People are Telling the Stories of When They Were Sure They Were Going to Die

I and about two dozen art students were on a college bus, making our way home after a trip to visit art museums. There had been a few hold ups and we were late getting back. It was about 8:30pm and it was storming, really storming.

This was May in Missouri and we were driving through farm country. There was hail and strong winds which rocked the bus back and forth. There was no one else on the road and the storm got worse and worse as we went along. We stopped a few times under overpasses and waited out strong bouts of hail.

Eventually it got so bad that we had to pull over on the side of the road, next to some farm land and wait. There was no visibility through the wind, rain and hail at this point. We hadn't waited there long before everything instantly went silent. In a moment, the rain had stopped, the hail had stopped and everyone on the bus quit talking. We held our breath and looked around.

I leaned over the seat in front of me to look out the windshield for a better view. A yield sign flew past as I was watching, spinning and reflecting the headlights. I grabbed the seat in front of me - both hands. There was a roar, a raging, bellowing sound like a train racing in spirals around us. The bus lurched and flew upward into the air. I felt that dropping feeling in my stomach, like the floor had fallen out beneath me. I felt weightless, suspended in air, and grasping at someone else's bus seat for dear life.

I became suddenly aware that I was inside a tornado. It felt like we were off the ground for 15 minutes, in reality it must have been less but there was still time for me to think briefly on my life, the things I had never done, and what it would feel like when we finally hit the ground. I couldn't tell how high we had gotten but in my imagination, we were at least half-a-mile up.

We finally landed with a smash and the sound of screeching metal. We rolled and rolled and finally stopped on our side, when we hit a farmer's fence with such force that its posts had stabbed through the bus's side wall in about 4-6 places.

I had a window seat on the side of the bus that was now on the ground. I had luckily escaped the fence posts. My window was gone and I became aware of something wet and viscous all over my face. It wasn't the mud that oozed in through my square window-hole, because it wasn't so gritty.

When I tasted it in my mouth that I realized it was blood. Glass from my window had cut up my face and adrenaline prevented me from immediately realizing it. I tried to get up, sticking my hands into the mud, pouring in around me.

My shoes were gone, I was soaking wet, bloody, muddy and slowly beginning to hear the voices of the people around me. It was like someone was turning the volume knob up again.

I looked around the inside of the school bus. It had been crushed by immense air pressure like a hot/cold can crush experiment. The glass from every window had exploded inward when we were lifted. The bus was twisted and strange, odd enough being on it's side. Someone saw me, saw that I had no shoes and carried me to the square emergency exit, originally on the roof.

Everyone lived, but no one was unhurt. We were rushed to a nearby hospital where one of my classmates learned that the same tornado which tossed our bus went on to destroy his grandparent's house, killing his grandmother. I had nightmares about this experience off-and-on for several years.

Username: Hertubise

I've nearly drowned 3 times. The first time was back in year 2 swimming class, at the stage I could swim a length confidently, but the teachers wanted us to use floats regardless.

We were in the big pool, I made it half the way across before one of the floats slipped out of my grasp, and the offset caused me to lose my pace. I didn't know how to tread water, and without my momentum I started struggling. One of the older boys dragged me out of the pool and I got the rest of the day off.

The second time was during a family holiday in the south of France. At this stage, I was a pretty confident swimmer, I could do a few lengths and turn myself around no problem, and I could just about keep myself afloat. I decided to go a bit of a distance out into the ocean, arguably a very stupid decision, but I was only about 10-15 meters out, not terribly far out but not super close to the shore either.

My brother, a very weak swimmer, decided it would be a good idea to join me, and lo and behold, he got to me and couldn't make it back, so he started struggling. I was in front of him at this point, and I didn't even realise he was struggling until he yelled out help and started dunking my head under. Luckily, my Dad was on alert, and swam out to rescue the both of us.

Finally, I was on a cruise a few years back, and me and my brother decided to go for a night time chill in the hot tub. My brother said he wanted to swim, so we went in the pool for a while. Now, it's important to note that I've never received lifeguard training, and I hadn't swam properly for years, so while I was still a confident swimmer, I wasn't very good at treading water, and I certainly couldn't save anyone. Of course, my brother gets right into the middle of the pool, and starts drowning.

I leap into action, the only thought on my mind was "I have to save him, I have to save him, please fuck don't die here". As I said, it was night time, and we were the only ones on the deck, so I was the only person that could help him. I swim out to him, and try to approach him from behind, I'd heard you were supposed to do that to stop them from dunking you, and yet, in his panic, my brother somehow still managed to dunk me under and use me as a float.

At this stage, I'm fucking terrified. We were drowning, alone, at night, in the middle of the fucking pool. It was all a blur, a panic, I don't have very good lungs so I couldn't hold out for long and pretty soon my mouth opened and I started taking in water.

At the time, it felt like everything was just dark, I could feel my brother scrabbling alongside me, all I could think about was how I'd basically ended up getting us both killed on a family holiday, pretty sure I ended up crying a little bit, all I could think of was my mom and dad, and when I thought it was all over, my hand struck something solid, and I felt my brother's shoulder, I hoisted myself out of the water, somehow, by some miracle, my brother had managed to grab the edge of the pool and drag us over to it, the solid thing I'd felt was the edge, and I just hoisted myself out and collapsed at the poolside with my brother, coughing up water and like, crying and all gross snot and stuff.

I think I just lay there on my back for a good 2 minutes, catching my breath and calming myself down. I honestly thought it was curtains for me and my brother, and yet somehow we'd survived.

Needless to say, the third incident was by far the worst of the bunch, and I haven't swam, or even touched any sort of deep body of water since that day. I'm still terrified of drowning. For those that haven't experienced it, it's hard to describe, but it's truly the worst thing I've ever felt, just an overwhelming sense of dread, of complete panic, when you're surrounded by water and your feet aren't touching the floor.

I still shudder just thinking about drowning, and I honestly think I'm so fucking lucky to have actually survived 3 times. I'll never go swimming again unless there is either someone qualified to save me with me, or if my feet can touch the bottom.

Username: SF_Hydro

I had a surgery on my jaw, and the anesthesiologist either made a mistake or some unavoidable, unforeseeable error occurred and some blood got into my lungs. Now, normally this would not be a huge deal, as you could just cough it up. However, my jaw surgery required that they *wire my jaw shut* for recovery.

So, a combination of just awakening off some heavy anesthesia, a ~millimeter wide gap between my front teeth being the only passageway for air, and my entire face and throat swelling enormously, I was unable to breathe very well. To put it mildly.

Now, add in the blood in my lungs and it became simply unbearable. I spent about 24 hours awake trying to write something coherent with an iPad and weakly grunting until someone finally got the message that I actually could barely breathe. Difficulty breathing is normal with this kind of operation, so I assume they thought I was being nervous/dramatic.

When they finally came over and heard the rattling in my lungs with a stethoscope, they put me in the intensive care ward with a nebulizer and steroids to (I think?) expand my airways. The relief I felt when my throat opened up was literally indescribable. I won't even try.

I genuinely believed I was going to die in those 24 hours. Every second was scraping to get oxygen into my lungs and stay awake. I did not sleep, because I thought that if I went to sleep I wouldn't be able to breathe, and if I got tired then I simply jerked back into full awareness because I couldn't breathe.

All of my foggy, disoriented focus was on one task: breathe in, and breathe out. For twenty four hours. The night after the surgery was the worst part, because I was exhausted and it was very dark. My mother and father were in the room, and I was somewhat aware of that comfort, but they were asleep and I was barely aware of anything outside myself. I was just wheezing in and out, and I was terribly afraid.

