Deep Freediving and Narcosis

So far I did 26 dives (yes I counted them) between 90 and 99m but only recently I started having problems with narcosis. In fact until last month I only had a couple of slower dives where I asked myself ” did I just have a little narcosis?” but I wasn’t 100% positive that it was that or I was just less focused and paid less attention to details. Then I came back from Roatan at the end of last August, and decided that I didn’t want my depth season to be over just yet, so I signed up for another competition (Freedom Depth Games in Cyprus) which meant that instead of getting back to my regular training routine I would keep doing depth training and not so much else other than a bit of strength maintenance and some apnea sprints. That meant that both my physical fitness and my o2 and co2 tolerance would keep deteriorating but my coach figured it should still be good enough for another month. With that, once I got back to Tenerife I kept doing deep dives and that’s when the narcosis started to hit me, at times less, at times more, at times it was so strong that it took me more than a minute after surfacing before I could even feel my face.

First it was only on longer FIM dives but yesterday I got hit quite hard also during a bifins (faster) dive for the first time, and that really freaked me out because I can see that it’s happening more often, hit me more severely and affects me also on shorter dives.
Not everyone experiences narcosis the same way. Some people have a nice euphoria, kind of like happy drunk drunkenness. I get the dentist anaesthesia type narcosis, it starts with my tongue getting all tingly, then the whole mouth then the whole face and then the whole head get all pins and needles to the point that I want to slap myself to get the feeling back; but worst feeling to be acutely aware that I’m pretty much unable to think. I feking hate it. Being a control freak, let me tell you, it is not a nice feeling when you realise that you are out of it against your will.

So yeah, here we are, I was aiming at 3 digits dives but now I’m too afraid I won’t remember which way is up or that I’m supposed to pull or swim myself up.
I wish I was a gen z freediver (i.e. younger, stupider and irresponsible) and that I could just go for it without much thinking. Instead I took a few metres off for my first comp day with the intention to see if I can keep it together enough and then add a few metres if it felt I could.
This is too much drama for old ladies and I swear, after this is over I’ll take a knitting course and the only freediving I’ll do is to watch Diveye while laying on my couch wearing a knitted mermaid tail.

Update: my comp dive today was a disaster: nothing to do with narcosis, but apparently I’m a gold fish (my coach just call me that) and I easily get distracted while I should think about my equalisation instead. I got surprised by the thermocline that moved 15 meters deeper overnight and as I got face-slapped by it, I lost concentration together with most of my air and I had to turn earlier (like many others today – lots of gold fish in this competition obviously).