Stoned On One Breath?

[ricki]

Well, more fittingly, nitrogen narcosis, inert gas narcosis or even "rapture of the deep" for narcosized Francophiles, in free diving? True enough, this showed up on Deeper Blue today. A number of us my have been narc'd SCUBA diving. I went through it so many times that I wrote an interesting paper for college about symptoms, causes and variables when I was 18. Never liked the sensation though. Anyway, back to getting narc'd holding your breath at depth:

Originally Posted by efattah

I can recall many deep water incidents:

- Cyril Isoardi, diving with Bernard Chabannes, dove 130m in no-limits and never resurfaced

- Pipin had on at least two occasions momentary blackouts on the ascent in NL, that were not hypoxia related

- Tanya Streeter had a narcosis incident on her 160m no-limits dive where she stopped doing anything on the bottom and forget to inflate the lift bag for about 20 seconds

- Rudi Castineyra suffered a blackout on the bottom during a constant weight dive to around 55m

- Loren Maas suffered a blackout on the bottom at 15m during a recreational freedive. He died. The incident was witnessed by his friend who was too nervous to hold his breath long enough to save him.

- I suffered a narcosis/paralysis incident at 53m on the ascent from an 88m CW dive in 2001. A more detailed story is available somewhere on this forum.

- Nitsch suffered a narcosis incident on an 89m dive in Ibiza in 2001. He thought he turned at 74m, but the dive computer showed otherwise.

- Stepanek suffered a narcosis incident on the bottom of a CW dive to 83m in 2001. He remained on the bottom for at least 30-40 seconds, he thought he saw a very large fish come right up to his face. His safety freediver Paul Kotik nearly blacked out waiting for him.

- In 2000 I suffered a bad muscle cramp on a 33m CW dive at the turn around. Luckily there was a line nearby so I could pull up. Kicking in the mono was impossible.

- Genoni had a crazy problem on a 145m no limits dive. The primary lift bag had wrapped around the descent line and would not inflate. The secondary tank valve failed. After wasting 60+ seconds on the bottom at 145m, he started swimming/pulling up and suffered insane narcosis and hallucinations. He blacked out at 10m, within range of the safety freedivers. It would be the last no-limits dive of his career.

- Mullins had a bad narcosis incident on his 111m dive (4'15") at Vertical Blue 2008. He was too cold and wanted to turn at 70m, but he forget what to do and kept sinking until 90m, when he decided to turn again but again forgot. Eventually he hit the plate which woke him up. On the ascent he forgot what he was doing around 50m and felt so tired he couldn't move. Eventually he started kicking slowly and suffered a samba at the surface.

- I suffered a strange cardiac arrythmia on a cold water no-suit FRC dive at the cafa nationals in 2007. The 6-8C cold water seemed to freeze my heart through my collapsed chest, the arrythmia became so bad I aborted at 48.8m. It passed soon after I turned upright.

- Mandy suffered simultaneous broken eardrums and lung squeeze on her 90m CW attempt in Cayman in 2008

- William Trubridge has suffered numerous narcosis induced hallucinations on 100m+ free immersion dives

http://forums.deeperblue.net/general...lems-deep.html



When they say "No Limits" (NLT), this is what they are talking about riding at least in the case of the current world record. These sleds do seem to change in appearance over time.


From: http://www.trygons.com/index.php?page=nol&lang=eng/


The current NLT world record seems to be 214 m or 704 ft. held by Herbert Nitsch of Austria, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Nitsch.