Narcosis Experiences

[shakespear]

Wow this all sounds scary. I though computers were supposed to beep or something if you went down too far?

 

[beester]

Thanks for sharing your experience and I am happy all worked out OK for you guys.

Yea narcosis is an interesting beast....the effects are varying from diver to diver and within the same person dive to dive (lots of variables). A lot has been learned regarding its effects but so much we still don't trulley understand.

I for one 'seem' to suffer less than many others in regards to narcosis, though this does not change my dive protocols to take what action I can to reduce its effects on deeper dives.

I think study,,,,progressive diving and awareness are some key things we can each do to protect ourselves.

PS--Travis is a nice dive lake.

I have about the same experience... Narcs come with me in different forms:

1) Positive buzz... feeling warm, relaxed and on top of the world. Not hard to react to (up to depths I've been to = 150 feet)... since this in it selve won't cause issues.

2) About the same as texdiveguy. Feeling fully in control but misreading instruments and taking wrong decisions based on that (faulty) data. If you would add taskloading to this mix you could get in deep **** quite fast.

My personal experience was diving to about 125 feet with a buddy who had recently experienced a blowup with his drysuit. I was leading the dive and was more then usually taskloaded with checking if he was ok (more then needed). After about 10 min at that depth I started ascending slowly and I stopped at first deepstop depth (about 70 feet). Our dive was a shoredive so the ascend was according to bottom profile not blue ascend. I checked my computer after about half a minute and it seemed as if my deepstop timer wasn't counting down as I would like. We kept following the bottom profile for some more time and after some time I looked again at my computer. The (perceived) deepstop timer had count down some but not nearly fast enough... so we kept at that depth for some more time (I believe all in all about 8 min passed). In the end I lost patience and started ascending again with my buddy to about 30 feet. Only then when rechecking my computer I noticed that I mistakingly had took my NDL timer for my deepstop timer. The timer had indeed been counting down from double digits to single digits but much slower of course (minutes). The incidious part of course was that I was fully convinced that I was looking at deepstop instead of NDL and based my profile and dive decisions based partly on this (wrong) information.

 

[Scuba Sweetie]

Thanks for this post.

I experienced my one & only narcosis after diving Devil's Throat in Cozumel. We came out around 126', and we were cruising along the wall. I knew we were going to come out at about that depth, and I was a little bit nervous, so I was keeping a close eye on my gauges. Once out of the hole, I checked my gauge, then a voice in my head said "Dummy! That's your watch! Check your gauge!" So, I slowly reached to my side, grabbed my gauage & checked it. A minute later, I was again looking at my watch, trying to figure out my depth, when my mind yelled the same thing at me. This happened a few more times, and it wasn't until we ascended a bit that I realized what was going on. My mind felt really sluggish, along with my reaction time.

It was an amazing dive, and I'm glad I got the chance to do it, but since that experience I have really questioned whether the really deep dives are worth it for me personally.

Oh, & Bob, I love your wolf eel story. Thanks for the laugh!

 

[SparticleBrane]

Wow this all sounds scary. I though computers were supposed to beep or something if you went down too far?

Sounds like you want your computer to do the dive for you. Pay attention to the depth instead of relying on your computer to tell you when you're out of bounds.


My "best" (if you could call it that) experience with narcosis:
I was on a meg tooth dive about 45 miles off the coast of NC. 110ft down, hovering above the bottom, stirring up the silt to look for teeth underneath.
All the sudden I thought, "If I took my fin off, I could do this much more efficiently..."

Had to talk myself out of taking my fin off at 110ft. "That's probably not a very good idea..."

 

[wedivebc]

Sounds like you want your computer to do the dive for you. Pay attention to the depth instead of relying on your computer to tell you when you're out of bounds.

It seems you missed the sarcasm in that post. Very strange considering you sig line