Like a nightmare, my first episode of claustrophobia arrived in my sleep. On a camping trip in western North Carolina, I awoke with a start in the middle of the night. Unable to breathe, I attempted to burrow out of the tent in an irrational effort to access fresh air. It would be years before I thought about the incident again.
My phobia, however, revealed itself repeatedly during an eight-year span when my wife and I were living abroad and traveling extensively. Travel had become almost an obsession as we attempted to see the world while still young enough to enjoy it. In an odd twist of fate, our wanderlust was a source of, and a cure for, my claustrophobia. After several panic attacks in exotic locales, I decided to beat my fear by exposing it to claustrophobic sites around the world. In the end, I triumphed but not before several anxious events that, although inconsequential today, seemed like international incidents at the time.
While living in Berlin, hints of my fear of enclosed spaces crept into my subconscious. Like the Grand Central Station of my youth, the Kurfurstendamm U-Bahn station is always a jumble of teeming humanity and ambiguous aromas. While people-watching was a preferred pastime there, I now realize I often rushed through the city’s main subway station, dashing to change trains to avoid the crowds and the damp stench – a mix of urine, beer, and cigarette smoke — of Germany’s oldest subterranean people mover.
Two years later, Mindy and I settled into an apartment in a leafy suburb of Istanbul. In the three years we lived there, I assumed the role of tour guide for visiting friends and family. My city tour never varied – a water taxi on the Bosporus, visits to the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace, and the Grand Bazaar, lunch at a favorite kebab joint, then a jaunt through the city’s block-long, 1,500-year-old underground cistern. In retrospect, at least one of those visits foreshadowed my second serious panic attack (suddenly alarmed by the ancient structure’s pocked support beams, I remember covertly hurrying my 70-something mother and her sister along to the exit).
The town of Kutahya is in the hill country a few hours south of Istanbul. A group of us had made the excursion and paid $20 to watch miners extract Meerschaum, the soft white stone that’s crafted into smoking pipes, figurines and doo dads for Turkish tourists. A small generator operated a makeshift pulley that would clearly not pass OSHA standards of safety. One by one, we descended 100 feet into the cool, wet earth. Last in line, I touched down with a sensation only the blind can appreciate. There was no miner to guide me, no lantern to illuminate my folly. Anxiety enveloped me like a glove as I took a few tentative steps. A source of light, faint and fleeting, directed me to the others about 50 feet away. Unable to stand upright in the cramped space, I ran toward the light like a soldier under a helicopter’s blades.
Three miners and eight of my friends gathered around a soot-faced man plunging a jackhammer into stone the color of snow. One friend translated as the miners explained their daunting, deafening vocation. A cold sweat took hold as I concentrated on small, deliberate inhales and exhales, and tried to overcome the absurdity of phobia. Just then a miner lit a cigarette, and as the smoke filled the enclosure, I ran through the tunnel like a blind Quasimoto, seeking the crude elevator that would return me to fresh air. My mining career lasted perhaps five minutes, but it seemed long enough to collect a pension.
Subsequent claustrophobic episodes added to our travel story cache, but I never thought the problem serious enough to seek professional help. I resolved instead to embrace my fears. Like people afraid to speak in public, I did the equivalent of joining Toastmasters. I attacked my phobia by feeding it challenges and looked forward to the next cramped confrontation, which came in Egypt. 
Single file, Mindy and I joined other tourists and descended a ladder 50 feet into the belly of the largest of the Great Pyramids of Giza. A catacomb of empty rooms leaves a lot to the imagination, and my mind pondered this colossal burial place that once held untold riches of an all-powerful king. I remained in good spirits until a group of school children – about 30 of them – slowly made their way down the ladder. My escape route blocked, my personal terror alert level rose to red. Mindy spoke to me, calmly and rationally trying to take my mind off the phobia that was, if not overtaking my life, certainly my travel experiences. “You’re fine,” she said. “Look around. Imagine what was here.” As I tried in vain to picture the tomb’s mummified occupant, I spied an opening in the school kids and made for the ladder. Launching myself like a salmon over several nine-year-olds, I was back under the Egyptian sun faster than a Cairene can say “Backsheesh?”
There were other humiliations — a cave in Malaysia, a snake exhibit in Thailand, even a snorkeling expedition that came perilously close to spelunking. But there were signs of improvement also. In the Cappadocia region of Turkey, I hiked up craggy cliffs to view ancient churches inside mountains of stone where Christians hid from marauding infidels of the medieval period. On that same trip, I survived three minutes in an underground city tour that lasted five. That was progress.
The ultimate turning point came in Vietnam just outside of Ho Chi Minh City. The Cu Chi tunnels were constructed as subterranean cities for the Viet Cong, complete with kitchens, strategic planning rooms, schools, and hospitals. Thousands survived underground while US bombs exploded overhead. The tunnels were so small that today they’ve been enlarged to accommodate the more corpulent Western body. Having taken the tour without incident, I was emboldened enough to experience a stretch of the tunnels in which visitors must crawl on their bellies for some 60 feet. When our tour guide explained this, Mindy looked at me warily. But even when a bat flew into her head midway through our crawl, my fears did not take over.
That was 10 years ago and I haven’t had a negative episode since. I even survived an episode in a broken elevator, where I had to contact someone through the intercom and wait 45 minutes while a repairman made his way across town. I attribute my mental healing to world travel. Given the opportunity to see so much the world has to offer, I persevered in the face of panic and anxiety. It’s about time to revisit that busy train station, the suffocating mine, those ominous underground cities and crowded pyramid. It’s time to get more out of them than emotional paralysis.
