Panic is what causes drowning, not the rip current per se. The rip current causes the panic though. I can only tell you how it felt for me. The rip current p

Panic is what causes drowning, not the rip current per se. The rip current causes the panic though. I can only tell you how it felt for me. The rip current pulls you backward, not downward. And the fight against the backward pull power of the ocean directly gets you very tired, and being very tired causes you to not be able to push yourself up too far, causing big waves to hit you in the face, wherein you start swallowing water and get even more tired. I was swimming away from shore for a while, diving through waves. At one point I checked for sand under my feet and didn't feel any, but kept swimming because the group I was with still was. I got a little tired, and decided to say screw it to my group and I turned around. As I tried to swim back toward shore, the distance from where I was to where the shore was seemed to double. The more I swam toward shore the farther away I was getting. I had a lot to drink and eat in my body, so my muscles weren't functioning perfectly or smoothly anyway. When you witness the distance increasing so drastically, you panic, and you start doing illogical things. Getting on my back did not cross my mind for a millisecond. It feels like no matter how hard you try you'll just get pulled in further, and that's scary (but not true).