aldiboronti, I would assume that if anyone choked themselves alone in your day, they wouldn’t have told you. Would you tell your friends something like that?
That’s a good point. The auto-erotic aspects of this would have completely escaped me at the age we indulged in this. (We were about 11 or 12; most of us, I would guess, pre-pubescent and clueless as to sex.)
I did it once, for about 20 min… no wait that was something else.
We used the bear hug from behind version.
10 very deep breaths, after the last exhale, friend bear hugs you from behind. You turn beat red and then faint. You friend can break your fall for you and lay you down.
The solitary deaths are likely because the person is providing the pressure using something like a belt that doesn’t release the tension when the person blacks out. If another person is doing it, they generally release the pressure once the person is unconcsious, unless they’re homicidal. Somebody that knows what they’re doing can apply choke someone into unconsciousness in just a few seconds with no apparent aftereffects; martial artist extrodinaire “Judo Gene” LeBell will choke out dozens of people a day at seminars or book signings (video of Gene as he chokes some folks). It’s definitely an area best left to the professionals, though. Someone that doesn’t know what they’re doing can crush a windpipe.
Hell I do that today! Whenever someone walks extra work up to me I hyperventilate and press on my carotid until I pass out and wet myself.
Usually they go away.
I think you’re an exceptional case, because I’ve never heard anything like that before. A quick search confirms it. This study says that tolerance develops just like any other drug, not the opposite as you contend. The search also turned up some posts on recreational drug forums with users complaining that they barely got a buzz at all from one cartridge after days/weeks/months of frequent use.
Interesting. Just about everyone I’ve ever known to take the stuff, including experience reports I’ve read online, claims that their sensitivity increases.
When I worked at an adoloscent psych hospital the kids would do this to each other. They would say they were “passing each other out”. They also referred to as an “institutional high”. Once the staff caught on, the kids were put in solitary confinement if they were found to be participating.
The other problem with strangulation (as opposed to a choke, which is what pravnik mentioned) is that you’re going to affect the vagus nerve. Well, actually, hyperventilation by itself will do that, but you’re compounding the effect with compression. Sometimes the reaction to this is severe enough that people’s hearts stop beating.
My martial arts instructor worked his way through college as an EMT. When we were learning chokes and strangles in my dojo, he told us that while it’s not a given that someone will crash like that, we should always be prepared to give an attacker CPR unless we wanted to be responsible for someone’s death instead of just temporary incapacitation.
If you get a strangle on properly, you can knock somebody right out. Much more reliable than head trauma, and with little lasting effect, but obviously harder to get the positioning for it. It’s shockingly fast if you get the right spot. Even being careful and not applying much pressure, sometimes we’d barely have time to tap before starting to get tunnel vision.
I’ve passed out before, a couple of times from having blood taken (embarrassing, BTW) and it’s not my idea of fun. I’d heard of kids doing something like this before, and in fact one of my friends, who’s in his mid-50s, had done it when he was in school. Never deliberately tried to pass out myself though.
I did it in 5th grade. My sister, in 6th, would do the choking with a thin scarf. I’d lean against her legs and take several deep breaths. When I let out the last all the way, she’d put on the pressure. As soon as I passed out, she’d let go. It was quite the spectator sport. I never had hallucinations, though, just a head rush when I came to.
How about a different question…
Seeing how harmless choking can be, what do you have to do to actually kill someone by strangulation?
I 'unno, squeeze them for an extra 15 seconds?