Drowning: A peaceful way to go?

[RICHinNC]

Peaceful......painless????? BS>>>BS>>>>BS>>>>

Do this. Go out in the water and just sink. Now dont you dare equalize....let your ears just explode. Was it painful??? DUH!!!!

 

[jbd]

I've had two incidents in which I came close to drowning. Both times it was from exhaustion trying to swim across a part of Kentucky Lake. I can clearly remember the feelings from both episodes which were nearly identical. I recall sinking and things getting darker and darker and in both episodes I can distinctly see myself sinking into the darkness of the lake water. Very much an out of body type of thing. At the time and even as I recall it now there was profound sense of peace and serenity. As I watched myself I saw no struggling for air or attempts to get to the surface. Just a limp body slowly sinking into darkness. I remember I was surrounded by a bright light during all this and then I was at the surface. I slowly swam my way to shore and that was that.

 

[SparticleBrane]

Drowning doesn't seem peaceful to me, but who knows? It might be, after you quit fighting it. Either way, I don't want to try.

I'm now going to hijack this thread...
What about "instant" deaths? Are those "painful?" If you are shot in the head (and assuming instant death), does this "hurt"? I would imagine that you would be dead before the nerve endings would have time to transmit the pain.
Thoughts?

 

[jbd]

I haven't tried the instant death thing. Not sure its worth the risk

 

[tkdawg]

All the people I pulled from ponds and ditches it does not look painless. My wife when she was 16 drowned, she says all you think about is trying to get some air. After the gulp she says she can't remember anything else but up till that time she remembered it all. It may not hurt but the brain has to be freaking out.

 

[rjpv]

Maybe you get reflective after sucking down some water; but as your CO2 level builds up you are going to be pretty unhappy.

I'd rather be eaten by a shark if I could find a nice big one. If you found one that wasn't a sissy (ie, one that will take more than a nibble) it would be alot faster and, once shock set in, probably painless. And of course you could go out swinging...

 

[SparticleBrane]

All the people I pulled from ponds and ditches it does not look painless. My wife when she was 16 drowned, she says all you think about is trying to get some air. After the gulp she says she can't remember anything else but up till that time she remembered it all. It may not hurt but the brain has to be freaking out.

If she's still alive, I'd say she didn't drown. IMHO of course...

 

[occrider]

Is there a link to this?

http://www.undercurrent.org/UCnow/featured_dest/NautilusExp200308.pdf

It's on page 7. So perhaps a better question would be if you had to go, would you rather drown or knife yourself?

 

[Sasquatch]

Neither...I'd just bite down on my cyanide capsule.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

If I were prone to suicide, I'd be tempted to seriously hyperventilate to eliminate as much CO2 as possible then do a nice deep free dive resulting in me peacfully blacking out before I felt the CO2 induced urge to breathe.

Of course, I'd also want to do it while over weighted and while solo in a suitably isolated area so that no one would not recover and in time to revive my now badly brain damaged self. That would really suck.

Other than under those carefully controlled circumstances, I am pretty sure that drowning would be a pretty awful way to go.

My second choice for suicide would be freezing to death. Once you get past the feeling really cold part, it's reported to be a very peacful way to drift off and die. Of course with my luck some well meaning jerk would find my badly frostbitten carcass and "save" me in time to enjoy the painful loss of lots of frostbitten body parts.