One Thing: panic! in the hot wet box

sometimes you can hit rock bottom in a sauna

It was roughly five minutes into my sauna journey that I realised I was experiencing something close to the opposite of my fellow steamy brethren. As they sunk deeper into the heat they let out small sighs, letting their arms slump to the side, eyes closed, breathing deeply, while I desperately tried to catch my breath, feeling the scalding walls seemingly press inwards on me, feeling my tiny stupid heart begin to drum solo.

The sauna, for those of us who have never experienced one before, was apparently typical for the Nordic model (Nordic Model is a term I’ve only usually encountered when arguing for sex worker rights and when trying to find out what that unfriendly blonde with crazy cheekbones does for work), and was a small wooden box roughly the size of a shed, with two layers of hot wooden seats. I was seated on the top tier, packed in side-by-side with a bunch of sweating strangers, my boyfriend to one side, a collection of ageing millennials with faded tattoos imitating zen crabs in a pot.

I’d only ever been to one sauna before, which was on my last day on a writer’s residency in Switzerland, where we spent a few nights in a fancy hotel which had its own medicinal hot springs and sauna. I decided that a sauna might be a good vibe for my skin before flying back across the world, and swiftly discovered that it was one of those naked saunas. This one was quite large, with coals glowing in the centre of the room. I was alone, and sat enjoying the relatively gentle heat, finding myself enjoying the sensation of being publicly naked in a way that I didn’t expect considering the many dreams I’d had about having to do a maths test while nude - that was until six literal young supermodels of both genders walked in and casually sat around me. As I sat in the shimmering heat, surrounded by paragons of bodily perfection, gleaming trim perfect bodies dusted with a fetching sheen of perspiration, I realised in this moment that I was one of the damned creatures in Ursula the Sea Witch’s garden, and I was doomed to remain that way forever. I was a wretched sack of bones and misshapen organs cursed to literally rub shoulders with flawless underwear models, who weren’t even wearing underwear. I’d been feeling pretty good about myself until this moment - like when Adam and Eve eat that apple and learn to feel shame about their gross features.

But that was many years ago, and I was keen to give a sauna another go. Hypothetically, I’m very open to experiences - it’s usually just the doing of them that I object to. My boyfriend very sweetly suggested the sauna excursion as a potential tonic for a couple of bad weeks I’ve had recently, where mentally, physically and even spiritually I have gone **through it**. I’ve been so unwell lately that the idea of hot steam potentially driving out the ill humours seemed incredibly attractive. I’ve been so anxious and depressed that I was slightly worried that relaxing my clenched jaw would simply give the bad feelings inside me an avenue to escape in one long honk like a crate of geese released into the wild - but I thought it would be a good experiment to try.

Instead, after five minutes, I realised I was only getting more stressed. It wasn’t helped by a guy in speedos who, for inexplicable reasons, spent the entire time in the tiny box standing up and stretching, further cramping the tiny space and drawing the eye like a slow steaming ballet dancer in a microwave. It’s hard to explain, but I get very stressed about good crowd maintenance in public - I often have to close my eyes on trams just to stop getting over-invested in people standing in annoying places, or people sitting on the outer edge of a seat and gatekeeping the inner one. And don’t get me started on when old people enter and people don’t stand up for them. I found myself struggling to breathe normally, my vision swimming, my fists clenched with the effort of not fully panicking. I could feel myself getting faint, black spots swimming in front of my eyes, nausea blooming. The physical aspect of the illness I’ve had recently coming bak with full force.

But I’m also stubborn, so I told myself to wait and enjoy it. Another ten minutes passed, and finally I gave up, stumbling outside into the freezing night air, which caressed me like a cold absent mother - comforting and slightly cruel. I told my boyfriend that I was done, despite the fact there were another two ten minute sessions to enjoy, and that I felt insane and bad. I stumbled back into my car, and it was only when I pulled out onto the street that I realised I was far too dizzy to drive, unable to see beyond the black spots in my eyes, an epiphany punctuated by my attempt to turn around on the street leading to me violently backing up the curb, my car crunching and tossing me around. I drove down the street and pulled over, letting myself breathe for a few minutes, before I took off again, desperate to get home.

The next morning I was woken by a call from the police - turns out that when I’d mounted the curb it had thrown my car off and into the side of a parked car, which I hadn’t noticed amidst what I can only describe as a full body and mental breakdown, maybe even a cousin of a panic attack. I don’t think I currently need any more humbling in my life, but clearly the universe decided otherwise, because I’ve now had to explain to the cops, the poor guy whose car I rammed, and my insurance service, that I’d had a “traumatic sauna experience” which caused me to accidentally hit and run a parked car.

I’ve learned a hard lesson here - I need to rely on the relaxation techniques of my forebears (repression and gin) and leave tiny boxes full of steamed humans to people who aren’t mildly claustrophobic (oh yeah I forgot to mention that I’m pretty claustrophobic).

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Patrick Lenton is a writer and author and the editor of Nonsense Newsletter. His debut novel, In Spite of You, is currently up for pre-order, please pre-order it!