piikki
Contributor
I wanted to share somewhat ‘everyday’ story about Dark Narc, especially for the benefit of those people who dive in warm clear waters who might not have ever experienced the kind of anxious narcosis one might get in the cold waters of the north. Here is a description of how stupid narcosis can make you. I was going to make it a funny story because it certainly could be but.... Honestly it was only funny afterwards when one got out of the water.
For background: I don’t usually dive air to any considerable depth. My narcosis presents itself as the usual slowing down and if it worsens, in increased feeling of tension or paranoia (eg checking gauges and buddies excessively). Last weekend at depth, I faced an overwhelming feeling of doom, and even though I knew what was happening (that I was narc’ed) I was barely able to keep the intrusive thoughts in check.
I was diving at local lake shore with buddy I know well. We were just doing a skills dive, breaking up the sessions with swims to warm up. We planned no fixed floor as we know our turn pressures in this place by heart. We both had doubles and only air, so we knew we were mostly going to be in the shallows.
After about 35 min we headed down to 60ft marker, and noticed that with the lake turning the viz had opened up remarkably at depth. We wandered down a bit. Instead of the usual pitch dark and 10ft of viz, we now had this cool moonscape to investigate. We crept down further, and hit the 80 ft marker. Buddy was motioning that we should turn but I signaled whether she was opposed to taking a quick look where the 100ft marker was – if there was one? We’d never been there. She agreed.
I immediately felt a sting of guilt about my decision. I felt even worse when we hit 100ft. We did not see any sign of markers but instead my buddy signaled that she was feeling loopy. I grabbed her hand to check her, and turned the dive. I was not feeling weird but it’s obvious I was already very impaired because I did not check anything as I turned. I had no concern that we did not hit the 80 ft marker a few moments later either.
Minute later I wondered why there was nothing in the silt, no trash, not one rock or log that are present towards the shore. The up-slope that should have started was not there. I felt some anxiety creeping in. At this point, I was leading us (judging later – about 90 degrees) off course but I was not doing anything logical about it. Only gauge I kept checking was pressure gauge that I quickly became obsessed with.
I was starting to have both kinetic and visual hallucinations but all I was obsessing about was how bad I felt about my buddy being narc’ed and it being my fault. Then I glanced at my depth gauge and I saw we were still at 97ft!!! I nearly freaked out!! (This should have been a clear sign to me where we were as I know the beach).
Now I got this terrible urge to ascent. If it was based on a rational thought that I want to ascent for the narc to lessen I would feel better about it. However, it was solely based on depth angst. I just DID NOT WANT to be this deep. I just wanted up. I didn’t want to surface but I didn’t want to be at 97ft!!! It was pretty irrational thought, and I needed to keep fighting it from then on. I kept looking at my depth gauge and freaking out, then at pressure gauge and yelling at myself that I was being stupid. OMG – 95!!! Why was it still 95!!! Shouldn’t be 95!!! I shouldn’t be here. And again I was not doing the only couple of things I had at my disposal to get out of there. I just kept on trekking on steady depth.
At some point, probably based on gut feeling I changed the course a bit. Because of the depth angst I tried to sneak a few feet upwards. Buddy tugged me and gave me a stern look. I showed her the ascent sign and she pointed to her eyes and the bottom and made clear that she wanted to keep visual contact. I quickly agreed because I feared she’d freak out. I kept praying for a log or a rock in the silt but it was still all smooth mud. I started getting this nagging fear that we were swimming in a circle but I still did not look at my compass. I was feeling increasingly tense, like something really nasty was about to happen.
At this point my hallucinations got worse. I felt like I was kicking in pudding, like the water was very thick and I was barely moving . I looked at my buddy and it looked like we were moving at the same speed. I kept seeing a silt wall about 10ft in front of me, like the mud from the bottom rose straight up in 90 degree angle and with every kick the enormous wall quivered and moved ahead. Like we were boxed in silt. It did not disorient me because I knew it was not true. Yet, it worried me because I wondered if these things were going to get worse if I did not get off the depth.
Then I took a look at my gauges. I saw we had 4 minutes of NDL left. It was another angst nail in my coffin. OMG! Only 4 minutes to find the slope! (As if).
I asked my buddy what her pressure was just to see how loopy she was, and assure myself that she too had plenty of air. Mistake! She showed me she had 1800PSI but I saw it as 1300PSI. (1+3 fingers but obviously my visual intake was twisted and I interpreted everything with negative bias anyway). Another catastrophy!! EVERYTHING was a catastrophy!! Now all I could think was HOW could she be down to 1300 which was way less than what I had - when usually she’d have more than I do when we had started the same. I was so wound up now and I returned to obsessing about it all being my fault 10-fold: “Poor thing I have gotten her so narc’ed – she is even hogging through her air”. Water temp was 50F, and I knew she was wearing less thermal protection than I was too. I barely calmed myself down with the thought that there was absolutely nothing to worry about because we both still had plenty of gas even if she did only have 1300PSI. My left hand was glued to my SPG now. It was a miracle I was able to avoid seeing the compass on that wrist.
