Here's what happened:posted by psmealey at 7:09 PM on December 22, 2007 [2 favorites]
The water fills the hole in the saran wrap so that there is either water or vaccum in your mouth. The water pours into your sinuses and throat. You struggle to expel water periodically by building enough pressure in your lungs. With the saran wrap though each time I expelled water, I was able to draw in less air. Finally the lungs can no longer expel water and you begin to draw it up into your respiratory tract.
It seems that there is a point that is hardwired in us. When we draw water into our respiratory tract to this point we are no longer in control. All hell breaks loose. Instinct tells us we are dying.
I have never been more panicked in my whole life. Once your lungs are empty and collapsed and they start to draw fluid it is simply all over. You [b]know[b] you are dead and it's too late. Involuntary and total panic.
There is absolutely nothing you can do about it. It would be like telling you not to blink while I stuck a hot needle in your eye.
At the time my lungs emptied and I began to draw water, I would have sold my children to escape. There was no choice, or chance, and willpower was not involved.
I never felt anything like it, and this was self-inflicted with a watering can, where I was in total control and never in any danger.
And I understood.
Waterboarding gets you to the point where you draw water up your respiratory tract triggering the drowning reflex. Once that happens, it's all over. No question.
Some may go easy without a rag, some may need a rag, some may need saran wrap.
Once you are there it's all over.
Two days later, it doesn't seem all that bad. I mean it's a little water up the nose, what's the big deal?Likewise Youtube shows some activists performing it in public as an anti-waterboarding protest, but again, this demonstartes the opposite of what it is trying to demonstrate. Because no protesters would put on a routine demonstration like this of, say, the anal pear, (physical torture) or getting raped (psychological torture). Yes that does communicate something. When the man in the link says he would be 1000 times more likely (or whatever) to have his fingers smashed than get waterboarded again, well, the real behavior of him and others says something very different.
I got the same thing after my first 50 miler. During it and immediately after I thought of it as terrible suffering, and pointless and swore never again. A few days later I was like "that wasn't really so bad." A year later when I did it again, I was like "Yes, it was. What was I thinking."
So, no. No lasting psychological damage or anything like that :) I seem to be pretty good at revising traumatic experiences after the fact to make them more palatable.
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Hmm, It sounds like he didn't actually try smashing his fingers with a sledgehammer, so how does he really know?
posted by delmoi at 5:49 PM on December 22, 2007