Method Is there any actual success stories using shallow water blackout method?

[jatty]

It seems promising for me, but it's barely looked at. The only problems I can see is if I don't pass out long enough and I wake up too early or maybe in the middle of drowning.
I would love to find a way for me to pass myself out reliably, as it seems simply hyperventilating is too short term or not achievable sometimes :/

Compression is another way, however maybe I am slow, but I simply do not understand how to carry it out..

 

[wait.what]

It seems like everyone around here tries the night night method and shallow water blackout, but I've never heard of a single success with either. It seems to me like you'd need some significant training to manage shallow water blackout, along the lines of what free divers get. Every one of us who learned to swim as a child has a kind of instinctive alarm clock that starts ticking the moment we submerge our faces, and which goes off well before the point where we remember that scary "CO2 level rising" feeling starting up. That might well be where you remember exceeding your tolerance for fear as an eight-year-old.

I'm sure it's possible to unlearn that reflexive urge to surface, but I bet it would take a lot of time and patience.

 

[jatty]

It seems like everyone around here tries the night night method and shallow water blackout, but I've never heard of a single success with either. It seems to me like you'd need some significant training to manage shallow water blackout, along the lines of what free divers get. Every one of us who learned to swim as a child has a kind of instinctive alarm clock that starts ticking the moment we submerge our faces, and which goes off well before the point where we remember that scary "CO2 level rising" feeling starting up. That might well be where you remember exceeding your tolerance for fear as an eight-year-old.

I'm sure it's possible to unlearn that reflexive urge to surface, but I bet it would take a lot of time and patience.

Thank you for the information, it's very helpful! I might just go for another method as this seems a tad bit too tedious for me.

Edit: After rethinking, maybe one could bypass that instinct by passing out before submerging in the water? Let gravity do all the work after.
Unless the instinct holds true even when in that state. Anyways, this method is still going down on my list.

 

[hi-okbye]

yea i tried shallow water blackout before. I first tried to pass out above land, i always noticed i never passed out long enough, but i treid in the water anyways. I spend hours outside. I tried over and over again, but i would notice that every time i would hit the water, i would instantly snap back up, even when trying inside the water, it never worked. i ended up crying on my patio at 4 in the morning soaked and sitting in rain. I feel like the only way it could be reliable to drown is using something esle to make you pass out, like drugs or some type of gas.

 

[crockpotsanta]

if the person succeeds then how do they write a success story

 

[jatty]

if the person succeeds then how do they write a success story

There's lots of success stories dealing with various other methods of CBT. It can be recorded by someone else or if someone makes a post detailing if they are going to do it, and becomes inactive indefinitely.

 

[anxiousguineapig]

As many people have pointed out, the people who are most likely to be successful with shallow-water blackout are people who have a lot of experience with swimming. It's usually a cause of death for accidental deaths, so there are probably some people out there who have been successful with it without anyone ever knowing it was ctb. That said I don't know of any reports on here of it being successful, but that doesn't mean it never has been.

 

[Intoxicated]

yea i tried shallow water blackout before. I first tried to pass out above land, i always noticed i never passed out long enough, but i treid in the water anyways. I spend hours outside. I tried over and over again, but i would notice that every time i would hit the water, i would instantly snap back up, even when trying inside the water, it never worked.

Can you describe your actions step by step?

 

[hi-okbye]

Can you describe your actions step by step?

it was a while ago so i'll try to remember. first i went to the beach, because i wanted to ctb there. I sat by the side of the beach, where it was kind of shallow, and my feet were in the water, just barely. i enjoyed the scenery then i tried it. I sat in the water, where it was deep enough for my head to go fully under. i hyperventilated for a bit while curled up in a ball, after i think about 2-3 minutes when i felt it was enough, i quickly stood up and held my breath, in about a second i passed out. i remember the feeling of my face hitting the cold water and instantly being woken up. i tried this several times, again and again, until i gave up. i got extra desperate so i went into the pool. i would like to add, it was the middle of a cold night, it was super super cold. hypothermia isn't for the faint of heart. in the deep end of the pool, there's a tiny ledge about a foot down from the water line where you can sit. i sat on there and hyperventilated, did the same thing. again it didn't work. every time i would hit the water, it would make me snap back awake and survival instinct would kick in, and i would try to swim. shallow water blackout makes you pass out, but it's not a deep enough state of unconsciousness to keep away survival instinct. your body is still very much functioning, it's just your brain passes out for a few second. and i also did this before the water. a lot of times i practiced passing out with this method on my bed or something, and i would be able to stay unconscious for at the most a minute. your best luck is if when you pass out, you sharply hit a rock or something, and you end up passing out that way.
probably a dumb method, but if your really desperate you could do it in water, next to a big sharp boulder or something, and position yourself so when you fall after hyperventilating, you hopefully hit the rock. pretty dumb though if you ask me a lot could go wrong.

