So I got my first case of Nitrogen Narcosis

[d_lafleur]

First, a hello to everyone, I think this is actually my first post.

Anyway, my daughter and I are relatively new divers, we always dive in Coz together, neither of us has ever been narc'd, but on our last trip one of our group got narc'd and it scared the crap out of both of us. We were doing Palancar Bricks if I remember correctly, down around 100' or so, I'm tail end Charlie in a group of 6 divers, my daughter is right in front of me. In front of her was a sub-group of 3 women.

We come to the edge of a wall, all of a sudden one of the women goes over the edge and starts kicking straight down. I'm looking at her, thinking "*** is this woman doing??" The divemaster sees her and starts banging the crap out of his tank. No response. He goes after her, probably caught her about 140' or so. Pulls her back up to our depth, and he's giving her all the signals - "Are you OK?" She's nodding, giving the signs, all looks good. Until he lets go of her, at which point she reaches down and pickles both of her weight bags and starts shooting to the TOP like a cork now. The divemaster is right behind her the whole way, fighting to slow her down while the rest can do nothing but watch and wonder what the HELL is going on. All the way to the surface they go, we can barely see them.

So the rest of us kind of circle the wagons, thumbs up, let's go up, but SLOW. I fully expected to be boatless when we got there, I figured sure as heck the lady was bent over sick and they'd be flying to shore and we'd have to swim in or flag down the nearest boat. So we get up to about maybe 30', took our sweet time getting there, all of a sudden HERE COMES OUR DIVEMASTER BACK DOWN!!!!!??????? And he's motioning us to follow him, we're going to finish the dive??? Sure enough, that's exactly what we did. Maybe 20 mins later now we come up for good, here's the narc'd lady in the boat, and she's laying in the sun like nothing happened. Besides the fact, of course, that she said she had absolutely no memory of any of it.

So that was our first, and hopefully last experience with narcosis. What still boggles my mind is that the lady appeared to have absolutely no ill effects (besides the memory fuzz-out) despite what appeared to be a completely WRONG ascent. Lesson learned for both my daughter and myself, without question. We started paying a LOT closer attention to each other for the rest of that week.

Just curious, did that person do the next dive?? Fast/uncontrolled ascents from 100' after having bounced to 140' = Lots of surface interval to offgas. She was lucky to not have suffered severe DCS. I cannot imagine the "Divemaster" not taking the group to a safety stop and getting you out the water, once he saw you guys ascending. This is where one dive leader in the group with advanced training (not AOW) isnt enough in my book. Was there someone on the boat evaluating the diver? That first 10-15 minutes after surfacing from a profile like that one is a critical time.

Wall dives with deep bottoms require several experianced divers in the group. I personally dont like doing them unless I have a close ratio ~1:1 advanced/newbie of divers. I also will not take my camera along unless I have dove with the group and everyone has their **** together. I am also very particular about who I dive at night with. I may be a bit pessimistic, I live by the rule that [I]"when it goes wrong underwater, you have the rest of your life to solve it."[/I]

 

[1KWIK_69]

We went to 152' on Maracaibo Wall last summer and I still haven't noticed anything.

Other than a large great hammerhead shark that is.

 

[Papa_Bear]

It is like the guy who says he can drive after a few drinks! It is real and it happens to EVERYONE the problem is YOU may not know it! It is like I said, the guy who say "Give me the keys I can drive"! YOU are impaired and it is just a matter of degree and how it effects each one differently! There are happy drunks, mean drunks, and yes stupid drunks, but the are all drunk!

 

[1KWIK_69]

It is like the guy who says he can drive after a few drinks! It is real and it happens to EVERYONE the problem is YOU may not know it! It is like I said, the guy who say "Give me the keys I can drive"! YOU are impaired and it is just a matter of degree and how it effects each one differently! There are happy drunks, mean drunks, and yes stupid drunks, but the are all drunk!

All I said is I haven't noticed it in several hundred dives, and I have been paying attention for the signs. It's not bragging, just an observation.

 

[Papa_Bear]

Eye hand is the first to go! Try going to 90ft and using some simple snaps, clips, etc.... You will see the difference! A zip lock bag operating the seal is fun to try!

 

[Big John]

An easy test to see if you or your buddy is narked, agree on a conversion factor before descent +1,-3,-2,etc. At depth hold out a number with your fingers and your buddy must then apply the conversion and reply with the correct answer. For example you set a -2 factor for your dive, at depth you show your buddy 4 fingers, he/she should reply with 2 fingers. Quick and easy on the surface but more challenging when you are narked.

 

[DCBC]

The crazy thing is it didnt happen at 95-100 feet but when I tried to go just 3 feet deeper man did it hit me!

Narcosis affects different people, in different ways, at different times. Everyone gets affected in that reaction time slows and problem solving time increases. Most divers don't recognize that they are affected on shallower dives. You said you were not feeling the affects at 100', but didn't realize it until 3' deeper. Chances are, your reaction times and performance decrease was similar at both depths, just that you didn't understand that was the case.

With repeated exposures and experience, divers can detect narcosis earlier. They become more aware, increasing their concentration to perform tasks. Because of this they can safely operate at deeper depths on air.

 

[1KWIK_69]

I'll try those tests next time. I've tried doing math in my head on more than a few dives below 100' and didn't notice a problem.

P.S. Ok, I'll admit that the hammerhead was a little bragging, but it was really cool!

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I never noticed narcosis until once when I was doing a deep air class and we had to go to 150 feet. My ears started to ring like crazy and it was all I could do to keep my concentration and enough sobriety to be able to get through it. It felt like being on Dentist gas and also that feeling when your getting really sleepy driving and you're trying to shake off being drowsy. It feelsd like you have to slap yourself in the face a few times to snap out of it. The scary part was I was one of the more sober ones, the other two guys in the class were totally whacked. The instructor seemed OK but he was more used to it than us so was able to deal with it better.
It didn't happen right when we got down there. It took a few minutes to build up.

I also got narced once at 70 feet. I took a shot at a fish and missed. When I went to replace the spear shaft and wind up the shooting line to set up my gun again I drew a blank and couldn't figure out how to do it. I've done it a thousand times but this time I totally forgot. I had no feeling of narcosis prior to that.

Now the deepest I go is 130 feet or so for a very limited time to check my anchor, then I make my way up the pinnacle to the depth where I do the diving. I generally don't notice any narcosis and as long as I can look at my bottom timer and compass and know what's going on I'm OK. I have tinnitis really bad in both ears so my ears are very sensitive to physiological changes in my body such as increased blood pressure and especially narcosis. When narcosis starts up with me now my ears will begin to ring like crazy and that's my signal.

I also don't dive hung over or on any medications.
I don't dive dehydrated.
I don't dive when I'm sick or getting over being sick.
I avoid getting cold and match the suit to the dive environment and temperature.
I don't dive on little or no sleep.

All these things help in avoiding the hazards of narcosis.

 

[Spg01]

In my AOW class we dropped to about 115' and everything seemed fine. We started to swim off and the instructor pointed something out to me and I could not figure out what it was. It was pretty dark and I only had a small light with me, all I could make out is some sort of ring or something.

Later on the surface he said it was a trash can with a crab in it. I still don't believe him.