Rapture of the Deep - being narc'd

[rockystock1]

Is love to watch this vid but the link doesn't work


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[Remy B.]

In your experience guys, when you do deep dive, having both male and female divers present in that deep dive 35+m with Air, have you noticed who gets in lala-land first ?

 

[cmulvaney]

My girlfriend shows indications of nitrogen narcosis well before me. She is blonde so maybe that might be it. lol
In all seriousness her deepest dive is The Great Blue Hole Belize and she was in lala land after we hit the stalactites and went back into the cavern a bit. I brought her up a bit and she came back to her senses. We have a video of her just being spaced out that she watches every now and then. She doesn't remember being that out of it. That video finally got through to her why I take diving so seriously and leave my playing around for after.

 

[Pinecube]

In your experience guys, when you do deep dive, having both male and female divers present in that deep dive 35+m with Air, have you noticed who gets in lala-land first ?

Since I'm curious too and on that line of thought, has anyone noticed a trend in how men vs women act while narced? Is one gender more predisposed to, lets say, break off and dive deeper while the other is not?

 

[pdhenry]

Is love to watch this vid but the link doesn't work

Try this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQp3aNyeCJU&sns=em

I give up. Copy the web address and paste it into the address bar.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

In your experience guys, when you do deep dive, having both male and female divers present in that deep dive 35+m with Air, have you noticed who gets in lala-land first ?

Do women get drunk easier than men? I would have to say yes, as a broad generalization - even when adjusting for size. However, it doesn't matter. People are still gonna fall somewhere on the bell curve. Maybe women's and men's are slightly different, but that will tell you nothing about the individual. There are a lot of women who can drink men under the table.

Some people get narced pretty easily, some don't recognize it, some don't get narced easily at all.

If someone has done hundreds of "deep air" dives (that has a broad definition) they will most likely not be scared or nervous about doing it one more time. Someone who has few dives, hardly ever goes deep, is going to have a good degree of anxiety about the dive and the mood you are in and confidence you have, can significantly affect how you will perform when impaired.

Personally, I think narcosis is very dangerous and people should very slowly and carefully determine how they react to it.

I am a strong believer that people can learn to adapt to it, if they have repeated, relatively frequent exposures, however the degree of adaptation can vary wildly between individuals.

 

[drrich2]

Dr. Mike:

Enjoyed the article you linked. That said, I believe some people have posted that their mental clarity deep diving with trimix is noticeably better than deep diving with air. I've never gotten into technical diving or used trimix; be interested to hear from those who use it.

Richard.

 

[doctormike]

Dr. Mike:

Enjoyed the article you linked. That said, I believe some people have posted that their mental clarity deep diving with trimix is noticeably better than deep diving with air. I've never gotten into technical diving or used trimix; be interested to hear from those who use it.

Richard.

Glad you liked the article! I don't think that anyone (even Chatterton) questions the utility of trimix for minimizing the effects of narcosis on deep dives. But it all comes down to your definition of deep.

The point that he is making, I think, is that at recreational depths (say, above 130 feet), any disorientation is more likely to be due to CO2 retention than to the PPN2, since the effects of nitrogen - while certainly present to a variable degree in any group of divers - are not as clinically significant as they are at depths far below that. And while it is possible that someone is SO prone to nitrogen narcosis that they become seriously disabled at 90 feet, there are other explanations for that which are more physiologically likely.

So it seems that his objection to recreational trimix is that it is addressing a problem that is unlikely to occur - nitrogen narcosis above 130 feet.

Now, I'm nowhere NEAR qualified to pass judgement on this issue. John Chatterton feels this way, but other experienced divers feel differently. And as I said above, it's really difficult to get good scientific data about this question, so it remains up for conjecture...

 

[Iralub]

How those effects manifest themselves in the diver will depend on the individual. For example, a diver who is very confident in his or her ability might start feeling a sense of euphoria. But a diver who is not secure with their skills or surroundings may experience a sense of anxiety.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)

That's a great explanation. A very experienced diver said to me that for him, narc was quite pleasant, like being happy drunk. For me the experience I associated with narcosis (at least in part), involved heightened anxiety and was not pleasant at all, and the starting mental attitude may well explain it.

The first deep dive I did, as part of AOW, I was one on one with an excellent instructor. We settled down at about 31m and did some mental exercises. I could feel that more effort was required to think clearly, but that was about it. No euphoria or wanting to do silly things, but also no anxiety and I didn't feel uncomfortable in the slightest.

A few days later I did a dive to 40m on a wreck. No penetration, just swimming through outside walkways for a few minutes and then going to a shallower part of the site. I was aware that this was 10m deeper than I've done before and wasn't sure I'm supposed to do it without specialised deep training. After less than a minute of swimming through the open walkways, I had a strong feeling of anxiety and that I just wanted to be outside the wreck altogether. I swam out of the walkways (with my buddy - a rescue diver) and we followed the dive group from outside the wreck. I wasn't having any actual problems - buoyancy was fine, breathing was fine, plenty of air, excellent buddy. I wasn't panicking or trying to do anything stupid - just anxiety at a level which, frankly, was not rational. The anxiety disappeared once we got to the shallower parts of the site.

With your explanation, Bob, I'm now thinking that because I started the dive being a bit apprehensive, at that depth, I ended up with an anxious narcosis. I've only done a handful of dives to vicinity of 30m since, but haven't had any issues at all. Guess I'll need to work on my pre-dive attitude. And probably do that deep training, for confidence if nothing else!

 

[The_Aviator_1]

Link should be fixed, my apologies!

Nitrogen Narcosis - YouTube If it doesn't work let me know!