered by specific objects or circumstances—dogs, snakes, high places, germs—are known as phobias. Phobias can lead to anxiety or panic, or cause the sufferer to change or limit his life to avoid the phobic trigger. Anti-depressant drugs do not help phobias. Phobic reactions seem to result from conditioning (for instance, a child attacked by a large dog may develop an irrational fear of all dogs), and using various deconditioning techniques, behavior therapists have been extremely successful in helping people overcome phobias. Probably the most effective technique, known as systematic desensitization, involves creating a graded hierarchy of fear-producing stimuli. Someone with a fear of snakes, for example, might list ten situations, from a not very scary number ten, such as seeing a photo of a snake, through progressively scarier ones (being in the same room with a caged snake, seeing someone else in the same room hold a snake), to the most terrifying one (holding a live snake). The subject would then begin by confronting situation number ten until it no longer held any terrors, then move on to nine, and so on, becoming progressively desensitized.
This is often combined with reciprocal inhibition, in which the trigger situation is paired with a counteractive calming stimulus or technique, such as muscular relaxation, visualization of a peaceful scene, or deep breathing. It has been found that if anxiety-provoking stimuli are produced in the presence of deep relaxation, they seem to lose their charge. So, while moving up the hierarchy, the subject confronts each situation, and simultaneously practices the relaxation technique, until phobic reactions disappear, with the ultimate goal of confronting the most terrifying phobic situation and remaining calm.
Clearly the float tank can be an effective tool in combining these techniques for overcoming phobias. By inducing utter relaxation, it enables the floater more quickly and easily to overcome the tension and other correlates of fear; by increasing the power of visualization, it helps the floater imagine the phobic situation more clearly and realistically, and also to imagine himself or herself overcoming the phobia and acting fearlessly in that situation; by eliminating all distractions and other external stimuli, it enables the floater to focus specifically and exclusively on confronting and overcoming the phobic situation.
“What I would really like to do is work in the tanks with people who have problems with phobic responses—using systematic desensitization,” says psychiatrist Thrash. Peter Suedfeld has successfully treated snake phobia in this manner using a sensory deprivation chamber, and has begun work using the float tank for desensitization therapy.
The Tank as Psychotherapeutic Tool
In his survey of the effects of sensory deprivation, “The Benefits of Boredom,” Peter Suedfeld noted that “psychiatric patients tended to relate better to their psychoanalyst after” being in sensory isolation; that “other researchers have reported improvements in various personality test responses, body image, symptomatology, reality contact, and social interaction”; and concluded that sensory isolation influences “in one way or another, processes as various as the electrical activity of the brain, biochemical secretions, galvanic skin response, basic sensory and perceptual processes, cognition, motivation, development, group interaction, the relationship between environment and personality characteristics, learning, conformity, attitude change, introspection, and creativity. This is probably as wide a range of effects as has been investigated in any substantive area by any technique known to psychologists.”234
We have noted the persuasive evidence that float tanks can be enormously effective in alleviating depression, anxiety, and phobias. In the light of such evidence it is hard to understand why psychiatric hospitals have not yet begun to use the float tank as a form of treatment, while they continue to rely on electroconvulsive (or shock) therapy and powerful drugs which have well-known harmful side effects. There are indications, however, that this is changing. As more and more doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and other health professionals become aware of the beneficial effects of floating, often through their own experiences in the tank, there is increasing pressure on hospitals to accept the efficacy of floating, and several doctors have told me that they expect that float tanks will soon become common in mental health facilities.
There are already many mental health professionals in the United States and Canada who rely on the float tank as a therapeutic tool, either by integrating it directly into the therapeutic process or, like Dr. Thrash, by recommending it to patients as an adjunct to therapy. Many traditional forms of psychotherapy have long used less effective methods of sensory deprivation. In psychoanalysis, for example, the patient reclines on a couch (to facilitate relaxation), with the analyst sitting out of sight, saying little, so that the analysand can turn attention inward and allow mental contents to surface in a process of free association. The characteristics of the float experience—deep relaxation, self-exploration through mental imagery and free association, absence of anxiety, release from tension, growth in feelings of wholeness and well-being—are exactly the characteristics most conducive to advancing the therapeutic process.
People engaged in therapy will be helped by taking a float either before or after a therapy session. “Either way,” says Dr. Thrash, “would have a payoff. Hopefully, in the session you are effective enough so that you stir things up, so that going into the tank afterward would allow him to sort out a lot of questions; going in before hopefully would bring up a lot from the unconscious that you could work on in the session.” Thrash also points out that the relaxation brought on by the tank would help people open up, stop “blocking,” and become more aware of physical tensions related to mental problems. “The thing I like about the tank,” says Thrash, “is that you do it yourself.”