Question Panic in the experienced diver?

It would seem to me that, as we gain experience and go through some minor glitches on dives, we should increase our capacity to tolerate issues underwater. I'm wondering what could cause an experienced (say, more than 200 lifetime dives) diver to become distressed enough to lose rational thought. Has anyone here (who meets those criteria) been through a panic event? What caused it, and what did you do?

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

I think panic sets in when one stops actively seeking solutions; not when there are no solutions. That's why panic response varies from person to person.

To reduce panic potential one should train themselves to seek solutions.

To train to seek solutions one needs to seek out challenging circumstances.

Some people are natural problem solvers. They like to do crossword/suduko puzzles, take apart and rebuild old machines, treat sick or injured animals/people etc...

Other people try to avoid problems. They either don't deal with them or pay someone else to solve them for them.

Trying to restructure our wiring during the event doesn't work that well. It's how we conduct our daily lives that reveals itself during crisis situations.

Ah yes; the internal conflict of the human condition.

You claim "panic response varies from person to person" but you only "think panic sets in when one stops actively seeking solutions." Are you sure the panic reason doesn't also vary from person to person?

My adventuring friends often call me MacGyver, because I "create" physical answers to situations requiring "created physical answers."

It could be using a wire coat hanger to re-attach a 4x4's exhaust so we could get out of the wilderness or slinging a leaky inner tube between two non-leaking inner tubes to get two weak swimmers and myself back to the "road side" of a snow melt ragging creek.

able to solve complex problems with everyday materials he finds at hand, along with his ever-present duct tape and Swiss Army knife.

But I am also champion at running away from my "life" problems; if I had known Guam was available to me without a passport I might have ended up there. As it was I thought Kauai was as "far away" as I could run from my "life" problems without a passport.

Another favorite nickname used by my home town friends was "Spock" because I seem to have "an emotionally detached, logical perspective."

My gang used to stretch the bounds of pretty much everything, especially partying. We were not satisfied with just having "head rushes" - we were also interested in "full body rushes." I will only give details in PM's but we had a 3-person "shotgun" procedure that caused everyone to collapse, and everyone but me went into "black-out convulsions."

For my friends, their memory of the body rush was before blackout and after blackout. Even though I collapsed, I was still aware and relaxed throughout the whole event. We subjected me to higher and higher "dosages" but we were never able to make me convulse. In my own High School click, I was seen as "outside the human condition."

Spock offers the captain an emotionally detached, logical perspective. The character also offers an "outsider's" perspective on "the human condition".

My Head of the Humanities Department stepmother might say that my Head of the Math and Science Department father raised me in an extreme back country environment that required a MacGyver/Spock-ish mentality.

We are the sum total of our experiences. Some of us have had more extreme, on the edge, experiences. I have no distinct memory of the earliest events, but my youth constantly hammered that "panic is not an option." I have serious doubts that without a youth hammering that "panic is not an option" an adult can "train" to get to the same level of control as someone with that "hammered youth."

I have a feeling that if I were to drown and still be conscious, I might rather than panic.

 

[TMHeimer]

Halemano, That's heavy stuff. Are you saying in a nut shell that you doubt you would ever really panic? Maybe you're right--My theory that everyone would eventually panic given the right situation could well be flawed.

 

[The Chairman]

It was triggered by a very minor water aspiration on a deep open water dive, no visible bottom, while fairly heavily narc'ed.

Gagging can produce panic or near panic in just about anyone. Its not easily done on the surface, much less at depth while surrounded by your enemy.

 

[Farback]

Gagging can produce panic or near panic in just about anyone. Its not easily done on the surface, much less at depth while surrounded by your enemy.

Yeah, I've seen that in films.

 

[TSandM]

It gave me a big "reality check" because it was totally unexpected responce to what was really a non-event, and made me realize I could certainly "lose it" under the right set of conditions.

That was my wake-up call with the stage incident. I was furious with myself for that brief instant of "out of here" reaction. I still am, but it taught me that it can happen. I was just pleased that it was so brief I didn't make it to the surface before I had solved the problem.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

Halemano, That's heavy stuff. Are you saying in a nut shell that you doubt you would ever really panic? Maybe you're right--My theory that everyone would eventually panic given the right situation could well be flawed.

I have a feeling that if I were to drown and still be conscious, I might rather than panic.

Well, instead of a Mexican Hat Dance I was kind of doing a Loco Gringo Nut Shell Dance; replace "doubt I would ever really panic" with "have a sneaking suspicion that I might never really panic" and I'm relatively OK with that statement.

My friends consider me to be "too honest" but usually finishing with a happy hour bartender's "cutting sarcasm." I have not felt the need to change my original SB Bio;

nearly died; on 2 wheels, 4 wheels, hang gliding, rock climbing, shooting rapids, skiing, snowboarding, waterskiing, cliff diving, freediving, but not scuba diving. right.

Once, while solo diving ~3000' off shore, I chased a spotted eagle ray at ~80 fsw. After medium hard chasing for probably 2 minutes, I put on a burst of speed.

Symptoms and signs of early hypercapnia include flushed skin, full pulse, tachypnea, dyspnoea, extrasystoles, muscle twitches, hand flaps, reduced neural activity, and possibly a raised blood pressure. According to other sources, symptoms of mild hypercapnia might include headache, confusion and lethargy. Hypercapnia can induce increased cardiac output, an elevation in arterial blood pressure, and a propensity toward arrhythmia. In severe hypercapnia (generally PaCO2 greater than 10 kPa or 75 mmHg), symptomatology progresses to disorientation, panic, hyperventilation, convulsions, (*) unconsciousness, and eventually death.

