Narcosis incident

[double125's]

gbrandon the way it was explained to me is that some people deal with narcosis by concentrating exclusively on the task at hand. For example:while at depth if you were required to due multiple tasks your overall scores would not have been as good. While you were on land you were probably not concentrating exclusively on the puzzle, you may have thoughts about the dive or maybee even talking, thus your score reflected it. if you would have been in that state of mind at your depth it may have taken you 1 + minute to due the puzzle. Thats is one possible scenario. Some people handle narcosis better than others. Physical conditioning, environment and your abilty to handle stressful situations or multitask yourself effect how you react to narcosis. Studies also show you can build a tolerence to it if you dive deep frequently. Keep in mind I am not an expert on the subject, I am only relaying what I have been taught on the subject. If any of this info is incorrect or outdated please let me know so we all can educate ourselves.

 

[Uncle Pug]

gbrandon once bubbled...
comments someone wants to add?

narcosis causes a narrowing of perception that is insidious since it allows you focused cognition while gradually (as PPN2 increases) attenuating peripheral awareness. And you are unaware that you are unaware.

Narcosis won't kill you... but it could make you miss the little event that starts the cascade of events that does kill you.

 

[Braunbehrens]

NetDoc once bubbled...
Whether you feel it or not... YOU ARE NARCED BY THE TIME YOU HIT 100'. Deal with it.

That, my friend, depends on which gas you dive

I haven't been narked in a long time, but I use Helium on almost every dive now.

The most narked I've been was in the old days, on an oil rig dive. The plan was to go to 120 fsw or so, and do a quick "ok", and if everything pans out descend to about 150 fsw for a quick look see at a cross structure, then a slow ascent.

I was using a nitrox mix at the time that had been carefully tuned to exactly 1.6 PO2 at our max depth.

My buddy told me that at 120' there was another cross structure, so we should just stop when we see it, do the "ok" and then move on. We jumped in, and started descending. The water was very clear, and we were flying down in a state of total bliss. I checked my depth a few times on the way down, the last one at 80 fsw. Then I looked for the structure, and lo and behold, there it was. I slowed my descent, and checked my depth. 146 fsw. Ooops I blew right past our 120 mark.

Luckily everything was ok, and we proceeded with the plan. We moved up to about 120 fsw at a slow pace and hung out there for a little while. I distincly remember looking at my spg, then putting it away, and 10 seconds later having to look at it again because I couldn't keep a number in my head for that long. I did this over and over. The whole time I felt this very safe balmy sensations, and my lips were all tingly like at the dentist.

Yep, I was narked big time.

The dive was great though, and we saw lots of stuff. But after that I decided that if I wanted to go below about 80 fsw I should do it on Trimix.

There were a lot of things on that dive that I would do different nowadays...

 

[MikeFerrara]

It'll be interesting to see if attitudes toward narcosis change in the next few years. I have seen divers do some strange things below 80 ft. In our early diving we had some bouts with narcosis ourselves. Now we rarely dive below 100 ft without helium and if we do it isn't much below. Yet...I often get teased for using trimix for 150+ ft cave dives and for Great Lakes wreck dives above 200 ft. There are many many divers who insist they don't need to worry about narcosis at those depths. The confusing thing is that lots of them are very experienced. You can't tell them anything especially if you're less experienced.

And then of course you have all the vacation divers who follow the DM to 130 or even a quick dip deeper. Since they never have to do anything except follow they figure their fine. Of course we see how they really handle it when they try that stuff at Gilboa. LOL

My rescue prices are goin UP.