Every night, like a moth to a glowing, judgmental flame, I crawl into bed and open my phone.

“I’ll just scroll for a few minutes,” I tell myself, a woman who has never in her life scrolled for “a few minutes.”

Forty-seven TikToks later, I am somehow watching a raccoon make cotton candy disappear in water and questioning not only my life choices, but the fragility of existence itself. My brain? Lit up like Times Square. My sleep? Filing a formal complaint.

And yet, this is my routine. My nightly descent into blue-light purgatory. Occasionally preceded by a bath, because I am nothing if not a woman of contradictions. I’m half self-care queen, half dopamine-chasing gremlin.

But now, there’s a new contender in the bedtime ritual Olympics: dark showering.

Yes. People are voluntarily standing under running water in the dark.

No candles. No music. No curated “spa vibes.” Just you, your thoughts, and what I can only assume is a mild but persistent fear of slipping and suing yourself.

And yet, people swear by it.

They say it’s calming. Grounding. Sleep-inducing. A sensory reset.

Naturally, I am both intrigued and suspicious.

Because psychologically speaking, this actually makes a lot of sense. Which is annoying, because I was hoping to dismiss it.

Let’s break it down.

First, we have the removal of stimulation. No screens, no light, no visual input. In a world where our brains are constantly being pelted with information, dark showering is basically telling your nervous system, “You can stand down now. The raccoons are off duty.”

Second, we have the water. Warm water, specifically, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is our body’s built-in “calm down, you’re not being chased by a lion” mode. It lowers heart rate, relaxes muscles, and signals safety.

Add darkness to that, and suddenly you’ve created a low-sensory, almost womb-like environment. Which, depending on your attachment style and unresolved childhood issues, is either deeply soothing or mildly existential.

And then there’s the psychological wildcard. stillness.

Because when you’re standing in the dark with nothing to do but exist, your mind does that thing it’s been trying to do all day, process.

And this is where I pause.

Because for some of us, the reason we scroll isn’t because we love raccoons (though, to be fair, we do). It’s because silence is loud. Stillness is revealing. The moment we stop distracting ourselves, the thoughts we’ve been outrunning start catching up.

Dark showering, then, isn’t just a sleep hack. It’s exposure therapy.

To your own brain.

And yet, maybe that’s the point.

Maybe what we’re all craving isn’t just sleep. Rather, it’s a break from the relentless input. The noise. The performance. The constant engagement with everything and everyone except ourselves.

Maybe standing in the dark under running water is less about hygiene and more about honesty.

About giving your nervous system five uninterrupted minutes to say, “Hey…what was that day actually like for you?”

Will I try it?

Probably. But let’s be realistic. I will absolutely bring my phone into the bathroom “just in case,” and then heroically resist using it like I deserve a medal.

Will it replace my nightly scroll spiral?

Unclear. Growth is not linear. Neither is my screen time.

But I will say this. There’s something oddly comforting about the idea of doing less. Of dimming the lights both literally and metaphorically and letting the day settle without commentary, without distraction, without a raccoon dissolving sugar into oblivion.

So tonight, maybe I’ll try it.

Lights off. Water on. Thoughts pending.

And if nothing else, at least I won’t accidentally learn 17 new things that keep me awake until 1:30 a.m.

Progress.