What nitrogen narcosis symptoms have you experienced?

[MaxBottomtime]

When I've dived below 200 feet on air I tend to watch my spg way more often than I do on other dives. When I stop moving, take two long breaths and relax the symptoms subside to a point that I can complete the dive.
I made deep air dives for a couple decades without ever forgetting part of a dive.

 

[Storker]

Being stupid. As I approach 30m, my brain seems to downshift. In bad cases, it's in 1st gear and I can't rev the engine.

Which is why I listen to GUE et al. and try to keep my END less than 30m. Even if I don't dive mix. I'm not comfortable with being stupid in an environment that may kill me if I mess up.

 

[scubadiver888]

When I was only Open Water certified my dive buddy (insta-buddy really) had no buoyancy control and went below 80 feet. Got a little narc'd, dumped all his air (still don't know why) and dropped to the sea floor at 100 feet. I was fairly new and didn't know what to do. Violate the "60 foot" rule or violate the "stay with your buddy" rule. Decided to stay with my buddy and bring him back up. I immediately got narc'd. Had a paranoid feeling like something was going to get me. Water was like a bathtub. Visibility was 100+ feet. But if felt like darkness was closing in on me. Got my buddy above 70 feet and immediately felt fine. My buddy had no idea what had happened. Didn't remember sitting on the sea floor. Didn't remember dumping air. But he felt fine once we were above 70 feet.

Years later I got Advanced Open Water, Deep Specialty, etc.. Knew what to expect and didn't have the "dark narc". Instead felt everything moving in slow motion. Normally I'd check my gauges every few minutes. Realized it felt like seconds between checks but the bottom time was saying 5 minutes just passed. Started checking every couple of seconds because what felt like 10 seconds was really 5 minutes.

Seemed to affect me less than my instructor. We were going to practice skills at depth but the first two dives she forgot. Back on the boat I asked, "when are we going to practice tying knots?" To which she'd reply, "We didn't do that?"

 

[Charles2]

Nitrogen Narcosis? Funny, but I just don't ever remember that experience.

 

[kafkaland]

For me the most obvious symptom is after the dive: I don't remember all the details. I still know that I swallow along the wreck, checked out the bowsprit, etc., but forgot exactly what I saw there. So I have pretty much concluded that I won't do dives where I will likely get so narced that I don't remember much - what's the point getting on the boat, spending the money, if I don't get the memories to take home.

 

[jgttrey]

It's pretty variable between divers as to how and when it manifests.

For me, I probably get a little more paranoid -- checking depth and spg more frequently. I don't find it relaxing. Whether that's me being worried about the fact that I might be narc'd, or actually being narc'd, I don't know....

When I have for sure noticed being narc'd, it's been in situations involving task loading. Often, you don't notice until you have something additional to deal with. Then you realize that you're fumbling around more than usual or have diminished situational awareness. Try doing a few long division problems at depth and see if you can do them as quickly as at 30'. You might be surprised.

For that reason how deep I would be prepared to go on air depends somewhat on what sort of a dive it is. No way I'm doing a deep wreck penetration on air. A great vis, no current, warm water wall dive? Different story.

 

[rongoodman]

Short term memory loss is the most obvious symptom. I remember a dive on the Radeau in Lake George, only 100' but cold and dark. No obvious problems on the dive, but when I came up, there were just flashes of memory of what I saw. Some day I need to go back and dive it with 30/30.

 

[RyanT]

As you might have gathered from the responses so far, the experience is quite variable from person to person and even day to day for the same person. For me, I tend to start noticing that the gas I'm breathing feels "thick." This is not unusual at around 115-120'. At 130ish I tend to start feeling something akin to a nice little "alcohol buzz." In the 140-150 range, I've got a clear buzz and I start to have trouble doing things like fine tuning my buoyancy, which is pretty much instinctive when I'm not narced. Where these things manifest themselves varies tremendously depending on the visibility, temperature, workload during the dive, and even how stressed I am gearing up on the boat. Make it a little dark, a little cold, swimming in current, or stress gearing up, and these effects start occurring even shallower.

 

[Gareth J]

When I've dived below 200 feet on air I tend to watch my spg way more often than I do on other dives. When I stop moving, take two long breaths and relax the symptoms subside to a point that I can complete the dive.
I made deep air dives for a couple decades without ever forgetting part of a dive.

You are much better than me.

One of the groups that where doing deep air used to take a video camera on the first dive on a new site. Run the video back afterwards to see what they had missed, and what the target was for subsequent dives. Especially if they where looking for salvage items. There biggest complaint was how many housing and video lamps they broke, but they where regularly at 60m+.
Personally, I think the lack of light has a major impact on how narked I feel, combine that with poor visibility and the narcosis seems worse. Chuck in a good bit of current to fight and you really are inviting problems.

The biggest issue is the variability. You have dives you would expect to be narked, and you seem ok, others where you thing it should be ok and you are out of your box.
The worst case I witnessed was with a regular dive buddy. We did a wall dive in Scotland to 60m, no problems at all. A month later we where in Scapa on the James Barry at about 40m. As we got to the end of the dive, he started to have a problem as we prepared to ascend. I ended up calming him down, and helped him ascend. We got to around 20m, and he 'came round' and was perfectly ok. He said afterwards that all he could remember of the end section of the dive was being absolutely terrified, disorientation, and confused, he didn't remember we letting off the DSMB. He did remember me being right next to him. He got to 20m and suddenly felt great. It was a one off occurrence.

 

[Jayfarmlaw]

For lots of reasons, I count divers in my group. It's become a habit and is absolutely second nature with a strong twist of OCD. It's just something I do.

On a dive to Belize Blue Hole, I was about 140 feet on air and was mildly amused at the sight of the ball of new divers with hands and feet going everywhere amidst a huge cloud of bubbles. It looked like a cartoon cat fight in a glass of Alka Seltzer. About that point a new diver passed me like an anchor on his way to the bottom. I started to count the divers and instead of counting 13, I got to 5 or 6 and thought, "I don't even know these people, why do I care?" The divemaster passed me on his way after the anchor diver and tossed me a snorkel that came out of the catfight. I realized I felt like a bottle of wine drunk (just a good buzz for me) and recognized what was happening and went up to about 120 and all was good again. I counted the divers, came up with 13, still thought the ongoing cat fight was hilarious and we all worked our way to the extended safety stop.

Great dive, just too short. Narced was nice, no doom and gloom, just a happy buzzed euphoria.

Safe travels,
Jay