Nitrogen Narcosis, what's up with that?

This seems like a great format to get information about nitrogen narcosis. Guam, being the top of an underwater mountain is for the most part a deep place to dive. Everywhere around the island you could swim out to the drop offs, that were often spectacular and full of fish. Being a scuba fisherman all my life I found myself hunting deeper than 100ft. a lot. The feeling of narcosis became something I was very familiar with.

The truth is, I really enjoyed it. I am a child of the sixties so I'm not totally unfamiliar with altered states of mind.

During all those dives I never felt like the safety aspect of what I was doing every left me. Always paid attention to the gauges, knew how much time I would be down and how long I'd have safety stops.

I am curious of those of you that are also familiar with the feeling of nitrogen narcosis and if there was anything negative about it for you. Also is there anyone that dealt with someone else's problems with narcosis?

Adventure-Ocean

Standards say I can't teach when I'm actually drunk, so I like to take students as deep as I can go. It's just more fun that way!

This question has really been bugging me. (Sorry for the hijack) but since your a child of the sixties is the nitrogen narcosis talked about in scuba the same as say buying a balloon from from a hippy at a music festival? Or a visit to the dentist? Not that I'd know, it's just for research purposes that I ask.

Stampsalot:

This question has really been bugging me. (Sorry for the hijack) but since your a child of the sixties is the nitrogen narcosis talked about in scuba the same as say buying a balloon from from a hippy at a music festival? Or a visit to the dentist? Not that I'd know, it's just for research purposes that I ask.

Click to expand...

They're entirely different. The balloon effect
Is from nitrous oxide. It's hypoxia caused by a lack of oxygen getting to your brain, and it by itself can cause seizures and death in short order.

The narcotic effect in nitrogen narcosis is thought to be caused by nitrogen in the tissues affecting your nerve impulse transmissions. It's believed that it affects the lipid membranes, affecting nerve impulse transmission speed. It isn't known to cause seizures and death in itself, although the "drunken" effect it causes can lead to problems because of lack of focus.

-Adrian

I think that some people are under narcosis at 1 atm.

N

I've had experiences with nitrogen narcosis that were disturbing and other experiences that were quite intentional and enjoyable.

Negative experiences? On more than one occasion I had difficulty completing the dive as planned due to narcosis.

During another dive I was unable to read my compass (120 feet, complete darkness, poor viz) so we had to surface.

During another dive I was unable to do simple math to calculate revised turn pressures and so we had to surface (rapid descent to 150 feet on EAN24 in complete darkness).

Once my narcosis was an unpleasant sense of panic (in complete darkness).

Finally one experience was so extreme that I started to wonder if I was suffering from something else beside N2 narcosis (like CO or CO2) and was worried that I might lose consciousness.

My most recent experience with N2 narcosis was in Hawaii - I was solo diving in deep water and knew that I would get narcotized if I went deep. So I went deep (120 ft), settled on the sandy bottom, and listened to whale songs while under the spell of the deep.

I was born in 1954, so I grew up in the late 60's and 70's, in Northern California . . . so draw your own conclusions.

I have never had an experience of narcosis on scuba where a) I was aware of an altered state as such, or b) that was pleasurable. I have had narcosis episodes in Puget Sound that were distinctly unpleasant (dark narcs) and I have been involved in incidents in caves where I was clearly narced but completely unaware of any impairment.

If I want to get a buzz, I'll open a good red blend.

Be aware - be very aware ! - yes narcosis can be like a pleasant buzz from something your mother would not approve of you smoking, but just as often it will not be, and it will a a dark narc - with this feelings of uncertainty, panic, paranoia and such like are common, and most disturbingly your ability to recognise what is going on and to react can be severely limited. What is so dangerous is it is unpredictable, you will never know whether a narc is going to be pleasant or nasty until it hits, and then it could be too late.

Even so called rapturous narc's can be lethal.

An example I always remember was a dive with my regular buddy, ex Florida Cave Rescue Team, very experienced, and a much better diver than me, we were diving warm water 30/31 degrees and at about 30-35 metres when all of a sudden I could hear singing, my buddy was singing into his regulator ! and just swimming off gently into the blue like he didn't have a care in the world.

I signalled him, no response, swam over and signalled again - right in his face, no response - apart from more singing ! so I gently brought him up about 5 or 6 metres.

The look on his face was pure shock, what was I doing and why?, he was completely off in a world of his own and had no idea he was singing. Not an experience I would ever want if diving solo. We have regularly dived deeper and colder with no problems and we have no idea what was different about this dive.

I am not usually too hung up about buddy diving (I tend towards solo behaviour) but this is one situation where I do support it. A buddy can often see you are not behaving rationally and do something about it.

So I am very wary of being narced - ok most of the time you may be ok, but it only needs to go wrong just once - life isn't a gameboy, there is no reset button.

Phil

yeah, i have never had any kind of noticeable "buzz" but the one time I really know I was narked was about 60 meters down a vertical cave in Mexico and instead of watching what I was doing I was just hanging there thinking about my laundry and did I have enough clean socks to continue my journey to Belize the next day. It was only when my buddy tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to my computer that I realised what was going on.

When I teach deep courses we cover narcosis and I say that although it hits people in different ways, for me it is only like being drunk in so far as sometimes when I am drunk I don't feel drunk. In my head everything is normal but people notice I am talking a lot louder and generally being a bit more sloppy. To try to illustrate this I have a timed exercise for students to complete on the surface and at the bottom and then see if there is a difference. I notice that the differences would always be a lot bigger in cold water when I was teaching there as opposed to now when I am teaching in warm water but I think that would not be due to cold water being more narcotic just that people don't function as well when they are freezing cold

Narcosis affects different people in different ways ... and sometimes even the same person in different ways on different dives. I've met folks who enjoy it ... one in particular got so much enjoyment from it he ran himself out of air (on doubles, no less) at 200 feet and ended up corking to the surface in an attempt to CESA to deco depth. The ensuing DCS almost killed him and permanently impaired his vision. From what he's said, he didn't even realize he was narc'd at the time.

The test I give my AOW students on their deep dive ... normally conducted at between 90 and 100 feet ... is to spit out my reg and slash my hand across my throat to see how they're going to react. Most will pass off their backup second to me in a reasonable amount of time (which is the point ... if I'm going to certify them to dive at these depths, I want to know they're capable of responding to an emergency). Some don't do so well. I had one gal who just stared at me, checked her dive computer, and signaled back to me that we should head back upslope. We had a long talk about that afterward ... and although she eventually passed the class I think she developed a much greater respect for how narcosis affects her.

I tend to start noticing narcosis at around 110 feet in local waters (cold and dark), and don't go below 120 feet without some helium in my tank. I'm not suggesting this is what everyone else needs to do, but it's the line I drew for my own personal comfort level ... I don't like being mentally compromised underwater. Usually how I'll recognize I'm narc'd isn't because of how I feel ... I often won't feel anything different at all ... it's when I start noticing that I'm becoming forgetful. For example, I'll check my SPG, clip it off, and almost immediately not remember what my pressure was. That's usually a good clue to me that I don't need to go any deeper ... or that maybe I should move up a few feet and see if I can remember it better.

I do notice that I have a lot more leeway when diving tropical ... where the water's warmer and there's way more light at depth. But it's rare for me to go to 100 feet in tropical waters anyway ... most of the good stuff's way shallower than that. So narcosis is less of a concern ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)