Cigarettes in the dark

Listen, this is seriously mind-blowing! It’s just an unbelievable experience that totally gets you. Maybe you’ve been thinking about it for a while, you’ve read a bit about it and you’ve heard you shouldn’t expect anything because it’ll come by itself. So you didn’t expect anything, but the closer the date got, the more you felt that strange kind of fear. You didn’t actually even know what exactly you were afraid of or what you were getting into. But as they say, the darkness calls you by itself. Bit by bit you start to realise it, and that’s when the whole thing begins.

When the darkness stirs up an inner storm and a freak-out

During the retreat it can happen that you suddenly have a proper freak-out. It’s incredibly strong, in your thoughts and in your whole perception, and at that moment you genuinely think you just can’t do it. But getting past exactly that fear then turns out to be the best thing that happens on your whole retreat. That’s the most beautiful part of it all, because it leaves you with an unreal feeling. Once you get through that, a huge calm comes over you, absolutely wonderful and impossible to describe.

Ten kinds of experience in one package

Honestly, it’s like ten kinds of experience in one. You go through everything – from euphoria to confusion, understanding, calm, all the way to psychosis. It’s seriously unbelievable. Me, for example, from the moment I shut myself in there I didn’t think about a cigarette once. I didn’t get round to thinking about it at all, I didn’t have time. I was constantly piecing thoughts together. At first there was an absolute mountain of them and I needed to sort them out. Then I was dealing with completely different things, getting over phobias and enjoying the calm. It never even crossed my mind, even though I normally smoke a few cigarettes a day.

Realising your priorities and changing your life

Darkness therapy shows you that everything important happens in your own head. Even if you decided you wouldn’t light up, you just wouldn’t, because it’s your decision. You find out loads of things about yourself in there. I’d bought piles of tobacco, for instance, and in the end I didn’t have a single one. Because it dawned on me that it’s tied up with work and my whole lifestyle. To change anything, I’d have to overhaul absolutely everything from the ground up. A dark retreat simply sorts out the stuff in your head that’s just rattling around in there and that you don’t need at all. You get your life priorities straight.

In the end the darkness hugs you and won’t let go

Don’t be scared at all, because as they say, in the end the darkness hugs you. Once you understand it and stop being afraid of it, it’s beautiful. You’re calm, you meditate and you start to become aware of space-time. It’s an unbelievable experience with a wide-reaching impact. This isn’t some marketing thing, it’s about you outdoing yourself. That’s the peak, it absolutely blows the roof off. Another interesting thing is that in the dark you’re not hungry at all. I ate just an apple, two bananas and two spoonfuls of pasta the whole time. I just drank water, lay there and meditated. The mental effort simply keeps you busy in a different way. I definitely want to try it again, maybe in a year, for five days.