Reading about it during Instructor training is one thing, but when you are by yourself, 80' down, and the breaths do not seem to have any oxygen in them, bolting for the surface seems like the only answer! :shocked2:

If I had not personally verified so many of the "near death tenets" would I have been able to curb the "flight for life" instinct? I swam slowly to the wall, ascending to ~60', deep breaths concentrating on full exhalations, hold on and relax mind and body. My memory seems to be that the world started to go black; I closed my eyes, not wanting to see that I could no longer see. Since I didn't convulse as 17 year old, did I make it all the way to the (*) above?

It might have been 20 eyes closed breathing cycles before I started feeling like I had made the right decision; 30-40 seconds that seemed like forever. Damn glad that happened at 1000 psi and not 700 psi!

 

[Kingpatzer]

I have been near dead a few times. I was in the military during a few major bits of history. I know that I problem when the stuff hits the fan. I have almost 1,000 stitches in my left arm from the flesh being literally ripped off the bone from the elbow to my fingers. When that happened, my reaction was to look down at my arm thing "Woah, that's kind of cool. I guess I should go to the hospital."

But when I couldn't breath for a second when I thought I should be able to I definitely experienced panic.

There is simply no way to predict what you will or won't do. The specifics of each situation are what they are.

 

[NWDCGUY]

Panicked Divers Anonymous:

On my 230ish dive I decided to swim against a ripping current at 90fsw. I was wearing long Free diving fins and was pushing a heavy ikelite SLR camera rig.

After 10 min I was sucking wind through the regulator. The water was 80 degrees and I could feel the heat clinging to me. My buddy without looking at me, immediately entered a swimthrough.

I turned to look at it and a sudden rush of fear struck. Air hunger. Not enough air in my lungs. I had a violent urge to break the surface and breath in fresh sea air: white clouds and blue sky. I tried to stop, relax and breath but each breath seemed ineffectual. My body felt weird, tingly. Vision was narrowing.

My death scenario flashed through my mind, I thought of my mother, my girlfriend, how they would react to my untimely death. AIR. ESCAPE.

I had to literally fight the panic off with the other half of my brain. DAN articles flashed through my mind, Air embolisms, I knew that a 90fsw CESA was not good. Slowly ascending was an option, but I felt like I might black out.

So I followed the DM through the very brief swim through. It was the fastest way to a buddy. I could feel the ragged edge of panic as I swam slowly through that hole, it took an eternity.

When I got to him out in the open, I gave him the wavy hand signal, we hooked in at 65 feet. After 10 min I felt normal again.

Being a tough guy, I didn't miss a dive. I logged another 10 dives that trip, I got the weird buzz, intense air hunger sensation a few more times, at depth and fighting a current. I had lost my confidence, claustrophobia was a new concern.

I was shaken, afraid of having to deal with that panic again. Being suddenly struck with a involuntary visceral fear of drowning made diving a lot less fun.

When I got home a few weeks later I had a few Shortness of Breath moments on land, that seemed like asthma attacks.

As far as the surface symptoms, Docs think I may have ruptured a Bleb (bubble in the lung) during the trip, reducing lung function. (or it could have been psychological no way to know)

According to divers I've talked to, I had a CO2 "HIT" / overexertion. It explains the symptoms. I didn't even realize CO2 Hits existed, had I known it would have made it less of a shock.

Maybe "being Narc'd" was actually a CO2 buzz, I just never took it to the end of it's rope.

That said, I love diving and intend on diving for a very long time.

DCguy

 

[Lorenzoid]

I feel less panicky just because I now know others experience panic attacks!

I have felt slightly panicky several times over the past two years or so, never for any particular reason. It just seems that my mind races, spiralling the way NWDCGguy described in the post above. It starts with just an irrational thought, like "What if I lose consciousness for reason of some undiagnosed medical condition?!" From there, I might think, "What if my buddy doesn't see me?--she's not looking at me right now!" And it just spirals on and on. Gear failures. Getting snagged on something. All the mishaps I have read about on SB and in magazines. I think I was a lot calmer back when I didn't read so much!

Is there a diving psychologist out there? :crazyeye:

 

[Deep South Divers]

It would seem to me that, as we gain experience and go through some minor glitches on dives, we should increase our capacity to tolerate issues underwater. I'm wondering what could cause an experienced (say, more than 200 lifetime dives) diver to become distressed enough to lose rational thought. Has anyone here (who meets those criteria) been through a panic event? What caused it, and what did you do?

Jeez, I don't want to try to come off as Billy Badass, but no.

My whole life I have persued things like waterskiing, mountain bike racing, and motorcycle racing. There was a time when I climbed towers for a living - working on cellular (wireless) antennas and such. I have always very much enjoyed risk management activities. To me, managing risk is more enjoyable than the adrenaline rush that comes from these same activities. Risk management is what attracted me to diving in the first place.

Four-plus years ago, I was diagnosed with fairly advanced testicular cancer. During treatment, I died two or three times (cancer haze has me forgetting whether it was twice or three times). I'll spare y'all the long discussions I had with our maker while I was dead - in one case, which I remember very clearly, our discussion lasted for 2-4 hours. I had the chance to ask a lot of questions, and I was not shy about doing so.

...Anyway, I am not afraid to die. To me, this life on this Earth is now, more than ever, like a video game. I don't WANT to die, and I certainly do not have any kind of death wish... But I know what to expect after this life, and I'm okay with that. To me, it's little more than a "GAME OVER" flashing up on the screen, and since I've already seen that a couple of times, the concept of seeing it again really doesn't concern me too much.

...So my perspective is a bit different than most's. Panic, excitement, stress and fear... They're all gone. I used to enjoy managing them... Now they're absent. Now all there is is logic... "I want to live, so I need to do THIS, not THAT.."

Every decision is like a decision tree... Carefully thought out, planned, and executed after all of the options are weighed.