I had one, single thought: *I do not want to die. I will give anything, trade anything, do anything, to not die today.*

I do mean anything. I would have gladly traded someone's life for mine, my parent's or brother's, any great amount of people in the world, or agreed to any bargain with anyone to not suffocate to death. I'm not a religious person, but if Satan himself had appeared to me I would have done anything he asked if it meant I would live.

(Granted, if I were in a more logical state, I might have been aware that existence of Satan would imply that I was trading a temporary good for an eternal bad, but I was, drugged, and oxygen/sleep deprived, and that is neither here nor there.) I had the thought that there is so much to the world that I desperately want to experience, and that if I die I will lose everything good in the world.

So I learned something about myself. I am very certain that I do not want to die, and I would gladly do just about anything to avoid it. I will not be brave, I will not face death in a manly, stoic fashion. I will in fact do everything in my power to stave it off and continue living so long as my life is worth living. I have never been more sure of anything in my entire life than I was then, sitting in a dark hospital room and desperately wanting not to die.

ps. I have some sympathy, now, for fictional (and real life?) fantasy villains who do everything in their power to gain immortality. Harry Potter-- Dumbledor-- has a stupid message, death is terrible and I can't imagine not wanting to flee it. I can understand being Stoic, and accepting Fortune's lot, but things are seldom truly inevitable (especially in fictional universes).

Username: nou5

I was doing research in a remote part of Northern Sumatra on wild orangutan. It was a swamp covered with thorny vegetation and water run-off that could be 1-2 meters deep. This was the main reason the research area was still safe from illegal logging. Unfortunately, it was also driving many of the animals in the surrounding area into the swamp, including tigers.

Our day-to-day routine was to enter the swamp in pitch black darkness around 04:00 AM towards the entry point that we set the night before, which pointed at the orangutan's nest where it went to sleep. Likewise, in the evenings we often returned to the field station after dark, to ensure the orangutan was asleep and we could find it again the next morning (we were following some individuals for several days in a row).

The first part of the jungle where we entered ran along a strong river, the same one that we had to cross each morning to enter the swamp and which did not have too much vegetation. There was one part about 20 minutes in where fisherman sometimes caught their daily meals, and they had cut the grass short in a small half circle in a riverbend. On the end of the cut grass about 15 meters away from the river the thick undergrowth of the jungle started again.

One night when we left our orangutan nest we were into the swamp quite deep, about an hour's walk, and the sun was starting to set so we were in a bit of a hurry. The sky turned bright orange and I remember thinking to myself how a tiger's colours would camouflage perfectly against the bright sun at that specific moment.

When we reached the part where the fisherman had been it had become completely dark. Being on foot, the only thing we could really use was a very strong head lamp to illuminate the half-rotten wood boards used to cross cut-out swamp trails. In addition, we all carried long jungle machetes to cut away the think vegetation when we went off the trails. The moment the forest opened into the cut grass area we were walking directly along the river and were happy to almost be back home.

Right in the middle of the bend we suddenly heard the noise of something rushing through the vegetation on the left side. In an instant all 3 of us pointed our head lamps towards the noise and there was an adult tiger staring straight at us from the dark forest. I will never forget the penetrating stare of the animal's reflective iris. Without knowing we all ducked and grabbed our machetes. And then it started growling.

It's hard to describe the intense power of a full-blown tiger growl only several meters away from you. It felt so directional and penetrating straight into my bones. It also felt it lasted for ages. The feeling I remember best is feeling completely naked, except for some loin cloth. It was like a part of my brain got activated that had not been activated in a very long time.

At that point my machete felt like a toothpick and I really thought this could be my final moment. My first thought was to jump in the river behind us but I managed to realize tigers are great swimmers (I didn't even think about the crocodiles at that point). Then the person next to me bumped into me and I startled a little, which gave me a second or two to gather my thoughts.

The tiger itself was still growling and not intend on leaving. I was able to take a hold of myself because we were at an impasse and I realized the tiger did not charge at us (to this day I'm guessing we owe our headlights to that).

I proposed to the other two researchers to back away sideways with our backs to the river and emphasized no one should start running.

The tiger stopped growling at some point and we were able to walk along the trails backwards until we were sure we were not being followed. Back at camp I went into a shock with crying and being extatic every other minute.

I also smoked a full pack of cigarettes in about an hour. Not long after that the sightings increased more, even at the research station, and I decided I was not safe anymore so I left the research area. Later I heard some fishermen were killed and partly eaten when they made an overnight stay under a small rain shelter.

Username: Tecnik606

I went tubing with friends in a river in town. It was June so the snowmelt was well underway and the river was swollen, cold, and moving fast, but it was supposed to be better than upstream in the canyon. I had a floating cooler roped loosely around my arm. My friends got in and got a bit ahead of me. Around the first bend my tube went directly into a bunch of tree branches that were sticking down into the river.

The tube went through but the cooler got caught on the branches. The rope went taught, closed the knot around my wrist, and my tube came out from under me. I was suddenly stuck in the water with my right arm pulled above my head and the strong current pushing against my body, with water rushing over my head.

I tried to pull my body up to the cooler or maybe dislodge the cooler but the current was too much. The weight of the water kept tightening the knot and my hand went numb. Luckily there was a branch above me that I could loop one arm around, but I couldn't climb out because the rope was too short, and I kept slipping off of the branch either from the current or bark shearing off.

I could also brush the bottom of the riverbed with my toes but couldn't get enough weight to counteract the current. I was trapped and water kept flowing over and getting in my nose and mouth. After about 20 minutes some other tubers came by and I screamed for help.

One of them went and called 911. He later told me he thought I was joking but then he saw the fear in my eyes. One friend had noticed my tube going by but not with me so he had come back up the river. He climbed into the tree and grabbed my shirt to hold my head above the water.

We sat there screaming for help for what seemed like forever. My shirt ripped off, my trunks were gone, and my friend was straining to grasp whatever he could to keep me above water. I kept losing grip on the branch and going completely under the water, kicking and failing to try and regrab the branch. A couple of the times under I thought, "I can't get it again, this is it..." and thinking about how surreal everything was.

I had been in a car less than an hour ago. I went out to eat breakfast like a mile away. Now I'm going to die. Finally the rescue boat started to make its way towards us, but it kept pausing to cut branches (I couldn't see them, I could only hear the cutting). By this time I was pleading for my life, screaming that I was going to die and please help. I had no strength. My friend had no strength.

I kept going under more frequently. I could finally see the boat but my arm gave out and I went under. My body went under the boat and the current was making my ragdoll body sway left and right like a fishing lure. That was when I thought for sure I was dead.

They had finally made it to me but I was under the boat, I had no strength to fight, and no air left. I thought about what my funeral would be like and then I felt a brush on my right hand, and my body didn't feel like it was being pushed anymore but much lighter.

The rope had slipped off my hand from the force of the swaying, and I was drifting down the river. I got enough strength to pop my head out of the water and there were a dozen or so search and rescue people dotting the sides of the river. One came out and got me on a board and brought me to the bank.

The ER official diagnosis was "Near Drowning." Collapsed lung, hypothermia, wrist damage, severe bruising, and a lifelong fear of water (which I used to love). But damned if my friend and a well-placed branch didn't save my life. Also: Never tie anything to your body and don't tube when it's dangerous.

Username: hintontk

im sure this will get buried but i've thought about this so much, rehashed it endlessly, and never told anyone. Ended up waking up paralyzed from my OD and realizing i had taken all the pills and accepted my death as real.

