Nitrogen narcosis

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k954triniz

Contributor
Messages
110
Reaction score
34
Location
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
# of dives
50 - 99
So yesterday while diving the Lady Luck off of Hillsboro Fl, I got to the depth of 112ft. A good portion of my dives in the past few months have been at depths of 100 to 120ft (about 20 dives)
But yesterday somewhere around 110ft I literally felt like I was having an out of body experience and lost awareness. I caught myself, gathered my thoughts and got my dive buddies attention, accented to about 80ft where the boat was tied off to. Before I went up to 80ft I do remember looking at my dive computer and my NDL time which I was still at 8 minutes. At 80ft I was fine. Fully aware of everything. we continued the dive and everything was okay. But that experience felt crazy. I did tell the dive master and deck hands what happened, they said nitrogen narcosis and that it effects people differently and that I was fine to do the second dive which was a 50ft reef which I was perfectly fine on. Like I said I have a good amount of deep dives logged and nothing like this has ever happened before. Has something like this every happened to anyone else on here?
 
Different factors can increase onset of narcosis earlier. Rapid descents, fatigue or working heavily before or during the dive, sea sickness medication, cold, anxiety, poor visibility can all increase the effect. Were you diving air or nitrox?
 
Any chance you were working against current and built up some CO2?
 
The surface conditions were bad but not horrible. I’ve dealt with worse. Almost no current at all and viz about 80ft. I am a aircraft mechanic but I got a full 8 hrs of sleep the night before. Dive was at 8am which I’m used to waking up at 6am for work. I did not everything the same as I do before. I was on nitrox 31..MOD 116ft and I got to 112ft.

Different factors can increase onset of narcosis earlier. Rapid descents, fatigue or working heavily before or during the dive, sea sickness medication, cold, anxiety, poor visibility can all increase the effect. Were you diving air or nitrox?

Any chance you were working against current and built up some CO2?
 
Narcosis affects people differently and unpredictably. A friend who is a technical instructor had an experience on a recreational dive in which he felt a sudden sense of doom/panic at about 100 feet. He immediately ascended to about 85 feet, and it went away in seconds. His friends looked up at him, wondering why he had ascended. He dropped back down and was perfectly fine. As a technical instructor, he had untold numbers of dives previously at those depths with no noticeable effect.

There will be no carryover from one dive to another, but it could, of course, happen again.
 
Funny enough while diving the Lady Luck in Croatia last month i reached a depth of 112 meters. Which is weird considering max depth is 92m for 500 meters in either direction, anyway my shearwater was drunk and is off for a pre service hangover. Anyone else had similar troubles with their Teric?
 
First and foremost, nice job on recognizing it and ascending to a shallower depth. Many people do not realize they are narced.

Everyone is affected differently so I have not experienced the out of body type feeling you did. What I have noticed about being narced is a slight build up of anxiety / nervousness, as in I keep checking everything to make sure all is good.

Recognizing it and taking the appropriate action are the keys to dealing with narcosis. The good news is narcosis isn’t residual so it will not build up on a repetitive shallower dive, such as the one you did.
 
Good to know. I know I probably got it before and didn’t realize it, was the first time I can say I’ve noticed something wasn’t right. Tbh it did scare me a bit. First thought was nitrogen narcosis and second was decompression sickness. I felt like my body was a few feet in front of me. Didn’t panic or any thing of that nature but knew I had to go up a bit. I looked at my buddy and signaled something wrong go up and we did.. when we got back on the boat he said “dude you were narked big time” Told me I was was holding on to the railing of the wreck and just staring into the open waters for about a minutes until I came and got him. I to have a Teric and I have not had an issue with it yet.. 34 dives in
Do you have the single unit or the dual unit? Can you post some pictures please?

Narcosis affects people differently and unpredictably. A friend who is a technical instructor had an experience on a recreational dive in which he felt a sudden sense of doom/panic at about 100 feet. He immediately ascended to about 85 feet, and it went away in seconds. His friends looked up at him, wondering why he had ascended. He dropped back down and was perfectly fine. As a technical instructor, he had untold numbers of dives previously at those depths with no noticeable effect.

There will be no carryover from one dive to another, but it could, of course, happen again.

Funny enough while diving the Lady Luck in Croatia last month i reached a depth of 112 meters. Which is weird considering max depth is 92m for 500 meters in either direction, anyway my shearwater was drunk and is off for a pre service hangover. Anyone else had similar troubles with their Teric?

First and foremost, nice job on recognizing it and ascending to a shallower depth. Many people do not realize they are narced.

Everyone is affected differently so I have not experienced the out of body type feeling you did. What I have noticed about being narced is a slight build up of anxiety / nervousness, as in I keep checking everything to make sure all is good.

Recognizing it and taking the appropriate action are the keys to dealing with narcosis. The good news is narcosis isn’t residual so it will not build up on a repetitive shallower dive, such as the one you did.
 
Funny enough while diving the Lady Luck in Croatia last month i reached a depth of 112 meters. Which is weird considering max depth is 92m for 500 meters in either direction, anyway my shearwater was drunk and is off for a pre service hangover. Anyone else had similar troubles with their Teric?

Are you sure you weren't diving in Dead Sea with salinity set to fresh water?
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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