At this point I started obsessing that we might have to come up in the mush green water that I knew awaited us above. I really felt I was not in best shape to do it. Just in case I tried my pull dump. ANOTHER CATASTROPHY. OMG, it never ends. I pulled and no air came out!!! What is wrong??? I nearly got palpitations. I must have ALL my air in the drysuit! How have I managed to do something like that??? (Of course I hadn’t) I hate venting my drysuit on ascent!!! It traps air!!! OMGOMG! At this point I really needed to breathe deep a couple a times because I was going insanely stupid. I was really elevating myself to the next level of idiocy. I had to just put on a mantra to get myself to stop. “Do not go stupid”.
So, I faced my buddy and I swirled my index finger on my head to let her know that I was not doing much better than her. (As it turned out later I was way more impaired than she was at that point.) She tugged on my hand and gave me this pretty cold look. Like: “Yeah - SO WHAT. Like that’s news, we are both pretty bimboed-out right now, and what are going to be able to do about that!!! Let’s go!” I think that was very good response. I felt it was important she knew that I was not trustworthy anymore, and it was very good of her not to start wallowing in it. She said nearly up till that point she thought I had been in control. (She had probably gotten a reprieve just following, getting her head in some sort of order).
Then I finally looked at the compass. Why is South-East pointing totally the wrong way??? At first glance, I was only able to take in the chunk of information that we hadn’t been heading out to the lake. Relief. I still did not correct enough. I took another look and now my buddy was looking at her compass too. She corrected more than I did. I felt better seeing her active too. And we were swimming again. The thoughts were still there, and the silt wall. But we were doing something about our situation, we were consulting each others and the compass finally. I felt teensy bit better but I still desperately wanted out.
Then vaguely something on the right in the corner of the eye. Treetrunk, several of them. Sticks standing. OMG, never seen that before, kind of spooky but what a welcome sight. There was a little underwater forest and I had a desire to go hug the first log I saw but we just kicked to the slope and started a slow creeping up the hill. At 75 ft the angst subsided, all of a sudden a warmer more wholesome feeling filled the head. The constant feeling of doom finally left. We dug out the wetnotes, and started negotiating how far we were from our anchored float. We had no trouble thinking through a solution anymore.
It’s very humbling to feel so utterly dumb on a simple little familiar dive. It’s really hard fighting the inner idiot when you are narc’ed!
For background: I don’t usually dive air to any considerable depth. My narcosis presents itself as the usual slowing down and if it worsens, in increased feeling of tension or paranoia (eg checking gauges and buddies excessively). Last weekend at depth, I faced an overwhelming feeling of doom, and even though I knew what was happening (that I was narc’ed) I was barely able to keep the intrusive thoughts in check.
I was diving at local lake shore with buddy I know well. We were just doing a skills dive, breaking up the sessions with swims to warm up. We planned no fixed floor as we know our turn pressures in this place by heart. We both had doubles and only air, so we knew we were mostly going to be in the shallows.
After about 35 min we headed down to 60ft marker, and noticed that with the lake turning the viz had opened up remarkably at depth. We wandered down a bit. Instead of the usual pitch dark and 10ft of viz, we now had this cool moonscape to investigate. We crept down further, and hit the 80 ft marker. Buddy was motioning that we should turn but I signaled whether she was opposed to taking a quick look where the 100ft marker was – if there was one? We’d never been there. She agreed.
I immediately felt a sting of guilt about my decision. I felt even worse when we hit 100ft. We did not see any sign of markers but instead my buddy signaled that she was feeling loopy. I grabbed her hand to check her, and turned the dive. I was not feeling weird but it’s obvious I was already very impaired because I did not check anything as I turned. I had no concern that we did not hit the 80 ft marker a few moments later either.
Minute later I wondered why there was nothing in the silt, no trash, not one rock or log that are present towards the shore. The up-slope that should have started was not there. I felt some anxiety creeping in. At this point, I was leading us (judging later – about 90 degrees) off course but I was not doing anything logical about it. Only gauge I kept checking was pressure gauge that I quickly became obsessed with.
I was starting to have both kinetic and visual hallucinations but all I was obsessing about was how bad I felt about my buddy being narc’ed and it being my fault. Then I glanced at my depth gauge and I saw we were still at 97ft!!! I nearly freaked out!! (This should have been a clear sign to me where we were as I know the beach).