It was my second suicide attempt, downed a 5th of vodka swallowing 4 hundredish doses of my meds. Came home after quitting outpatient and was done. I just lied down on the bed at my dad's and stepmoms house (had recently had to move in with them because i wasn't trusted nor had a job to pay rent) put on The League, really wish king of the hill was still on netflix at the time, and just drifted off. Didn't really think about anything, just went to sleep.

I have no idea how long it was till i felt a pain in my neck. Not sure exactly what caused it but it felt like in my sleep i had moved my body closer to the headboard to where my neck was in an uncomfortable position.

Didn't think much of it at first until i realized i couldnt adjust. The more i realized I couldnt move the more aware i became. Didn't even think of what i had done for the first little bit. I have no idea of the time frame, i couldnt open my eyes, just knew there was still light shining through the window. I then became "conscious" to a degree at one point.

Had to tell myself to try as hard as i could to turn over so i could get comfortable again. I was starting to get pissed at the irony that the only thing i wanted in death was to be comfortable. It wasn't like ligit pissed, just kind of like a chuckle. I tried to talk, nothing happened. I tried to stretch, and i like put everything into it, like the effort when trying to lift something really heavy and your telling yourself, come on come on, and nothing. Finally just accepted that my neck was going to feel weird and be uncomfortable.

Had a moment then to kind of think, "well here it is". And it didn't bother me, I was ready. So i thought a little bit about my mom, my dad, not really in the way that i had thought while thinking about suicide. When thinking about it, it was always very "what are they going to think after". This was just a tiny reminiscence of good memories. Childhood stuff. And then drifted back to what i thought would be the end.

I'm really thankful looking back on it I wasn't scared. If i had wanted to live in the moment i wouldve been trapped in an unresponsive body that couldn't move, motion, or scream for help. I would've sat hopeless and alone staring my own self inflicted demise. It was a strange feeling to be a peace with it, a good feeling. Still surreal to me.

Next things i remember are very hazy till i woke up in ICU 3 days later. The stuff in between are hard for my couscous now. I hate that my folks had to go through all that. I remember hearing my name and knocking at the door. Then feeling a hand under my head and hearing my name frantically. I heard my stepmom on the phone with all i can assume was 911.

Remember someone touching me, not sure, it was what seemed a little after that and for some reason i thought it was my dad. I felt a hand and held it as best i could and tried to say im sorry. Then I woke up very hazy with a pipe in the throat and that was the first time i realized i was alive.

Turns out at around 3 a.m., i had taken everything around noon, i had a seizure, feel out the bed, there was a lot of blood but noone has really determined where that came from. And my dad and step mom found me bloody and on the floor and unresponsive.

What ever the mix of chemicals in my body or the seizure itself caused to muscles to start to break down creating a toxic mix or shit that almost shut down my kidneys. Couldn't walk for a week, was shaky with all thing physical for a month or so.

All in all i was just happy i wasn't scared when i couldn't move.

Username: Throwitawwwwwaaaayyy

Last fall I came to work just like any other day. About an hour into the day I started feeling really strange. Hard to describe exactly what it felt like, just didn't feel like myself. I started to have an anxious feeling, and a slight cold sweat...

Thought I was having a sugar low or something (not diabetic, but the kind of fatigue you feel after not eating for a little while - hadn't had breakfast) so I ate a couple of snacks I keep in the file cabinet at my desk.. 20-30 minutes went by with no change.

A customer came in and asked if I could come out and take a look at two tires on his truck (I sell tires) so I went out with a pad of paper and a pen and started to jot down the info. He asked me a question and I couldn't answer him. Not because I didn't know the answer, but physically couldn't answer him.

He has bridgestone tires on his truck and everytime I tried to say bridgestone it kept coming out "brimstone". In my head, I'm thinking wtf is going on? Meanwhile the customer's looking at me like I have 2 heads.. with good reason lol..

Luckily someone else had come out to help with his questions, so they took over. I went back inside to make a call to get a price on the guy's tires and the same thing happened on the phone.

I was jotting down notes and I had the same sensation you get when you're writing with your opposite hand. Had to focus extra hard to write and it looked like a kinder-gardener wrote it.. I went out to our back service dept counter to sit and drink some water for a minute.

I started losing feeling in my left hand, starting in my figure tips, working up to my fore arm... So at this point I'm starting to panic. I started describing what was going on with the service dept manager and he stood up and ushered me across the street to the neighboring fire station.

Sat down on a bench and the EMTs started running tests. Looking for signs of a stroke. (I'm 25 years old at this time) So I'm starting to come un-glued. Still having all the same symptoms, they put me in the ambulance and drove to the ER. I get there, get all hooked up.

They had me do a CAT scan, ran all the tests, etc. Ended up in a hospital bed for 9 hours. By the time the tests were complete, the symptoms had subsided. My parents were at the hospital by now, my boss (also my uncle) came in to see what was up. At this point I'm feeling completely normal.

A nurse came in a few moments later and started doing some ultrasound scans of my chest, heart, major arteries in my legs looked for clots and such. When they scanned my heart she took a few notes and a doctor ended up coming in to tell me they found that I had a small leak in my mitril valve (can't remember the exact term) that opens when strained, coughing, sneezing, etc.

They said 1 in 4 people have it and don't know, and that I guess it's pretty common and not serious. Supposedly the leak occurs on an area that is open when your still in the womb that has something to do with bypassing the lungs (since your in fluid and can't breathe.. ) and that it eventually heals some time after birth, or at least most of the way like mine.

Cutting to the chase, they said that a tiny clot could have passed thru that valve that normally would have normally been caught by your lungs causing a "TIA" or mini stroke. SO, scheduled an MRI. Got the MRI done, everything looked normal according to the doctor, nothing out of the ordinary. Had a follow up with the all the doctors a week or so later and they determined that it was a migraine...

Which apparently I've never had before. I find it extremely hard to believe it was a migraine, but if all these doctors agree on it and all the scans came back normal I have no choice but to believe it. I haven't had an incidence since. Thought I was going to die, and got stuck with a $4000 migraine. lol, at least I'm not dead.

Username: richardrichardson1

I was pretty much a cursed child, so I have a fair few stories about knowing I was about to die. I picked the highlights of my dangerous childhood which fit the question best, as I can remember them best.

Death by strangulation: I had a bad childminder who was pretty abusive, especially to my brother. One day, she was screaming at my brother who was crying in fear. I shouted at her to leave him alone and she choked me in a fit of rage. All I felt was terror, and pain, and a thought about my brother. It was pretty hazy because I was eight and passed out pretty quickly. Luckily, she must have stopped once I fainted, so I didn't die.

Death by ocean: A beach in Pembrokeshire. We were "body surfing", aka jumping into the waves like we were on surf boards and getting tossed about in the waves. We were all young adrenalin junkies. I was a fish, unafraid of anything. The waves were twice my height. I jumped into a particularly big one at just the wrong moment, and didn't pop back up.

All I was feeling was adrenalin, and a sort of "Oh, this isn't so bad", as the oxygen in me was slowly depleted. It was just lightheadedness, coupled with a dizzying lack of direction from being flipped in all different ways until I didn't know which way was up. That started to make me panic, but there was still a sense of novelty of sorts. Drowning felt kind of like being on a rollercoaster, at this point.

Then, I opened my mouth and the salt water came in. Now, that was the hell that I understand now as drowning. The pain was most on my mind. There was a sense of "get to the surface", but I was mainly focused on getting the water out of my lungs. Luckily, the wave was just a normal one, if strong, and I was deposited in knee deep water, coughing and spluttering, on my arse.

