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Hi,

I've been more or less lurking on this list for about a year and a 
half now. I'm not a technical diver but my interests may lead me in
that direction.

Last week in Bonair I made a dive to 180' which is as deep as I've 
gone thus far. One of the divers I was with went to 190 and the other
somewhere in between. I turned the dive because at that depth I got
a serious rush of narcosis and after thinking about it for a while I've
got some questions about narcosis management.

My normal dive is to about 90'-100' and I tend to make a dive to
that depth every week or so. I'd guess that doing that has given me
a certain amount of experience with mild levels of narcosis. Over the
period of the last week I probably made 8-10 dives below 100', 2 in
the 160'-165' range and the rest between 100' and 135'. The purpose of
my 165' dive was to get a sense of how well I was functioning at that
depth and I think that although I was somewhat high I was functioning
OK.

On the 180' dive what happened was I glanced at my depth guage and
it read 175'. I think that this made me a little apprehensive and 
I may have taken a couple breathes that were larger than the relaxed
sips of air I'd been taking. At that point I got a serious rush of
narcosis that stopped me from going any deeper than 180'. I decided to
ascend 20', let my head clear, access the situation and go from there.
When I turned, so did the guys I was diving with.

The rush itself was very similar to the rush I would experience when I
took a first hit off a nitrous oxide bottle in my younger days of
experimenting with gasses used to make fast motorcycles faster. It was
not anything that I was not experienced with but I was surprised to get
such a big, sudden hit all at once and decided that it was not an
appropiate mental state to be in 180 feet below the surface. Later in
the day when I was running things through my mind I got to wondering if
there was a correlation between my having taken a couple bigger hits off
my regulator and getting suddenly buzzed big time. When in a subsequent
165' dive I tested this hypothesis by taking a few deep breathes I
didn't have a similar experience.

Does anyone have any comments or observations about all of this? I don't
have any particular avertions to exceeding the "recreational limits" but
I do want to do so safely and I believe that an informed and experienced
diver is a safer diver. I'd also be interested in hearing feedback about
the subject of narcosis management in general.

Thanks,

Eric

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