Panic?

[Adamastor]

I don't have much experience with panic.

The only full-blown panic case I've witnessed was during my DM training. I was assisting the instructor with a couple on their OW course. The goal of the dive was to practice mask clearing at 5m on a sandy bottom. The guy did his clearing quite well, but the girl struggled on her first attempt and used a ****-ton of air.
When the instructor asked her to repeat the exercise, her eyes went wide open and she bolted to the surface. I barely managed to catch up with her and slow our ascent so we wouldn't fly out of the water.

During the debrief, she said she was feeling uncomfortable with the exercise and remembers the instructor asking her to repeat it. Then her next memory was floating on the surface with me. Her mind literally went blank for a few seconds.

 

[Nemrod]

Wow, do I understand this right, you passed out underwater? You obviously survived... Why did you not surface? Too deep? Did your buddy bring you up? Was the reg in your mouth?

My regulator malfunctioned and I inhaled sea water. I could not go up because I had a laryngeal spasm which closed my air way. Had I gone up I would have embolized is my understanding at the time, I do not know if that is true but it is what I thought at the time of the event. Plus all of the commotion I had ticked into deco. No, my buddies were by that time out of sight. Yes, I had switched to my alternate but could not inhale or exhale. Yes, I passed out is my best recollection.

Believe what you want or not, as I (dreamed?) floating beside myself I decided I did not want to die, it was upsetting and very disturbing, I really have no words. Like a bolt of electricity passed through me and I came to and when I did my chest heaved inward several times and expelled the water mostly from my larynx and mouth. Some seawater evidently entered my lungs. Yes, basically, I drowned. I do not have a full memory of the event. I got pneumonia and it took two courses of antibiotics and two months to clear the pneumonia. I got the first course of antibiotics in Marathon, Florida and continued to dive. Upon returning home the pneumonia came back with a vengeance and my doctor did a chest X ray. He came running in and jabbed a shot in my arm and then prescribed a different antibiotic course. I got well.

A more simple explanation of the event is that it just turns out that I am hard headed and hard to kill. And then I went to Bonaire and did some more diving . That is my story more or less abbreviated. I tell it different ways because I really have no complete recollection.

 

[Fred Tagge]

Way back in the dark ages ('68) before SPGs were common my instructor taught us two things that have saved me several times over the decades.
The first one is that the first thing to do when the world turns brown is to think the word "PANIC!" so you won't. That one word is enough to remind you that that if you panic you drown. It is always much more work to panic and drown than it is to think it through and solve the problem and live. Spend up to 10 seconds evaluating the problem and solving it, then deal with the problem. Your brain translates "breathe" into "move air," and it doesn't care which way. If the worst part of the problem is that you are truly out of air and deep then just start up passive exhaling with an open airway. This used to be know as a "free ascent" and was taught at the "normal" end of a dive. The last time I checked it is now known as an ESA but is not practiced as part of a basic course. I know from experience this works from at least 138FSW even if by around 30FSW the thought passes through your head that the fish are getting oxygen out of the stuff around you.

The second one is that the time between the first "breathe" command and the non-panic throat convulsions is going to be about 15 seconds, and exhaling again there can restart the brain's "BREATHE!" clock. By the time the second one hits even a moderate swim rate to the surface will give enough "extra" air by your lungs residual air expansion to exhale again. You can swim a long way up in 15 seconds.

 

[happy-diver]

https://blog.fittodive.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Panic-Triangle-Guide-to-why-scuba-divers-panic.pdf

 

[blueskies_up_ahead]

That's an interesting point. I'm not sure, maybe someone with more knowledge can answer: does a laryngeal spasm block the airway in both directions (in which cas surfacing would indeed be a bad idea)?

 

[CG43]

That's an interesting point. I'm not sure, maybe someone with more knowledge can answer: does a laryngeal spasm block the airway in both directions (in which cas surfacing would indeed be a bad idea)?

Hello

Until this question is not answered until now and I had a similar experience as Nemrod .
My experience is : Yes , in my case the laryngeal spasm blocked the airway in both directions .

I love freediving and scubadiving and the combination of both . This is why i sometimes temporarily
put the regulator out of my mouth and made a freedive with the surface on my back .
This dive i first put in the regulator in when i was about 40 feet away from the entrance in
about 17 feet depths .Because i was diving down head position the exhaust valve
position was up , and the exhause valve don't drained the most water out as i exhaled .
During inhaletion a splash of water hit my laryngeal that closed immedialy .
First i expected this will go away in a short time , no it does't .
I had not much air in my lung and was not deep , so i could swim back to the shore and sit down .
Meanwhile a noticeable urge to breath appeared and i used my freediving techniques to stay calm .
Instead of trying to breath i used my sleep mode . The following sec. are only estimated .
After about 45 sec. i tryed to breath again , but no inhale or exhale possible . 45 sec. later i could
breath a littel bit of air in and out , both with an terribel noise and with to much effort .
Not until another period of time the breathing resistance was low enough and the noise became
quieter . All this happend inside the limits of my freediving possibilities .
Nemrod's dive is another story that received my respect !