Death by cow: This was the most ridiculous, and most recent near death experience. It's probably the one I blame myself for most. I took my two best friends for a walk in the countryside near my house, along a public footpath.

The farmer was keeping bullocks in this field, and unfortunately due to my poor eyesight I thought they were dairy cows. They followed us into the next field, and although I was doing everything I knew: don't run, stay together, be big, stick to the side, etc., they wouldn't leave us and my dog alone. It was the dog that was the problem, of course.

That short space of time in which we came to that slow and dreadful realisation that we had fucked up, that I had fucked up, was nauseating. I was racking my brains frantically, trying to think how I could get us all out alive, whilst trying to keep my townie friends calm. It was so cold, like the sunny day was suddenly artic. Like I was already dead. I was dancing around the sickening decision that the dog would have to die. I would let him off the lead, and leave him to be trampled.

But the bullocks had surrounded us on all sides, and we had bigger problems. They were beginning to increase speed. They were going to charge us all, and the next field had no gate, just a way through for the cows. All I could think about is that I'd led my two best friends in the whole wide world to die. That it was all my fault. Because I was overconfident and smug at "knowing" the countryside.

And of course, that we were going to die in a very painful way. There was no way all of were going to make it out alive. The bullocks now had their noses near brushing our backs. The dog was making them even more agitated. But he was cowering against me, letting go of the lead would have accomplished nothing.

It was then that I made the decision that the next field was a pipe dream. Instead, we were going to chance the electric fence being on and hop into the ditch on the other side, at a small opening we had noticed. As fucking fast as possible without causing a stampede.

We all made it. The bullocks tried to charge the fence but they couldnt get through it from fear at being shocked. They followed us along the edge of the field, so we had a nightmare time trying to move through the undergrowth. Dog nearly drowned/choked in the deep waterfilled ditch, and the next field over had flighty horses, which began galloping about because of the dog and cows, but the owner happened to be out and didn't berate us too much for being on his land. I think he could tell we were in shock, and thought we were just amatuers that had messed up. To be honest, he was completely right.

Username: Neonnie

October 2014. So this was at the tail end of my painkiller and heroin addiction. I started with prescription pain pills, like many and eventually graduated to heroin. Now I've tried most opiates including pharms, so I know what I've taken somewhat based on effects. Especially when I was injecting. Its easy to distinguish say heroin from Dilaudid (Hydromophone) from Oxycodone when you're intravenously injecting drugs.

So I wake up dopesick as usual, in full blown heroin withdrawal. I go to my wallet and see I have $20 left and hit the streets. Dealer isn't answering so I head to center city to pick up off the street, or cold cop as its called. Find a guy and buy two bags. Now two bags, especially at this time during my addiction would not get me high at all, barely unsick but would make the withdrawals bearable. So I wasn't expecting to get high.

So I go home and prep my stuff. Being as I don't know the quality of this particular bag of heroin I usually do whats called a test shot. But since I only got two I opted out of that and did both. My mistake. I get the syringe and find a vein, once I do I pull back and see the blood enter from the vacuum of the syringe and my blood pressure. The best visual when you are in withdrawal.

Right away I press the plunger. Within a few seconds I get a very strong rush. More like Dilaudid than heroin, so a stronger initial rush. So I knew immediately either this was good heroin or Fentanyl....an opioid 400x the strength of morphine. I do like Fentanyl but not when I think its heroin. A bag of pure Fentanyl (@100mg) is the same as 400 bags of pure heroin (@100mg). So, bad idea.

I go downstairs and realize I am beyond fucked up. I should barely be able to feel two bags of great dope, let alone be nodding. I start talking to my Mom and she tells me she's going shopping. As I'm talking to her my eyes keep going closed and my speech is slurred. I know I am fucked up and so does she. And I know Im about to fall out. I go to talk and just cant.

Then I fell over, I cant talk and I cant move at this point. I knew what happened, Im very knowledgeable about the body and opioids and drugs and what they do. I realize I'm probably going to die. She doesn't know what to do. The amount of Fentanyl it takes to kill me with my tolerance is enough to kill over 5 adult human beings twice. So this bag was strong. I knew EMTs wouldn't get to my house in time to administer narcan, I knew this was it. I slowly faded out in total bliss.

Everything went black and for about 10 seconds I heard my mom screaming saying call 911. The whole time I was just calm. Finally the past two years of painful addiction would be coming to an end. I was almost happy to be out of my misery and save my family the unwanted misery in the long run. Next thing you know I awake in the ambulance with two EMTs and my mom. He said "Welcome back, you've been dead Cody, for 7 minutes."

They arrived and started chest compressions which my mom started while they were on the way. Probably helped save me. When they arrived they said I had zero vitals. I was dead. No heart rate, no pulse, no brain activity, flat lined. Opioids cause respiratory depression. The drug turns off the part of your brain that tells you to breathe.

So my brain wasn't getting any oxygen for 7+ minutes. 7 minutes is the time it took after the EMTs arrived to issue the Narcan twice and bring me back. So could've been dead before that. They said if I didn't respond to the second Narcan shot they were gonna call it. Doctor also said hes very surprised I didnt suffer any brain damage from the lack of oxygen. Also, blood tests revealed I injected about ~60mg of Fentanyl. Dose for an adult male is about 100 micrograms. 1000 micrograms is 1mg.

Was in the hospital for two days. Had my dealer bring in drugs for me and just injected into my IV line. Narcan gave me bad side effects for a few months, mainly heart issues. Continued to use heavily until late Summer of 2015. Been clean for quite some time now. Working 60+ hours a week. Life is good. Getting high lost its novelty to me.

But I will say I wouldnt change anything that happened to me at all. I learned alot. I had a very weird OBE during this event I didnt discuss because, well too long. But it was eerily like DMT and was something Ive never experienced since.

Username: Cody610

Good time to post this in the massive thread of comments no one could possibly ever read through....
So i worked for 5 years at a well known night club in a well know city for night clubs where all kinds of celebrities and wealthy folks roll thru regularly.

I worked security at this establishment as one of doormen, there were 2 of us, 1 supervisor (somehwere ) plus the rest of security all inside the club (another 15-20 guards). The clubs capacity was about 800. We would pack 1000 or more in at managements instruction. It was a busy holiday weekend. 1000 ppl in the club, 1000 ppl trying to get in. Myself and one other guy and some velvet ropes standing between them and sweet club euphoria.

Things were going smoothly until a host lets in a big group of about 20 or more in behind me without any IDs being checked. So wtf. I do my job and jump infront of the bulk of the group with the table owner, his security, and the host behind me. Im standing on stairs, host & company are behind me on the first landing. I'm getting IDs from the group and they sre complying, no big deal.

Almost done. The client is a prominent athlete household name. He was apparently not happy his group of barely 21 friends needed to get ID'd on a holiday weekend. Apparently he really didnt like it so he took it upon himself to set his beast security guard on me.

From behind me as im giving the 3rd to last kid his ID back this fucker's fingers come around my throat and he pulls me down the stairs backwards and proceeds to hold me up by the neck crushing my throat not enough to break my neck but enough to cut off air.

Now you might say its impossible. Im 5'10" about 200lbs at the time. Im not exagerrating when i say this guy was about 7'0 his fingers barely all fit on my neck. I was trying to pull his fingers off and could only grab my hand around one of his fingers at a time. This fucker was huge. Im trying to yell. Kicking. No sound. Looking around i could see the crowd of kids i was ID'ing all staring at me with wide eyes mouths open. I look down and the host is on his radio casually calling for security (totally ineffective radios on the loudest and busiest of nights) after the first 15 seconds or so I realized i might actually die. It felt like my throat was crushed.

