Nick Pelios
Freediver, Creator
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Nick Pelios
Freediver, Creator
Even though we've covered narcosis in previous articles, it is always an interesting topic to explore, as the stories related to it are fascinating! In a recent podcast - you'll know more about that in the near future - Harry Chamas shared one of his experiences with Narcosis, which occurred while doing -120m No Limits. Here's what happened.
"So like my first experience with narcosis was when I did -105m variable and all that I could say about it was like, my vision was pixelated. So it was just purely visual. It wasn't like anything else. Then I had the same thing at -110m, my first -110m, no limits, just sort of pixelated vision. And then I did -120m no limits and then I had this, it was like an amazing trip. It was kind of like an acid trip basically, but obviously very short and unintense".
"It was in Greece, in Kalamata, and Stavros uses a copper pipe to get the air from the tank into the lift bag. So, I do the dive, I hit the bottom, everything's all good, I don't feel narced or anything. Then I start to inflate the lift bag. And then I'm kind of like, not super lucid and there's this sound that the air escaping through the tube was making, which was like out of this world, like nothing you could ever hear before. And you know, in the water sound travels differently, right? You can't hear it coming from one place. It comes from everywhere and it was this sort of like, sci-fi surreal sort of screeching. And then it felt like it was like coming in, it was like inside me. And it felt like I was traveling through like a wormhole, from space or something like that!
And I was still aware enough to, every now and again, check on my watch, make sure I got off the sled in time. So then I'm like having this trip all the way up, it's just amazing. I'm just like loving life. Then I see the safety at -40m and get off the sled, start coming up slowly with the diver. And then you know, finally I surface, I do my protocol - it was a national record attempt. As soon as I finished the protocol before they give me the card or anything, I'm like, "holy s**t, that was the best experience of my life, I wanna go again, oh my God, that was so good"! And then they give me my white card, and Stavros is like "you know, you left the cylinder on the whole time you were coming up". So, once the bag is full, you are supposed to switch the cylinder off. Otherwise, the sled comes to the surface, and bubble balls fly everywhere. And it's just like this disaster! And I'd never made the connection that, okay, I was listening to the sound all the way up, having such a good time. But that sound was because I hadn't switched up the tank, you know. So, narcosis, I really enjoyed it, but I saw that it can affect my decision-making ability".