It’s a common scenario for the business located on Ogden Avenue.
Just last week, a mother-daughter pair walked into the building. The mother had recently broken up with her husband after learning he had cheated on her.
The daughter, recognizing that her mother needed a reprieve from the heartbreak, didn’t choose a spa or a favorite restaurant. Instead, they headed to a “rage” room, where mom could vent some of her emotions by taking a sledgehammer to a few bottles and TVs.
About half an hour later, the mother told the staff she felt much better.
“She was saying, ‘I’ll be back here soon,’” said Abby Varma, manager at Axe Zone Lounge and Rage Room in Naperville. “(I’d) recommend it to everyone who’s going through something or just wants to get the rage out. It’s like a therapy session, right?”
Axe Zone Lounge in Naperville started off with axe throwing but expanded to include three rage rooms as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“(We) always wanted to do something new … and came up with the rage room idea,” Varma said.
For 30 minutes, a patron can use a sledgehammer or crow bar to smash TVs, keyboards, printers, beer bottles, plates and old phones. Each room accommodates two to four people, with each person paying $70.
“Thirty minutes is a lot, I’m telling you, because you’ll be breaking for 30 minutes. You’ll be getting tired and it’s like a workout session too,” Varma said. “You’ll be burning a lot of calories. … People come out full sweating ’cause they’ll be breaking (stuff) — boom, bam.”
TVs tend to be a favorite attack item because they’re larger and take a longer time to destroy, he said. But bottles can be satisfying because they can be picked up and smashed on their ground, he said.
Most of the items they provide as targets come from recycling plants, but they accept donated electronics too, Varma said.
“I think weekly at least we get, like, four to five (donations) for sure, but it varies month to month,” he said.
Most of their customers are there for a birthday or similar celebration or because they want a group activity, like bowling or golf, he said. Others are just curious and want to try it, he said. Once or twice a month, a content creator will ask to film inside a room for a social media video.
However, there are those who come with the express purpose of letting out their anger or frustration, he said. Sometimes, it’s directed toward a job or an ex-partner.
It’s an activity that brings out all sorts of emotions in people, Varma said.
One time, two girls who were friends came to the rage room together. When he heard screaming, he checked on them and learned they were trying to work out their emotions because the boyfriend of one of them had cheated on her with the other, he said.
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Another time, he heard crying coming from the room as the group was breaking things, he said. It turned out they had recently lost a close family member.
“The rage rooms are definitely important because therapy is expensive,” Varma said. “If you are angry at someone, you can’t just go and take it out on people, right? You definitely need a rage room to break something, which you can’t do outside or anywhere else.”
Even axe throwing can serve as an emotional outlet. Sometimes a customer will put a photo on one of the targets they’re throwning at, he said.
Despite their popularity, mental health professionals argue that while rage rooms might offer momentary relief and a cathartic experience, they are not an effective long-term strategy for addressing anger and larger mental health issues.
“There’s really no scientific evidence to support that rage rooms can actually help anger or reduce frustration,” said Liz Chamberlain, a licensed psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz.
Rage rooms may be fun for a group activity with friends or as a way to temporarily let out some emotion, but it is important to have other coping mechanisms, Chamberlain said. Otherwise, they could reinforce aggressive behavior and lead to breaking items as a default response to anger, she said.
But she also understands why people feel the need to vent their anger, especially when pandemics or politics or global catastrophes can leave them feeling helpless and with no good way to externalize their feelings, Chamberlain said.
“I think it’s helpful if people need a release in some way,” she said. “But then the next step is not a part (of what) rage rooms offer, which is after I get some of this difficult energy out, then what do I do? How can I begin to think about what led to this, how I feel? How can I express it in a more constructive way?”