I was trying to breath in my nose but it was going no where. I started to kick more and wail around. Nothing. Steel hands on my throat. I knew i was fucked and all i could think was "why will no one help me" i had given up in another 10 seconds. i felt like my head was going to pop. I came to terms with it in 30 seconds.

Then i thought "at least i was doing my job....."just then the fucker dropped me without warning. I fall to the ground in s heap. I look up to see the assistant gm coming up the stairs saying clear the stairway. I can barely breath but the air is gettint thru, my throat wasnt totally crushed. I couldnt speak to tell anyone what happened. We get back up the stairs with everyone then here comes the GM to say "hey 'household name' what are you waiting for?

Come on down the elevator VIP style and have a bottle on us!" I almost shit my pants at that. Was surprised i hadn't already. Still unable to speak. Tried to drink water it just came spilling out of my mouth. Boss yelled at me to keep ID'ing. Finished my shift. In the meantime i wrote on a paper wtf happened then my manager went and allegedly kicked the guy out but not the client.

Never asked to filled out a police report and no video of the incident. I sued and got a small settlement. Had a few years of serisous ptsd issues which i still sometimes struggle with. Think about it all the time: "why is no one helping me." Maybe its because i thought i was going to die and maybe because i would throw myself in harms way to help my fellow guards and citizens because it was my job, but i am still appalled no one even said a word.

They would've just sat there and watched me die. I don't think now that the guy was trying to actually murder me in public but he could have easily and i thought it was all over. Writing this has made me sick to my stomach. Going to take a xanax. Lol

Username: [deleted]

Which time? Once I was driving on a freeway in the middle of nowhere Utah. Often there are no other cars for miles. I overtook a semi in my red sports car and moved into the fast lane to pass--two lanes, divided freeway. It was at an overpass so there was no shoulder. The semi driver moved into my lane when I had just cleared the rear of his rig. I can only think he did it on purpose.

There were no other cars, no obstacles. I thought, "I have nowhere to go." The next fractions of a second are gone. Nothing went through my head but I must have floored the gas on my wonderful red sports car and blew the hell out of there because the next thing I remember is seeing him directly behind me. My car was good but not that good. I don't know how I survived.

Another time I was rafting the Snake River with someone who had never done it before. We had rental life jackets and a rental raft. I should have known better because my life jacket was a little loose. We went over a rapid called Lunch Counter which is known for the washing machine effect it creates. I got caught in the cycle, under the raft. Three times I surfaced under the raft, with no way to get air, being tossed around by thousands of gallons of water, bubbles everywhere so I couldn't see or even tell which way was up. Everything slowed way down and my senses became very acute.

It was a little like watching a movie in slo-mo. I remember thinking that maybe this time I could breathe, but nope. Maybe the next time...getting closer and closer to death. It finally spit me out, exhausted. My life jacket was half off (too loose, I never made that mistake again) and I was dragged to shore by my partner. He saved my life but I had the nerve to be mad (silently) because he took us to the wrong side of the river and I had to face getting back into the water to get out. It took me an hour to get up the nerve and stop shaking.

I was on a trip to visit my mom. Ran into a very bad blizzard, the worst I have ever driven in. The snow completely covered all markers and I was doing about five miles an hour in the dark, unable to see more than five feet in front of my car but afraid to stop because I'm in the middle of nowhere and have no way of telling where I could safely pull off.

Hours of this until I start dropping in elevation and get out of the storm. It made a three hour trip over five hours long. I am exhausted but have left the blizzard behind. Now it is just rain. I top a hill on the two lane road and there is a truck pulling a horse trailer in my lane (illegally, naturally. No visibility and he had a double yellow line). We are both doing the speed limit at 55 and within a couple of car lengths of a head on at a combined speed of 110. Again, it's dark, raining, visibility is terrible but my thought was, "If I go straight, I am dead." Again, no other thoughts but I find myself on the shoulder of the road, shaking uncontrollably.

This is fun. No one will read this so I'm going to keep going. I lived in Nevada for a time and met a man who had a Hummer, the early version. It was great on Nevada roads since it could do 70 mph on gravel with no sweat...until he wasn't looking and missed a 90 degree turn. We went off the road at 70 mph and I remember thinking, "We are going to roll and die." Amazingly that truck took it like a dream and didn't roll or rip out the oil pan. It was perfectly fine and we got back on the road. I was very quiet for a while.

Another river trip, class five rapid. We could hear it far away, one of the longest rapids on the river. We scouted it first, then put in. I did everything wrong. I was cold and was wearing a very light-weight windbreaker on the outside of my high-float vest. I wasn't seated properly and my foot was not in the pocket. At the first bump I went right over the side. As I drifted further from the rafts I hoped for rescue but everyone was naturally focused on not dying themselves. I went down.

The bubbles were pretty, the light caught them beautifully. I looked up where the air was and couldn't get there. I tried and tried but the water and, probably, my stupid jacket held me down. My high float life vest that I was so proud of was not able to compensate for the very high water and my stupidity. Everything slowed down again, my total focus was getting past the pretty bubbles to the light.

I was underwater most of the rapid but missed the gigantic hole that almost certainly would have killed me. I thought about that hole several times between fighting with the bubbles. Totally exhausted, I just floated, unable to get to shore. Another party noticed me and paddled over. The guy had to haul me, a completely dead weight, up and over the side. I apologized for being unable to help.

Final story. I begged my gyno for a c-section because I was very old for a first child and very, very miserable. He refused. Finally he induced labor. Nine hours and suddenly he gets this look. He says the baby is distressed and we need to prep for surgery.

They had to stop the pain meds and I have never felt such pain in my life. I told my mom she couldn't come to surgery because, after seeing the look on my doctor's face, I thought I was going to die and I didn't want her to see that. My next thought was to try and make sure my husband wouldn't feel guilty, so the last thing I said to him was, "Remember, I chose to do this." Then I just held his hand and waited to die. One emergency C-section later and a stuck baby was born. A hundred years ago we probably both would have died. My gyno then had the nerve to say he had told me to have a c-section and I refused. Asshole.

Username: terrapharma

February 25th, 2016, a day that will live in infamy, at least in my eyes and the eyes of my coworkers and the surrounding communities.

Little backstory. I had worked at a factory (Excel Industries, they make Hustler ride-on lawnmowers) on an assembly line in Hesston, Kansas, for the last four years, and got to know the majority of the people who worked there. After about four years, that place EXPLODED! I mean, the amount of production, the number of workers, everything increased ten fold. We were working close to 60 hour work weeks, 20 hours of overtime. I worked second shift.

Long story short, a coworker who had substance abuse issues (mainly meth and alcohol) and problems with mental health (depression, anxiety, he also beat his girlfriend) received a court order at work, the second one in less than a month. From what I heard, he was harassing a coworker about her sexuality (she was a lesbian) and she filed a complaint with HR, but they never did anything so she went to the local police department who filed it that dreadful day.

He got fucking PISSED. He looked right at her and said (according to witnesses) "I'll be back for you, bitch." and left without clocking out. About 30 minutes later, as I was putting together my Kohler engine, I heard what sounded like a pneumatic gun going off the fritz.

My first thought was "That was a fucking gun.". I didn't think anything of it until I heard a loud POP POP POP POP POP POP sound and everyone screaming and a WALL of people (like over 100) were scrambling for the exits, one of which was right next to me. That's when I knew I was right.

