In the eighties, I used to work at a small business that had one of those. My boss charged the public $20.00 for an hour and a half to use it but he let me use it for free a couple of times. I had been diagnosed just few years before.
Just about that time a movie had been released called “Altered States” in which the story had revolved around a guy who used a tank and it drove him crazy or something or he regressed into some weird person or something. But the movie did well at the box office and it popularized isolation tanks.
So while I worked there, when customers came to rent the tank about 50% of them had seen"Altered States " and they were a little afraid to use or they would go insane. I was a little afraid too but I got in it and to tell you the truth, the whole experience was a disappointing dud. None of the benefits I had heard about before worked for me. I liked the warm salt water and the sensation of floating without sinking but it did nothing else for me. I didn’t clear my mind, it didn’t solve any of my problems, being isolated did not give me any great insights into myself. It was a dull, boring dud.
But just for the record, my job was near San Francisco and some of the players for our San Francisco Giants baseball team actually came in to use the tank.
I didn’t mention this, but the isolation tank had a small opening above your head with a video screen installed in it. So the baseball players would bring videos of themselves at bat in a game and they would float there and study their swing and try to improve on it or study what they were doing wrong and it would hopefully improve their game.