[Davey Willo]

Way back when YD was still a puppy I wrote a little story about an incident I'd survived in Oban where I truly thought I'd f*cked up in a major way.

This story was picked up by a guy called Gary Ladd ( A professor of Psychology in the States) who runs an excellent site about dive psychology.

Gary asked if he could put my story onto his site and of course I agreed, well I received an email tonight informing me that its now there and so I thought I'd let you guys know. A few of the YD old timers will remember this post and its ensuing thread, Gary's site is filled with enough horror stories to make your toes curl, plus its section on dive psychology is great.

My particular story is titled 'My battle at Oban' it's been altered slightly by the webmaster for continuity but is still 99% the story as I told it.

Enjoy the story's, enjoy the site - see the 'Stories' section about Oban.

http://www.psychodiver.com/

 

[Jay]

Imported post

Didn't I tell you that anything that appears on YD first, is OUR intellectual property? F**ker owes me a million dollars!!

At least you will be at home on Psychodiver!!

Nice one mate.

 

[Big Steph]

Imported post

Great story Dave.  Yes getting narked can be both frightening and enjoyable to the point of getting into serious shit.  You have also answered your own questions as to what caused it.  You did not say how long this effect lasted, but 1 minute can seem like hours.

The guys I do deep diving with always exchange OK signals on a very regular basis, every 30 seconds or so when we go below 30 metres.  As soon as somebody does not respond quickly, we get hold of them gently and swim to a shallower depth.  Diving regularly to these depths will not make a diver immune to the narks, it will only give us the experience of it's effects, therefore we should start heading up.  

My mate Billy has this theory that our air has a 'metalic' taste just before narcosis sets in.  Has anybody else experienced this??

Safe diving guy's and gals

Big Steph.

 

[Hobby]

Imported post

Mmmm narcosis,Steph says "getting narked can be both frightening and enjoyable to the point of getting in serious shit"
As for the metallic taste question,well I reckon it's fairly personal.I beleive narcosois as described above ,is like acheiving orgasm with a gorgeous girl....as her husband walks in.You know the ramifications might kill/injure you but it might,to you ,be worth it,so you continue.The physical side is the same,like pain or indeed an orgasm.We all know what it feels like(I think)but what we can't be sure of is that it feels the same for us all if you get my meaning.
Narc.hits,like orgasms,can be diffent according to mood,surroundings etc.and how we feel in ourselves,it's a variable phenomenon.Some days they may be hardly worth bothering with and you're able to cope,other days they may end up being really messy and you have to clean youself up afterwards (curtains usually go un-noticed till you've departed!)
Forgive me I digress,I've never encountered the taste sensation altough others may have,as I said it gets us all different ways at different times it must be good in a way to have prior knowledge of impending problems though).Some epileptics experience an aura just prior to fitting,it may present as a visual,tactile,auditory or taste sensation,this again appears to be a personal thing.Can't remember what I was on about now.
Narcosis can kill,seriously,and it can affect YOU,even (maybe moreso)if you don't dive that deep and don't treat it with caution.Take care,Hobby.

(Edited by Hobby at 10:45 am on Nov. 15, 2002)

 

[Ben Harris]

Imported post

Nice one Dave,

Thats a really well written account. Could be in a book!

Theres an idea for a collection of short stories -  YD Horror Stories To Tell The Wife Before You Go And Dive!!!!!!

Maybe not!!

 

[Dr Stevil]

Imported post

Re metallic taste, I've always felt that pure O2 does have a very distinct metallic taste and I guess that increased ppO2 may possibly be detectable in this way, assuming you have a sensitve enough palate.

As for why it may taste metallic, I'm guessing this may be because O2 in the breathing air may be reacting with metals in your body - many enzymes and proteins in your body will contain a metal ion or two and O2 can react with these; especially the transition metal ions e.g. Fe, Cu, etc. As your mouth contains a cocktail of digestive enzymes there's bound to be a reasonable amount of metal around in there.

Sorry Frog, science nerd strikes again!
Chee-az
Steve

 

[Dr Stevil]

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Read your tale now Dave, and a very sobering one it is too. I'm not sure I would have done a 35m and then a later 23 metre dive myself under those conditions.
Glad you're still here to tell the tale
Cheers
Steve  

 

[Mr T.]