Turns out he came back with his AK47 and a Glock, with plenty of magazines, and blew that woman away. Five rounds to the head with the AK, she was the first to die. In the panic, he managed to kill two others, and wounded close to 20 people, some with critical injuries.

As it turns out, he was high on methamphetamine and drunk as fuck at the time, and wanted her dead. We all ran, and when we got outside of the plant, he followed, and shot at the survivors fleeing, managing to hit most of the injured as they ran. I ran across the highway and into a nearby trailer park where I hid for a few seconds in a shed, helped a guy hide behind some plywood, and I took off running again. A guy who lived in one of the trailers let me and a few of my coworkers come inside; he was a former police officer and said he knew it was a gun immediately.

After the commotion we all gather back there in front of the plant, and it was swarming with SWAT. Turns out the first cop of the scene, the police chief, entered the building, was shot at but not hit, and managed to kill the guy. What proceeded was a two week layoff while they managed to conduct the investigation, during which I was called by both the KBI and the FBI and questioned (as was literally every employee there at the time).

I never saw the guy, but I heard bullets whiz by me. I almost got trampled on my way out, and at one point in a panic I ran into a dead end, hit a wall with no exit door. I knew I was going to die. My only thoughts were of my girlfriend of 8 months, and my only friend for the last 10 years. She was and still is my high school crush, and now she's my fiancee.

I didn't care about my coworkers at the time, just my will to live and see my girl again. I didn't even think about my family, including my dad who was also at work in the same factory at the same time as me until it was all over, which made me feel like a huge asshole.

That's my story. Here's a link to the wiki about the event if you wish to read more about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Hesston_shooting
Username: RavynRydge

I had attempted suicide about 3 weeks prior. I thought I wanted to die, and then the actually shock of what I did set in and I didn't want to die. Ten days of inpatient treatment at a psychiatric hospital, I was released to a partially hospitalization program. During that period, I had my Abilify (mood-stabilizer) raised to 10mg -- insanely high for a 100lb 15 year old kid.

I spent weeks telling everyone that I was dizzy, and on that particular day, I couldn't even walk straight. The program drug tested me, convinced I was drunk. Nope. I passed out during a group therapy session, so my parents were called to pick me up (it seemed like I had fallen asleep and when I came to, I was too embarrassed to admit that I hadn't).

My dad came and seeing me, knew something was extremely wrong. He took me straight to an ER, and I was rushed in because at that point I was too weak to stand. Nurses were scrambling around me. I had two IVs put in because there was such mayhem and I was too out of it to tell the second nurse that I already had one.

Then the fun part came. Nobody could find a cause for why I was slipping away so quickly. There was a nurse talking to me, but I kept seeing my aunt. My aunt had died 9 years prior, and I had no memories of her. Talking with my mom after everything, I got everything from her little habits to the sound of her voice perfect, so it was really freaky. Anyway, they wanted to get my blood pressure. No big deal. They put the cuff on, start the machine, and wait. The machines finished, the nurse freezes, and then runs out of the room. Actually ran. She came back with a doctor, who looked at the machine and said it had to be wrong. My blood pressure was somewhere around 60/40. They did it again. Same result.

There's this test they want to do, so they lay me back. I'm staring up at the ceiling and suddenly I'm looking down at myself. I was just thinking "this is really peaceful" as I stared at my own body. They get my blood pressure and sit me up. A little lower than before. The nurse tells me to stand and she isn't allowed to touch me and I can't lean on anything. Everything is fading away to darkness and I hear the machine going but I don't feel it on my arm. I can't feel anything. I'm just floating. I hear my aunt talking to me.

I woke up laying down, multiple doctors standing over me. Both IVs have fluids going in at full speed. My mom is crying in the hall. The doctors are talking about coordinating an airlift to a hospital about an hour away.

I had a blood pressure of 48/22, which is about that of a 5 month child, I believe. Nobody could figure out what it was and all scans were coming up clear. They kept a crash cart in my ER room.

Both bags of fluids are finished and they put on two more. One doctor says he is going to give me medicine for the pain, but I don't feel any pain. I don't feel anything. My mom is trying to talk the doctors out of airlifting me because we could not afford it. Not understanding what she was doing, she signs me out against medical advice. Since the hospital they wanted to send me to was affiliated, she thought we could just go there by ourselves and pick up from the same place. I can't even walk to the car and all the nurses look really worried but there is really nothing they could do.

As we start driving, I can't focus on anything. I drifted in and out of consciousness. But at one point, apparently wide awake, I asked for KFC. My mom got it for me, I ate, and promptly went out again.

At the other hospital, we start the process all over again. My blood pressure is suddenly much higher, though, in the 70/50 range. We have all of the records from the other ER and nobody is really sure what to think. They kept me in the ER there for a few hours and gave me another 2 liters of fluid. At this point, I've been pumped full of 6 liters of just saline. My blood pressure doesn't improve with it and they disconnect me from the saline because I haven't peed at all yet and they think they might be making it worse. I am getting prepped to be sent up to the pediatric unit, and they take my blood pressure once more. It is suddenly 90/60, which is pretty normal for me. I was completely coherent. They released me that night.

It happened 2 more times before anyone pieced together that maybe the Abilify was too high. Didn't help that I was allergic to it.

Username: paradoxicly

When I was 9 I would go horseback riding every week with an instructor. And it was a colder November night around 6 o'clock and my instructor who was an old woman with back problems was talking to my father who was there back from being deployed and recently just got out of surgery.

the pasture was right next to them probably about 50 feet away so she decided that I was old enough to go get the horse by myself.

He was a taller horse probably about 17 hands and little short me was probably about 4'6 or so so I went out their and I came up to him and I stroked him and like I said it was a cold and bit windy day this made the horses a bit friskyer so he turned away from me not wanting to be caught.

I was right BESIDE him (NO I was not behind him I was not that idiotic lol I knew the difference) but never the less he decided to rear and cattle kick me(this is the point where I blacked out and I was told this is what happened next) for those of you that don't know what a cattle kick it is a kick out to the side he had kicked me in the right eye half an inch over more to the right and he would have hit my temple and killed me instantly if I was wearing a helmet his foot would have gotten caught in the side strap and dragged me under him killing me instantly.

I collapsed on the ground and my dad who had just had a surgery ran all the way from where he's talking and picked me up popping all of his stitches in the process and carried me out of the ring my trainer had called 9-1-1 in the process when the ems and all of the other emergency vehicles got there they put me in the back

and we're taking me to the hospital they let my dad right up in the front the whole time they're all I can remember was them telling me don't go to sleep don't go to sleep don't go to sleep

and at one point when I blacked out again my dad heard them saying losing her she's going flat and all the things you would hear when they're talking about a person dying and at one point my heart stopped I was dead but I came back (mwahaha can't get rid of me)

I later got to the hospital and my vision was all red and blurry from the blood in my eyes it was horrible and I was in and out of things and I couldn't remember things.

So after all of this luckily enough I only ended up with a shattered orbital bone which is the bone above your eye, a the detached retina which I had to have the surgery for 3 days later now I still have a bruise on my eye where I can't see out of if I close my left eye.

Surprisingly enough I did not break my nose I had a concussion and doctors believe I developed dyslexia from this but they're not sure if I had it before or not.

I have one small scar on my eyebrow but besides that you couldn't tell physically and I'm still alive today and I'm really lucky for that. I don't blame anyone or anything for what happened and I still ride horses and not afraid.

I still love that course he's a good boy he's just excited and just proves that all animals are wild and you can't help what happens sometimes no one was really in the wrong.

