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This is the story of the first record deep air dive done by Frederic Dumas in an excerpt from _The Silent World_ by Capt. J.Y. Cousteau, published in 1953, over 40 years ago. This book is no longer in print and I thought that you guys might find it interesting. I see that we are pretty much in the same boat now as in the days of no pressure gauges, depth gauges or deco schedules insofar as getting narced is concerned. I also wonder how many people decided to get into diving solely for the purpose of experiencing a narcosis buzz after reading _The Silent World_. Quite a few, I suspect. My favorite line about narcosis is "I like it and fear it like doom." He is honest about it, as opposed to the complete state of denial most people on this list are in. Notice that Cousteau would have used helium if it was available to him at the time. Also notice that we are not talking great depths here, Didi almost died at the 200' mark well within the limits most deep air junkies place on themselves. ------------------------------ "The light does not change color as it usually does underneath a turbid surface. I cannot see clearly. Either the sun is going down quickly or my eyes are weak. I reach the hundred-food knot. My body doesn't feel weak but I keep panting. The dammed rope doesn't hang straight. It slants off in to the yellow soup. It slants more and more. I am anxious about that line, but I really feel wonderful. I have a queer feeling of beatitude. I am drunk and carefree. My ears buzz and my mouth tastes bitter. The current staggers me as though I had had too many drinks." "I have forgotten Jacques and the people in the boats. My eyes are tire. I lower on down, trying to think about the bottom, but I can't. I am going to sleep, but I can't fall asleep in such dizziness. There is a little light around me. I reach for the next knot and miss it. I reach again and tie my belt on." "Coming up merry as a bubble. Liberated from weights, I pull on the rope and bound. The drunken sensation vanishes. I am sober and infuriated to have missed my goal. I pass Jacques and hurry on up. I am told I was down seven minutes." Didi's belt was tied off at two hundred and ten feet down. The huissier attested it. No independent diver had been deeper. Yet Dumas's subjective impression was that he had been slightly under one hundred feet. Didi's bedrunkenness was nitrogen narcosis, a factor of diving physiology which had been studied by Captain A.R. Behnke, U.S.N., several years before. In occupied France we knew nothing of this work. We called the seizure l'ivresse des grandes profondeurs (rapture, or "intoxication," of the great depths). The first stage is a mild anesthesia, after which the diver becomes a god. If a passing fish seems to require air, the crazed diver may tear out his air pipe or mouth grip as a sublime gift. The process is complex and still an issue among dive physiologists. It may derive from nitrogen oversaturation, according to Captain Behnke. It has no relation to the bends. It is a gaseous attack on the central nervous system. Recent laboratory studies attribute "rapture of the great depths" to residual carbon dioxide retained in the viscosity of nerve tissues. U.S. Navy test dives have shown that the strange joy does not occur to deep divers in whose air supply nitrogen had been supplanted by helium. The world's only industrial helium well is in the United States, protected by a rigid law, so that foreign experimenters may not utilize it. Hydrogen, another gas light than air, may be as effective as helium, but it is explosive and hard to handle. The Swede, Zetterstrom, used hydrogen in his air supply on a spectacular deep dive, but he died during decompression , due to personnel failure on the surface, before he could contribute much data to the question. I am personally quite receptive to nitrogen rapture. I like it and fear it like doom. It destroys the instinct of life. Tough individual are not overcome as soon as neurasthenic persons like me, but they have difficulty extricating themselves. Intellectuals get drunk early and suffer acute attacks on all the senses, which demand hard fighting to overcome. When they have beaten the foe, the recover quickly. The agreeable glow of depth rapture resembles the giggle-paryt jags of the ninteen-twenties when flappers and sheiks coviened to sniff nitrogen protoxide. L'ivresse des grandes profondeurs has on e salient advantage over alcohol- no hangover. If one is able to escape from it's zone, the brain clears instantly and there are no horrors in the morning. I cannot read accounts of a record dive without wanting to ask the champion how drunk he was. ------------------------ Jim ------------------------------------------------------------------- Learn About Trimix At http://www.cisatlantic.com/trimix/trimix.html -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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