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Re the Metallic Taste.....

From memory, doesn't pure O2 bring the blood corpusles in your soft tissue in the mouth closer to the surface?? If you've ever (as I have on inumerable occasions) been hit in the mouth whilst playing rugby and found it to be pissing blood, then blood itslef tastes of a slightly metallic flavour, right? Correlation perchance??

 

[Dr Stevil]

Imported post

I've alway assumed that metallic taste of blood to be due (at least partially) to the iron in the haemoglobin of your red blood cells.
Not sure about the blood vessels dilating in response to O2, I always associate that with NO (nitric oxide), but I'd guess there could be an NO-mediated vasodilation in response to elevated extrinsic O2, will have to check that out.
Steve

 

[Ben Harris]

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Wow,
What have you lot been reading!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Frog]

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Brens eaten a dictionary, with encyclopedia and thesaurus on the side!  (Clever clogs, in other words!!)

Steve - I did understand what you put - this time!  :umnik: Dive safely.


(Edited by Frog at 4:43 pm on Nov. 18, 2002)

 

[ian Price]

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Dave
just visited the psycho site, the stories make for an interesting read... as well as making you sit and look at the wall for a minute or two...  Though I agree with your point, you can learn from the experiences of other people and hopefully that may help with an experience of your own..

 

[Davey Willo]

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It certainly did for me Ian, but heres hoping that you never need to

 

[darthmoll]

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Its good to talk, you could have got out of the water and pretended that nothing happened. sometimes its nice to hear that other people have felt the same way, at one time or another.

I always think that if you are a diver and you never sence the grim reaper behind you, you are lucky. If you have trained properly and are in the correct state of mind you will react in the best way, if not, anything could happen.

DM

 

[John Gulliver]

Imported post

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Read your tale now Dave, and a very sobering one it is too. I'm not sure I would have done a 35m and then a later 23 metre dive myself under those conditions.
Glad you're still here to tell the tale
Cheers
Steve  

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[John Gulliver]

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I still haven't worked out how to use the quote function, as you'll have gathered from the above c*ck-up. Anyway, my comment was supposed to read as follows:
Why not, Steve? With a good surface interval it's no problem, especially if you use nitrox for the second dive. I shall no doubt be doing something similar this coming Saturday. But perhaps I misunderstood you. Maybe it was " under these conditions" that was the important bit?

(Edited by John Gulliver at 9:19 am on Nov. 18, 2002)

 

[Dr Stevil]

Imported post

(Edited by John Gulliver at 9:19 am on Nov. 18, 2002)
[/quote]

I Think that just reflects my (current) rather cautious approach to diving; its been a long while since 20+ M to 35-ish metres has been the norm for my diving as more often than not I'm instructing CD/ODs or SDs. Plus, been getting to grips with new kit recently, so an added note of caution there too.  
Guess I might need to re-discover the more adventurous side of diving in the near future.
Cheers
Steve

 

[Mr T.]

Blast from the past!

Davey Willo gets to exercise his sphincter!

 

[Steve Summers]

Hi Dave,
great story mate and I'm glad you came out of it unscathed, one question though as I am a poor sailor I often take stugeron just before diving why did you list that as one of the possible causes?

Safe diving,
Steve.

 

[bubs]

narked noises

Very interesting story, and well done for admitting to being sh** scared takes quite a person.

I was reading with interest you saying about how noisy it was below you, as that was i experienced on a deep dive recently and am wondering whether narcosis was a big part of it?
Does anyone know if narcosis adds to your sense of hearing/ makes you think you are hearing things?

Basically me and my buddy were doing eastern kings last week, we have been building up our deep dives together over the summer, but this one (at 45m) is proberly the deepest this summer. Honestly I cant really remember when the noise started, as it was more of a case of it irritating me after it had been going on a while! for those who dont know eastern kings so well it is part of a pretty busy shipping lane, so when diving it you do get used to hearing sounds of boat traffic about. Anyway when chatting to buddy afterwards we were exclaiming about how noisy it was and sounding like a huge storm - we figured it just must of been a pretty huge boat that was going extremely slowly!
Interesting to know if it could of been narcosis adding to it- another symptom to put on the list!