Username: TaigaCat00

I started having a hypoglycaemic seizure. When I was home alone. In a foreign country. Without a working phone.

I'd moved to Denmark a few months prior to study abroad (still here, love it) and was living in the spare room of some distant relations.

They left me largely to my own devices, and due to my schedule (classes by day, parties by night, and being semi nocturnal to keep contact with family back in the states) we would often go long periods without seeing one another. As it stands, nobody was home that day nor were they expected to be.

Having a seizure isn't always how it's depicted in the movies, for me it was periods of inability to move due to intense muscle locking punctuated with just enough of my body relaxing enough for my limbs to flail and hit the floor. I tried to hold still, and was furious that I couldn't gain control of my body

I remember being completely lucid outside of this, thinking I needed to plug in my phone so I could try to call someone, thinking I need to shout, but I was unable to form words, my throat felt like it was constricting without reason. I remember thinking "this is what it feels like to be force-choked".

In what felt like hours I managed to drag myself across my room and to the door, losing my pants somehow in the process. Trying to get up to work the doorknob was impossible-- I kept spasming uncontrollably and falling back to the floor. I thought "I am going to die, shaking and pantsless, and nobody's going to know what happened."

Luckily my cousin came home and heard the noise, the sounds of thumping and strangled yelling, me screaming at the top of my lungs yet making barely a sound. She said later "oh, I thought you just maybe sounded sad and so I came to check". Thank god she thought to comfort the apparently crying foreigner upstairs.

After she found me I passed out. I honk I was holding on just long enough to make sure someone would know what was happening. The next thing I remember is being held down by a team of paramedics and having liquid heaven (glucagon) injected into my veins.

Warmth spread through me and I finally stopped spasming, and let me tell you you don't fully appreciate the bliss of having your muscles at rest until you can't. I apparently had punched one of the paramedics hard enough to bruise both his arm and my hand, and over the next few hours most of my body turned blue from bruising after knocking around so much.

They had to carry me downstairs-- my muscles were such a combination of strained and pulled and cramped and exhausted that I could hardly move. Got helped to eat a sandwich in the back of the ambulance.

Spent the rest of the day in the hospital being processed by the wonderfully free but intensely slow and confusing Danish healthcare system.

Username: [deleted]

Heat Exhaustion. If you don't know, heat exhaustion is where your body simply overheats. Doesn't sound too bad, I mean almost everyone has had a fever before and that is about like that right? Wrong. Wrong in such an unimaginable way.

Now for the story. I was working at my job (a grocery bagger) when a lady came up and bought an entire pallet of mulch from outside. It was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit outside, but my boss told me to help her (even though I am one of the scrawniest people that work there).

So I go outside, help her move something like 100 bags of mulch on to the back of her truck. She slips me a tip (we aren't supposed to accept them, but it was hot out and that was hard, so I didn't care). I tell her to have a nice day, turn around and go inside.

The second the AC hits me, everything gets incredibly groggy (like I stayed up for 24 hours), I notice my clothes are absolutely soaked in sweat, I become more dizzy than after any theme park ride I had ever taken, my skin gets clammy, my mouth turns dry, and my head feels like it is on fire.

I barely stumble inside the door, then sit on one of the display chairs next to it. I throw off my hat, and at this point some of my coworkers who where right near the door become pretty concerned.

I can't really answer them, as I was simply too exhausted. Maybe five minutes later I manage to stumble to one of my bosses to say what was happening and ask for sometime to recover.

This whole time, my current state of being hasn't improved at all, and I can barely keep my eyes open. After I manage to mumble loud enough for her to hear, she tells me she isn't sure if she can give me a break, because I already had lunch.

I am having a medical emergency and the same manager that takes and gives smoke breaks is considering whether she has to or not (I will never forget that). She finally decides to let me take a ten minute break, and I shamble over to a seat (in the cafe, we aren't allowed to sit on the display chairs she corrected me).

10 minutes and a few long drinks of water later, I am totally fine. Of course fast forward to now and one of my new bosses is angry at me for taking so many water breaks.

Common symptoms of heat exhaustion are: Confusion, Nausea, Dizziness, Fainting, Weakness, Clammyness, Profuse Sweating.

I had all of the symptoms, and let me tell you, there is nothing I have felt since that has been closer to dying, no stomach bug, tooth infection, temporary electrocution,101 degree fever, 2nd degree burns, or even cactus whacks. Nothing compares, you simply feel like your body is failing.

Username: Barfdragon

A little late to the party, but here goes nothing...I was in my early 20s. A group of us filled up a couple coolers with beer and 'near beer', and headed out to a place called the Kinkaid Spillway here in Illinois for a swim.

At the top of the spillway, the falls open up into Kinkaid Lake proper, and that's where we chose to swim and drink copious amounts of alcohol. After a couple hours of debauchery and heavy drinking, my friend Jeremiah and I began discussing how fun it would be to climb the [bluff on the opposite side of the lake and jump off](http://i.imgur.com/Dy9nm5T.jpg). Fuck-a-bunch-a that 'walking around the lake' bullshit though. No, that's not how a man does it.

A man swims. We took off, paddling for the cliffs. After a couple minutes of swimming I had already begun to tire, so I treaded water for a moment to see how much progress we had made. That opposite shore looked *so* much closer initially; we weren't even half way.

I knew at that moment we weren't going to make it. I looked to my side and could see from the expression on Jeremiah's face that he knew we weren't going to make it either. We gestured to each other and started heading to the closest bank, off to the side of the lake.

We didn't make it much farther before fatigue really set in. I was *so* fucking tired. I was winded, my muscles were burning, and my body wasn't responding the way I ordered it to anymore. I reexamined our position: Nowhere close to shore yet.

I couldn't properly swim anymore, so I was trying to doggy-paddle towards land at this point. My muscles were so fatigued, however, that I was losing gross motor control, so I was just kinda flailing at the water with all my limbs, like some retarded, injured octopus. I started to become lightheaded. I felt nauseated. My lungs burned like they were full of cinders, and I couldn't draw a full breath. Shore was *so* far away.

I knew at that moment I was going to die. I was going to die, and then my family and friends would see my dumbass on the news. "Tonight at six, tragedy on Kinkaid Lake as two young men drown in an alcohol related incident." People would be sitting at home, watching their televisions, saying "Moronic damn kids, drinking and swimming... don't they know that's a dangerous combination." Yeah, we knew. I knew, but I did lots of stupid-ass shit I wasn't supposed to do back then. This would just be the *last* stupid-ass thing.

At this point I was just writhing in the water like I was demonstrating rag-doll video game physics to somebody, trying to remain conscious, trying not to vomit... trying to hold my head above water. My body was failing me, and all I could imagine was that first breath of dirty lake water, filling my lungs, foreshadowing the inevitable. I fought as hard as I could, but I felt myself sinking, and my body just stopped accepting input.

Then my foot hit bottom. Just barely. My toes touched. I inched forward and then I could put my foot down. By the time I reached dry land I was literally crawling. I dragged myself up on shore and just laid there for the longest time. Eventually I was breathing normally again. My body ached, but was functioning properly. I still felt nauseated, but hadn't vomited, although I knew I was done drinking for the day.

Jeremiah was laying about 10 feet away from me, and once we recuperated we headed back around the lake to our group of friends. They were all drinking and having a grand time. None of them had even fucking noticed that we almost drowned, not even the girl I was dating at the time.

I knew I should have never dated her. Plus she gave me chlamydia.

