Spa Days and K Holes

COLUMN | ISSUE TEN | ISOLATION

Written by Isaac Tenzing | Drugs Columnist

Theoretically endless. The answer to both how long a piece of string is and how many videos you can find of Joe Rogan talking about isolation tanks on YouTube. The wellness influencer community seemingly has a new topic for their self-help manuals every other week. Podcasts recorded en masse aim to sell your soccer mum neighbour on the idea of cortisol management. Humorously enough, infatuations with these mindfulness techniques are not just isolated to affluent, suburban Audi Q5 drivers, but also extend to the almond-eyed, stoned, psychonaughtical substrate as well. You see, altered states are not just bound to that of exogenous chemicals, but can also include meditation, fasting, holotropic breathwork, yoga, and the aforementioned isolation tanks. 

As I exchange my birthday gift of one free float at a North Shore wellness centre, I submerge my naked body into the alien embryo and prepare myself for the small possibility of a sci-fi Ken Russell full-body ego dissolution. As I drift into the ganzfeld, I am immediately cued back into reality as I float repeatedly into the walls and listen to the staff intermittently talk shit outside, as the earplugs are not my size. Nonetheless, as I hover weightless in the magnesium sulfate, I let my mind wander (in an arguably not very meditative manner). I find it all very remarkable that the sensory tank experience can be this ubiquitous. Right next to yoga rooms and saunas, we have the claims of potential full physical, temporal, and mental dissociation. Stationary relaxation, sedation, bodily numbness, and reports of potential hallucinations. Perhaps this is more than just a wonky thought. Are wellness centres selling people K-holes? 

Ever since scientific literature got a hold of psychedelics, attempts at isolating the experience from the environment have been the goal. The 60s were an unprecedented time for drug research, and isolation tanks were crafted as a means to get as close to an unbiased report on effects as we could get. They’re still used for this very reason today. John C Lilly, inventor of isolation tanks, was a notorious psychonaut and spelunker of his own mind, including uses of ketamine (or as he labelled it, Vitamin K). Not only did John C Lilly use Vitamin K and isolation tanks, but he actively pursued this poly combination. “Lilly then began injecting himself and at one point was taking 50 mg of ketamine an hour, 20 hours a day, for three weeks” (Is Your Kid on K?”, TIME). This is in reference to his time with his own invention as he explored “internal” and “extraterrestrial reality”, as he liked to put it. Built within the very history of this Takapuna wellness centre is that of ketamine and dissociative use. The Vitamin K, sensory deprivation blend certainly didn’t start and end with Lilly. The individual, isolated mental experience has long been replicated, including the famous D M Turner, a psychedelic researcher who tragically passed away in his own homemade isolation chamber (made using his bathtub) after taking intramuscular ketamine injections. 

It is unsurprising that drugs curating these dissociative experiences are apexing in use in a post-Covid society. As mainstream as social lubricating drugs such as coke and pingas are, young people are seeking dissociative and independent states in an unprecedented way. In a world of atomisation, remote working, social separation and angry protests coming past your front door seemingly every other day, the prevalence of a drug that thrives on mental isolation is no longer some work of fiction from a Phillip K Dick novel. The numbness of touch, impairment of movement and talking (not to mention, at high enough doses, it makes you lose consciousness). Everybody feels anxious, derealised, and isolated. Ketamine is the 2020s in long shards. 

As bird chirping.wav cues the end of my floatation experience, I awkwardly paddle to the latch (and stupidly pick up my phone first and get salt all over it), and shower the magnesium chunks off me. I reflect on the past hour of almost pure, unadulterated isolation. No external stimuli, no bodily sensations, and a long distraction from the world. In other words, I raw dogged an entire hour. In many respects, getting up felt like coming down. Despite this, I felt a calm and omnipresent satisfaction with the world. A hint of euphoria washes over me as I regain the familiar feeling of my body. Perhaps I am too young to have lived through the selling of that delicious Y2K optimism. However, it appears I was born just in time to be sold pure, unsullied Silk Road isolation. 

References

Cloud, J. (2010, August 2). Is ketamine a quick fix for hard-to-treat depression? Time. TIME. https://time.com/archive/6934568/is-ketamine-a-quick-fix-for-hard-to-treat-depression/

Isolation tank. (2022a). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank

John C. Lilly. (2022b). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly

Rasmussen, M.D., K. G. (2024). Chapter 3. recreational use of ketamine: The world discovers the K-hole. Ketamine, 23–72. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9798894551944.lg03

VICE. (2013a, April 30). Sensory deprivation tanks: Part 1/3 (documentary). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCYglCDgpu0

VICE. (2013b, April 30). Sensory deprivation tanks: Part 2/3 (documentary). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fRTk9F9FGU

VICE. (2013c, April 30). Sensory deprivation tanks: Part 3/3 (documentary). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0AcjQzpDY8

VICE. (2022, July 16). Pissing blood: The ketamine time bomb | high society. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99XQY7Elwhc

VICE News. (2025, September 25). The hidden side of Psychedelic Research Ft. Hamilton Morris | Shane Smith has questions. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSx-bXNJPYk

Wikipedia Contributors. (2026, June 18). D. M. Turner. Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._M._Turner?utm_