WARNING; motion sickness medicine and boat diving

[kauai diver]

The preventitive may be worse than the illness.

My wife and I just went to Maui to try and dive "Molokini" we had not done any boat diving previously, and thought it may be a good idea to take a motion sickness preventitive. We had taken "Dramamine"? on previous boat tours and it made us drowsy, we were recomended to try Bonine on this trip. The wind was up and the sea was rough, but we only had our short vacation.
The directions on the "Bonine" said to take one or two tablets, we are not small people and the sea was rough, so we took two each. Due to a poor choice in dive company our trip didn't work out so we did a beach dive instead this day. By late afternoon we were too tired to even drive and crashed out by 5 pm we drug ourselves up at 8:30pm to grab some food and went back to sleep for the night. We were well rested now for our boat dive with another recommended dive company the next morning. We opted to only take one pill each this day. The sea was rough and we still got quite sick, after the dive we ate and felt somewhat better yet we had to pull off the road on our 40 minute drive back to the hotel to sleep at 2pm after about an hour nap we were awake enough to drive back to the hotel, and slept for 3 1/2 more hours, took a shower, went out to eat , and went back to sleep.
This medicine made us so stupid we could not even put a sentence together (literally) or even to stay awake to save our life. Not really the best way to be while scuba diving. We still enjoyed our trip, but decided we really really like shore dives.
Disclamer; this medicine may effect different people differently, it just did not work well for us.
Does any one have any great suggestions for something that works well ?and doesn't make you drowsy.

[chewyjr15]

their are those prescription patches that go behind your ear

[davieeeee]

K,
thats interesting.. i took dramamine recently and though it didnt make me anymore drowsy than the other meds i have tried, it made my tingle all the way from my foot to mar arms. i thought it might have just been me, but my buddy reported the weird feelign too. it felt as if the mediceine was really strong, but unfortunaly i still got slightly sea sick!

[PsychDiver]

My son, son-in-law and I have used the wrist bands with the pressure point. None of us got sick but it was a fairly calm day. Next time try different medications over the weekend at home before paying a lot of money on a trip. If it doesn't spoil your weekend while you may have just been working around the house or watching TV than it may be good choice for the water.

[SarahBella]

Dramamine has always made me a zombie...I never take it but I think I will try Bonine in the future because I am prone to feeding fish while on a boat. I also hear that a piece of ginger root between your cheek and gum will help.

[Zenagirl]

Dramamine causes me to have anxiety attacks, thus I wouldn't ever even THINK of taking it before diving. I used the Scopolamine patch and it works great for me. They also make a pill form of the patch called Scopace, which would be nice for times when you aren't diving repetitively. Both require a prescription, unless you get the patch in Canada, then its over the counter (but they don't carry the pill version).

I agree that it's super important to try any of these drugs at home before you take them on a trip. You have to know what the effects are going to be so you don't get hurt.

[scubajane]

my hubby gets seasick. he uses triptone with great success. triptone is different than bonine or scopalamine or dramamine. 4 drugs each with the same goal but each with a slightly different way of getting there. be cautious to not take more than prescribed, ans always start with the smallest dose. I am sensitive to meds and I usually start with a half a dose. remember that side effects are usually an extension of what the med is supposed to do. like the bonine is supposed to supress nausea. in too large a dose it will supress more of you hence the desire to sleep. it has supressed your level of conciousness. not really a good thing while diving. I also agree with Zenagirl and Psychdiver It is very important to try new meds on land prior to using them diving. you really don't want to be sedated while diving.

[MSilvia]

I've never noticed any side effects from Bonine, but then, I only ever take 1 tablet despite being a big guy.

[danielh03]

Has there ever been a study on the effects of motions sickness pills and how they will affect you under pressure? I have read and been told by different ppl that pressure on your system while drugs are in it can be bad. Same effect as carbon monoxide under pressure.

[texgal@heart]

I swear by the patch. I am very prone to motion sickness. I tried all the pill type meds, nothing worked really well for me.