Greetings Rainer

 

[AVANTI4]

I posted a recent thread about an out of gas incident I had this past weekend. I don’t expect anyone to read that entire thread but at least the first post will help to explain how and why I feel that the general subject of Panic is a worthwhile discussion to have here in the “basic scuba” forum. And since I might have the most recent experience of actually approaching or reaching a state of Panic, it's probably worth discussing as a dedicated and separate thread while it’s all fresh in my mind. My hope is that comments about equipment configurations and my bad pre-dive decisions can be kept in the other thread and that here we can just discuss Panic.

Tried to Kill Myself but Failed!

So I’ve been on the fence on whether or not to post this……because it’s really hard to openly and publicly admit when you do something totally stupid. But then I thought more about it last night and figure that if it might provide some productive and positive food for thought and discussion…..or...

scubaboard.com

Even though I have always considered myself as person who can “handle” situations, I also now know that am not a “Chatterton” that will just automatically go into “zen” mode while holding my breath for 3 minutes as I calmly think and work the problem.

As I replay the events of this dive, it literally scares the crap out of me when I think about how it could have so easily gone differently, and I am embarrassed and disappointed in myself when I think about how it was preventable and never should have happened.

As I go through it over and over and over…..I don’t feel that I “panicked”……. and so I think that I was incorrect in using the term “first stage of panic” in the thread. After my experience, I now believe there are no “stages” of panic. It’s more like a switch or a circuit breaker that gets flipped and there are no other options or “levels” other than the switch is either on or off. I believe that I was very, very close to flipping that switch.

My first thought when experiencing that very first feeling of reduced gas flow is probably best described as…..”hmm…that’s weird”…..and I would call it a level 1 or 2 concern. When I exhaled than went to inhale and there was nada…..I feel that I then went right to a level 9-10 concern……. but not Panic…because my immediate thought was still to simply go to my redundant source pony 2nd. When I didn’t immediately find it where it was supposed to be I went right to a level 5 anxiety and then moments later when I was still unable to find it I went into immediately a high level WTF, Oh Sh@t anxiety and my very next thought was ESA. What’s really weird is that I distinctly remember thinking ESA and not CESA. I also remember thinking I’m at 60ft and I can do this. I also remember thinking how “f’d” up this would be for my wife if I didn’t make it. It’s literally amazing how many thoughts can go through your mind in a second or two.. But I also believe that if a person is still “thinking” , they have not yet flipped the switch.

Then…. and what actually may have saved my bacon….. is I grabbed my Air 2 for the sole purpose of holding the oral inflate / deflate button and having that as an option to “rebreath” into my BC on the ascent. I remember thinking that it’s only 60ft to the surface……just two boat length’s…… I remember thinking that I was thinking!

Once I had the Air 2 mouthpiece in my in my mug, my uncontrolled reaction was to inhale and then there was sweet compressed gas available along with that wonderful sound of delivery. After two or three deep breaths, my mind slowly moved away from the “switch” and the needle on my high anxiety meter very slowly started moving down from that 9.9 level.

My conclusion is that panic is a strange and unpredictable thing. Maybe you can plan for it or train for it or prevent it, but you can’t really practice it and I don’t believe that all the training in the world can let someone know exactly what they’ll actually do if they ever flip that “switch”.

Curious what your comfort level has been in the water since then. Does it bother you to go to that depth anymore or are you able to continue diving at the same comfort level as before it happened? I only ask because I had a few uncomfortable but not panicked moments at depth. Even though I still love to dive, I've never been the chill cucumber I use to be.

 

[dmaziuk]

Way back when I knew kung-fu, we were told to put the knee between the victim's shoulder blades (sit him Japanese-style on your foot) and pull his shoulders back, while another guy sticks something sharp-ish, like a pencil, into his jinchu point right under the nose. That was for treating the "death touch" strike at the base of the throat that's supposed to cause laryngospasm if done right.

Obviously, I've never seen either of those things done for real, so no idea if it actually works as promised.

 

[CG43]

Even though I have always considered myself as person who can “handle” situations, I also now know that am not a “Chatterton” that will just automatically go into “zen” mode while holding my breath for 3 minutes as I calmly think and work the problem.

Why not ? This goal is easy to achieve with freediving exercises .
And this will improve your comfort level more then 2000 scuba dives .

Greetings Rainer

 

[justinthedeeps]

Very serious!

Whether we admit it or not, almost all of us can panic within ~5 seconds of having any kind of unexpected breathing difficulties.

Forget your calm drills where you know what's happening. It's totally irrelevant. Same with freediving (though it can help)

That 1-2+ minute breath hold that you thought you had is meaningless when you're caught unaware and other bad things are happening.

I don't think the diving world is honest enough about this.

Maybe try surfing in large and chaotic conditions, class V river kayaking, or maybe actual military drownproofing. Very few of us are at that level!

For anyone in testy conditions, or in bulky gear and gloves, a backup air supply should be shock-corded around our neck, and test-breathed immediately upon entering the water on every dive. Rebreather divers should use BOVs, and similarly test them on every dive.

Worst surprise I had was simply closing my CCR ADV on purpose, and then starting to sink later on while playing around photographing a jellyfish in open water. Empty lungs within moments, sinking fast with nothing to breathe. I hit the bottom in a cloud of silt before my fumbling drygloved hands found the wing inflate, BOV and manual addition valve. Even later to access the closed ADV. Only about ~10 seconds, but it sucked hard, and felt like drowning. Merely an embarrassment, once resolved. Fortunately the bottom was only ~10 metres deep there That kind of thing can be a fatal error chain of panic.