Hacker News Reader

Comment by hprotagonist | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like an accidental drowning to me.

The title seems misleading as a result, since one would think that he died as a result of his unwise injection. On the other hand, that's what he's known for, so it's not inaccurate either.

View on HN

Clickbait title, and it worked on me. I only clicked because it sounded like he died as a result of his treatment.

Are you familiar with flotation tanks? They're pretty small and only hold a few feet of water, just enough so you can float without touching the bottom of the tank. The water is also incredibly salty, hence the "floatation" part of a flotation tank.

Point being, it would be pretty hard to drown on your own accord in a flotation tank. Perhaps he lost consciousness and drowned, but this would indicate more about Traywick's current state of health than anything else.

Going to sleep is a health problem now? He may have been tired and fell asleep and in his tossing and turning managed to turn himself over and be face down in the water. I'm not sure why people are acting like this is impossible. Is there some measure to prevent this from happening in a float tank?

Your body has automatic reflexes to wake you up if you start to inhale water or lack oxygen. If he didn't wake up, then there was probably some underlying health issue that actually put him into an unconscious state.

Or he was taking ketamine, or he was drunk, or any number of other things.

This is not uncommon:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Drugs/comments/3yrulm/took_ketamine...

https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/local-news/floatation-tank...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20533982

That's true for sure but isn't it also deadly to inhale water into the lungs? I think I saw it's like 6 Tbps of water can kill you when inhaled. It feels like it's possible that that happened and, since it's dark and "sensory deprivation" happened that he couldn't figure out what was going on (since he had just waken up) and ended up inhaling more? I'm not really certain.

Ha. At one time, my "go to" interesting story was the time I fell asleep underwater. You sure do wake up in a hurry!

Additionally, the crazy high level of epsom salt in the tank makes the contact with your face very unpleasant, enough to wake anyone up.

Accidentally flipping in those also feels very unlikely, it's nothing like flipping on a mattress and would require serious coordination.

Well, poor decision-making seems to be the through line for this guy either way.

how can a normal person drown in a flotation tank? I don't see any mention of drugs so I'm assuming he was sober.

I wouldn't assume that. Drugs use is very common with float tanks.

> I don't see any mention of drugs so I'm assuming he was sober.

tox results in a situation like this would take at least a few business days, even if you're willing to do an incomplete run with the samples on hand, and everyone who needs to review the various intermediate stages is available to do so immediately.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com