Now I got this terrible urge to ascent. If it was based on a rational thought that I want to ascent for the narc to lessen I would feel better about it. However, it was solely based on depth angst. I just DID NOT WANT to be this deep. I just wanted up. I didn’t want to surface but I didn’t want to be at 97ft!!! It was pretty irrational thought, and I needed to keep fighting it from then on. I kept looking at my depth gauge and freaking out, then at pressure gauge and yelling at myself that I was being stupid. OMG – 95!!! Why was it still 95!!! Shouldn’t be 95!!! I shouldn’t be here. And again I was not doing the only couple of things I had at my disposal to get out of there. I just kept on trekking on steady depth.
At some point, probably based on gut feeling I changed the course a bit. Because of the depth angst I tried to sneak a few feet upwards. Buddy tugged me and gave me a stern look. I showed her the ascent sign and she pointed to her eyes and the bottom and made clear that she wanted to keep visual contact. I quickly agreed because I feared she’d freak out. I kept praying for a log or a rock in the silt but it was still all smooth mud. I started getting this nagging fear that we were swimming in a circle but I still did not look at my compass. I was feeling increasingly tense, like something really nasty was about to happen.
At this point my hallucinations got worse. I felt like I was kicking in pudding, like the water was very thick and I was barely moving . I looked at my buddy and it looked like we were moving at the same speed. I kept seeing a silt wall about 10ft in front of me, like the mud from the bottom rose straight up in 90 degree angle and with every kick the enormous wall quivered and moved ahead. Like we were boxed in silt. It did not disorient me because I knew it was not true. Yet, it worried me because I wondered if these things were going to get worse if I did not get off the depth.
Then I took a look at my gauges. I saw we had 4 minutes of NDL left. It was another angst nail in my coffin. OMG! Only 4 minutes to find the slope! (As if).
I asked my buddy what her pressure was just to see how loopy she was, and assure myself that she too had plenty of air. Mistake! She showed me she had 1800PSI but I saw it as 1300PSI. (1+3 fingers but obviously my visual intake was twisted and I interpreted everything with negative bias anyway). Another catastrophy!! EVERYTHING was a catastrophy!! Now all I could think was HOW could she be down to 1300 which was way less than what I had - when usually she’d have more than I do when we had started the same. I was so wound up now and I returned to obsessing about it all being my fault 10-fold: “Poor thing I have gotten her so narc’ed – she is even hogging through her air”. Water temp was 50F, and I knew she was wearing less thermal protection than I was too. I barely calmed myself down with the thought that there was absolutely nothing to worry about because we both still had plenty of gas even if she did only have 1300PSI. My left hand was glued to my SPG now. It was a miracle I was able to avoid seeing the compass on that wrist.
At this point I started obsessing that we might have to come up in the mush green water that I knew awaited us above. I really felt I was not in best shape to do it. Just in case I tried my pull dump. ANOTHER CATASTROPHY. OMG, it never ends. I pulled and no air came out!!! What is wrong??? I nearly got palpitations. I must have ALL my air in the drysuit! How have I managed to do something like that??? (Of course I hadn’t) I hate venting my drysuit on ascent!!! It traps air!!! OMGOMG! At this point I really needed to breathe deep a couple a times because I was going insanely stupid. I was really elevating myself to the next level of idiocy. I had to just put on a mantra to get myself to stop. “Do not go stupid”.
So, I faced my buddy and I swirled my index finger on my head to let her know that I was not doing much better than her. (As it turned out later I was way more impaired than she was at that point.) She tugged on my hand and gave me this pretty cold look. Like: “Yeah - SO WHAT. Like that’s news, we are both pretty bimboed-out right now, and what are going to be able to do about that!!! Let’s go!” I think that was very good response. I felt it was important she knew that I was not trustworthy anymore, and it was very good of her not to start wallowing in it. She said nearly up till that point she thought I had been in control. (She had probably gotten a reprieve just following, getting her head in some sort of order).
Then I finally looked at the compass. Why is South-East pointing totally the wrong way??? At first glance, I was only able to take in the chunk of information that we hadn’t been heading out to the lake. Relief. I still did not correct enough. I took another look and now my buddy was looking at her compass too. She corrected more than I did. I felt better seeing her active too. And we were swimming again. The thoughts were still there, and the silt wall. But we were doing something about our situation, we were consulting each others and the compass finally. I felt teensy bit better but I still desperately wanted out.
Then vaguely something on the right in the corner of the eye. Treetrunk, several of them. Sticks standing. OMG, never seen that before, kind of spooky but what a welcome sight. There was a little underwater forest and I had a desire to go hug the first log I saw but we just kicked to the slope and started a slow creeping up the hill. At 75 ft the angst subsided, all of a sudden a warmer more wholesome feeling filled the head. The constant feeling of doom finally left. We dug out the wetnotes, and started negotiating how far we were from our anchored float. We had no trouble thinking through a solution anymore.
It’s very humbling to feel so utterly dumb on a simple little familiar dive. It’s really hard fighting the inner idiot when you are narc’ed!
