ucfdiver
Contributor
I think drunk driving is a great analogy. Most people who drink and drive enough convince themselves that they've learned to drive slightly impaired because they drink so often they know how to deal with the impairment. And to a certain extent, it's true.
Think about the first time you had a few drinks, probly in high school, you're nervous because you know you shouldn't be drinking, and after two you feel absolutely paranoid of even thinking about driving. Now, a year or two, you're a SR in high school and have been drinking for a while. You learned to keep your mouth shut around your parents and tiptoe into bed. You can carry a normal conversation buzzed because you're somewhat used to the feeling, and some people remark that they "can't even tell you're drunk". You've learned how to deal with the stimulus around you at a party and not appear wasted when you've been (reasonably) drinking.
You learn to drive home and keep it fairly straight because you've slowly built up your muscle memory to do so, and fortunatly you're driving at night where all you have to do is remember a few stop signs and keep it between the lines. You have learned to "manage" being drunk.
Let's face it, people who kill others in drunk driving crashes get away with it SEVERAL times before getting caught or killing someone, and no one would get behind the wheel if they really thought today was the day that they kill someone in a crash. You can deal with impairment very well until the stimulus changes, like a child walking into the middle of the road.
There was a list of something like 200 names of people who had died from deep air diving that someone used to post on techdiver. I don't plan on adding myself, or a dive buddy to that list. I can't imagine what it feels like to have a buddy need help and later on find out that I was too intoxicated to notice...how would I tell friends/family that I couldn't save him because I was too worried about saving $50 on helium so we dove intoxicated?