this method just simply doesn't keep you in a deep enough state of unconsciousness. so if your planning on doing an unconscious drowning (my preferred method), use something like a gas (like N2O) or a very strong drug. it'll keep you unconscious enough to drown (if it's strong enough)

 

[Intoxicated]

it was a while ago so i'll try to remember. first i went to the beach, because i wanted to ctb there. I sat by the side of the beach, where it was kind of shallow, and my feet were in the water, just barely. i enjoyed the scenery then i tried it. I sat in the water, where it was deep enough for my head to go fully under. i hyperventilated for a bit while curled up in a ball, after i think about 2-3 minutes when i felt it was enough, i quickly stood up and held my breath, in about a second i passed out.

That's a wrong method. Hyperventilation only causes hypocapnia, while blood oxygen saturation level will be around 100%. Hypocapnia can cause loss of consciousness because your brain can't consume oxygen from the blood well enough when you don't have enough CO2. After this, carbon dioxide still accumulates. When a sufficient amount of CO2 is accumulated, your blood is still almost fully saturated by oxygen, and normal oxygen consumption by the brain is restored. This is why you wake up.

Shallow-water blackout happens when you hold your breath long enough to lower blood oxygen saturation level below the minimum that may keep you conscious.

so if your planning on doing an unconscious drowning (my preferred method), use something like a gas (like N2O) or a very strong drug. it'll keep you unconscious enough to drown (if it's strong enough)

Yes, that sounds like a good idea.

 

[hi-okbye]

That's a wrong method. Hyperventilation only causes hypocapnia, while blood oxygen saturation level will be around 100%. Hypocapnia can cause loss of consciousness because your brain can't consume oxygen from the blood well enough when you don't have enough CO2. After this, carbon dioxide still accumulates. When a sufficient amount of CO2 is accumulated, your blood is still almost fully saturated by oxygen, and normal oxygen consumption by the brain is restored. This is why you wake up.

Shallow-water blackout happens when you hold your breath long enough to lower blood oxygen saturation level below the minimum that may keep you conscious.

Yes, that sounds like a good idea.

oh thank you for letting me know. i think i tried that as well but i just never could pass out before my SI kicked in. when you mentioned that, i thought back to the diagrams i read in the past and realized what you were saying.
considering that i might actually try what you mentioned. thanks!

 

[Anónimo]

You have to train your co2 (carbon dioxide) tolerance. That's why this accident is so common on freedivers, because they get partially desensitized to co2 build up which is was causes the pain and urge to breath. Hyperventilation increases the chances. But you'll have to train for months. I'm kind of doing that.

ALSO, part of the pain is caused by your diaphragm contracting really hard trying to inflate your lungs (even when you inhale, you'll feel painful convulsions). The diaphragm is a muscle, so if you hold your breath with no training, especially while swimming or walking, you will feel an insane pain, like you are getting stabbed. I'm currently training my breath hold cause I believe in this method. I play the long game, so even if it takes me a year I'll do it.

Take rest days to let the muscle recover. You can train breath holding every day but not to the point where it hurts a lot, since you want to let the diaphragm recover like any muscle you train at the gym.

My stupid back-up plan if this doesn't work is to drink two bottles of vodka and hopefully lose consciousness at the sea. I don't have alcohol tolerance so this might work if I don't throw up.

 

[Intoxicated]

ALSO, part of the pain is caused by your diaphragm contracting really hard trying to inflate your lungs (even when you inhale, you'll feel painful convulsions). The diaphragm is a muscle, so if you hold your breath with no training, especially while swimming or walking, you will feel an insane pain, like you are getting stabbed.

I can't recall any pain when holding my breath. I had only strong and unpleasant physical tension. This feeling becomes less strong after several cycles of breathing and breath holding.

Some people who breathed in water described their perceptions as painless. Perhaps, not everyone can do this though because of possible laryngospasm or bronchospasm.

Displacing oxygen in the lungs by a gas should be more reliable. I can think of something like hydrogen that may be produced in several ways.