Narc Panic at depth

[surlytart]

This week was scary. We were diving the Blue Hole in Belize, which is an 130 foot dive. You head pretty much straight down and then swim into a cavern. Further ahead there's another drop off to 165 feet. You have an 8 minute bottom time and head slowly up.

Everything was great until we hit depth and then what I can only assume was a narcosis panic hit me. Took water in the reg and had a lot of trouble breathing, let alone anything else for a while. Thoughts of drowning at depth filled my head, and my chest was pretty constricted.

Well, I got out. I just focussed on breathing for as long as I had to, and told myself it was just the narcosis. I held the reg in my mouth with my hand. Probably due to the panic, my gauges showed I hit 145 feet on that dive.

I nearly lost it, but luckily kept breathing. Anyone else experience this sort of thing?

 

[Fish_Whisperer]

Your chest was constricted... Could the pressures at that depth cause your wetsuit or BC to constrict? Was it hard to pull a breath from your reg at that depth? If you can't breathe, or feel like you can't breathe, that's enough to incite fear in most people. Congrats on making it back and overcoming your fear. Good job.

 

[Web Monkey]

Could be your reg. It takes a really beefy (internally designed to support high flow rates at depth) first and second stage, in good condition to deliver all the air you want at 130'+

If you're not breathing well, your body recognizes this and the creepy feeling sends you back to the surface as it should. Don't feel bad.

Was it rental equipment or yours, and do you know what brand and/or model it was?

Terry

PS Given the depth, it is likely (almost certain) that you were narced, but the creepy feeling isn't necessarily from being narced.

This week was scary. We were diving the Blue Hole in Belize, which is an 130 foot dive. You head pretty much straight down and then swim into a cavern. Further ahead there's another drop off to 165 feet. You have an 8 minute bottom time and head slowly up.

 

[surlytart]

I think it was just the psychological. Anyway, it's my own gear. I dive a sherwood reg set up.

I don't remember it being difficult to pull air, exactly... just to process it. I'm pretty sure I was hyperventilating, and I know I sucked air. It was a total of 20 minutes under water and I killed 2900 PSI.

Any tips on how to handle your brain in such a situation?

Also, I realised after that I should have probably had an 8 minute decomp stop (I think we did 5). For future reference, is this something to worry about? I was definitely off the RDP.

 

[TSandM]

I don't know -- I had something similar hit me at 108 feet in Cove 2 the other day. Got very anxious, was convinced my buoyancy was screwed up, felt disoriented and very apprehensive. I breathed through it, got down closer to the bottom so I could see better, and it passed to a degree but I still wasn't very happy. Snowbear thinks I was narced, and it may well be.

As far as your question about how to handle it, Diver0001 has a fabulous piece about handling task-loading where he uses an "air, buoyancy, communicate and dive" scheme. But it isn't very helpful if narcosis is the issue, because in that case, you're working with a chemically impaired brain, and at some point, you just aren't going to be able to organize your thinking.

 

[surlytart]

The things that kind of worked were
a) counting out the breaths
b) telling myself that i've been in worse situations - ie, hanging underwater is less frightening than having people shoot at you
c) (probably what really worked) ascending.

I've narced at 80 or 90 feet in Cove 2 before. Maybe it's the cold. Glad Alki didn't eat you.

 

[daniel f aleman]

I've stopped deep diving on air, only helium mixes for me below 100'. Period. Diving deep on air has always been dangerous, in and-of-itself for the reasons that you experienced. Being narced will get you into real trouble sometime. Also, there is a good chance that this would happen again.

 

[dherbman]

I don't know how many dives you have, but for a newer diver, a deeper dive can cause some aprehension. Aprehension can lead to shallow, rapid breathing and CO2 can become a factor that will lead to a dark narc. Add water, makes it own sauce.
Have you had much experience at that depth? Thoughts of drowning are usually a pretty good sign it's time to ascend.

This week was scary. We were diving the Blue Hole in Belize, which is an 130 foot dive. You head pretty much straight down and then swim into a cavern. Further ahead there's another drop off to 165 feet. You have an 8 minute bottom time and head slowly up.

Everything was great until we hit depth and then what I can only assume was a narcosis panic hit me. Took water in the reg and had a lot of trouble breathing, let alone anything else for a while. Thoughts of drowning at depth filled my head, and my chest was pretty constricted.

Well, I got out. I just focussed on breathing for as long as I had to, and told myself it was just the narcosis. I held the reg in my mouth with my hand. Probably due to the panic, my gauges showed I hit 145 feet on that dive.

I nearly lost it, but luckily kept breathing. Anyone else experience this sort of thing?

 

[ShakaZulu]

Been there, it sucks..........ascend for a bit and the symtoms should subside. Trimix is the answer though.

 

[The Chairman]

The constriction of breathing is a normal response when you aspirate water. It's your body getting all cautious on you. You probably were experiencing a pharyngo-spasm which makes it hard to breathe in or out.

The cause of the initial water in your reg is important to figure out. It could have been as simple as an exhaust valve malfunction or a crack in the housing or diphragm. The latter two would continue to leak during the rest of the dive.

Depths below 100fsw are killer. The repercusions of any mistakes or failures are exagerated exponentially with the depth. Buddy management is just as important as air management and you had best worked out your contingincies BEFORE you made the dive. 145fsw is NOT the place to hash out which protocol you will be using.

BTW, glad you made it through with no injuries. Frayed nerves can be a great teacher.