Username: Wigriff

Had a gun held to my face on New Year's Day in 2003 and the person had every intention to murder me once he was done robbing me. I've told this story on reddit before, on this account and another account that I don't use anymore because my family knows its me. But I guess I've never shared what went through my mind when it happened

Time slowed down. I've only ever experienced this twice since - once on mushrooms and once during a really bad car accident. It slowed down. It felt like several hours passed in three seconds. I looked at the barrel and my mind went right to a memory of myself with my brothers when I was at Disney World when I was 8.

It was a memory of when Tigger turned and knocked my little brother over with his tail, causing me to jump forward and pull his tail so hard that it ripped off. I felt like I was reliving the memory first person, it was the weirdest surreal moment I have ever encountered. I blinked, my concentration switched to another memory of where my older brother threw a napkin filled with red pepper, black pepper and white pepper at me because he thought it was fun.

I remembered the pain I felt when the pepper bomb hit me in the face, wincing in pain as I felt the memory. I don't know how to explain it but this slid into a memory of when the same brother that hit me with a pepper bomb had caught a squirrel alive in a have-a-heart trap in the backyard and burned it alive because he thought it would be fun.

I snapped back to reality as the guy with the gun had the barrel against my forehead now and was demanding my money and everything. I was still frozen, I couldn't move. But then I thought about how my older brother was crying with me at my grandma's funeral -

He felt responsible for her death because she had a slip and fall in the house while he was with her and he wasn't strong enough to hold her up and keep her from falling, saying I would have been able to, that I was stronger than him and he needed me as much as I needed him. I heard my younger brother call out my name and was brought back to reality as the gun wasn't against my head anymore.

I looked at it, a few inches back from me now, I could see that the guy's finger wasn't on the trigger and he had a poor grip on the gun now that he didn't have both hands on it. Gun in the guy's right hand, his left held out to receive my wallet and backpack, I sprung into action while having another flashback of my dad pitching to me at batting practice, telling me he wanted me to get used to seeing a pitch down and away and not swinging for it.

I pushed the gun to the right with my left hand, took a step towards him and slightly to the left out of the way of the gun. I secured his wrist with my right hand, using every bit of strength I had to keep it pointed away from me as I pushed his arms downward.

Down and away, down and away - this phrase from my dad repeating in my head like a broken record. I felt nothing but rage and my body was on autopilot. I felt possessed, like someone else was in control of my body and I was locked in experiencing it all.

I was a few inches taller and way stronger from being a jocky guy and had a huge advantage in as I turned the gun away and he struggled to keep control of it, I heard it go off twice in a split second and the struggling stopped. The guy had misfired during the struggle and ended up shooting himself in the chest twice. I was in control again as the guy slumped down, my hands firmly holding the pistol as he was gasping for his last breath and starting to cry.

All of this took place over a period of about 10-12 seconds, but it felt like an entire day had gone by. I'm still coping with this event 13 years later.

Username: what_the_puck

A few years ago, snowboarding in upstate New York with a few friends, decide to take the lift one last time while friends warm up in the lodge. It's starting to get dark and the snow is picking up a bit, but there are floodlights galore in the place and I can see just fine.

I don't bother with my coat, since I had taken it off in the lodge and it's only fifteen minutes in moderate winter weather-a common practice, at least among my group.

I decide to take the main hill, Holly, down, and I get maybe one hundred meters before the snow is bad enough that I have to pull my goggles over my eyes, effectively erasing any hopes of peripheral vision, and hope no one sideswipes me.

Another hundred meters, and the snow is so bad I only have a few meters visibility. I can barely tell the slope is lit. I'm not stupid-I make my way to the edge, to a spot of hypothetical visibility so no one beheads me with their skis, and wait a few minutes to see if the snow will die down a bit.

It stays that way for a few minutes, about the amount of time it would have taken me to reach the bottom of Holly, and I hear one of my friends yelling my name from the main lift. I figure, sure, there's snow up the asshole out here, it's my (more experienced)friend making sure I didn't impale myself on a tree, so I yell back.

Friend continues to shout my name about every fifteen seconds for the next few minutes, and I eventually give up on yelling back.

I'm starting to notice the cold as I notice that no one has passed me on either skis or a snowboard in the past ten minutes-not since I got off the lift, really. It's progressively getting darker, it's even harder to see now, and I'm increasingly thankful I own gloves that could give me heatstroke.

In a small panic, I begin to frantically shout, hoping a staff member will be in the vicinity on a snowmobile, or maybe some other idiot decided a whiteout would be a good time to shred.

This is when my friend begins shouting my name again, but from farther up the hill, behind me, and it's also when an incredible sense of dread settles in my chest.

I immediately push myself up to stand and semi-carefully make my way down the slope, definitely going faster than was safe at the time. When I reach the bottom of Holly, with the lifts and the lodge, the snow all but disappears, and the thickness in the air disappates. There are people everywhere.

Upon reaching the lodge, all of my friends are there. I ask if any of them had gone to look for me, and they say no, they had assumed I had gone back up. I had been gone for forty minutes.

Username: TheEveling

Probably the craziest thing that's ever happened to me:

This was about 3 years ago or so and at the time I was driving a 1989 Cutlass Supreme. I had worked earlier in the day and of course driven to work with no problems. When I left that day for my lunch break, I noticed there was a light displayed on the dashboard that read simply "brake" but didn't think much of it as the brakes appeared to be working fine. (Let me take this opportunity to let everyone know; I am NOT a car guy.)

So I go out on lunch and I notice that on a few occasions it seems like I'm really having to push on the brake pedal very hard to get the car to come to a complete stop, but it was raining this particular day and the roads were still wet so I chalked it up to the slick driving conditions and went about my way. This was around 7pm or so.

Fast forward to about midnight. I'm driving home and am less than a mile from my house at this point when I begin to crest a very large hill leading to my home. As I'm coming down the hill, I go to hit the brakes and slow my descent and...nothing. The brake pedal goes straight to the floor.

Let me take this moment to provide some insight into my mindset/wellbeing at this point. I'm 23, head firmly up my ass, high as a kite with my weed and bowl literally right next to me in the seat and now my car won't stop. It was literally the most terrifying feeling I've ever experienced.

The hill I'm travelling down is a pretty steep hill and at the bottom lies a stop sign and directly in front of the stop sign on the other side of the road is a stone wall so my only options are to try and make the turn doing about 60+ mph. It was really odd though. Like, I assessed the situation, panicked really quickly and then it was just gone.

There was a very strange stillness about the whole experience. I just knew what I had to do and what my options were and the rest wasn't up to me, but when I think back to that moment, I can remember the eerie calmness that came over me like it was yesterday.

I don't know how it happened. I credit my years of video gamez. The stop sign approaches; I whip the wheel to the right like my life depends on it (pause for laughter) and **somehow** this boat makes the turn of a lifetime and I don't run into the wall.

I still can't stop at this point but there's 2 parking lots to my right side so I turn off the main road and go through the first parking lot, jump a small ditch, and go careening through the second parking lot. At this point, I'm over it. I'm doing everything I can to get this god damn car to stop. To the point where I'm trying to shove the transmission into park and it's making a god awful noise but I just don't care, I just want out of this death trap.

As fate would have it, there are two telephone poles lying horizontally in the grass at the end of the second parking lot. I hit the first one, go over it, and thankfully, the second one stops me in my tracks.

I hit so hard, my door opened and my hood flew up but whatever, the car stopped so I didn't give a shit if it was damaged or how much. Ended up losing my phone in the process so I had to run home the last half mile or so and my stepdad and I went and got the car the next day.

Turns out the master cylinder and the slave cylinder had gone out and something else too, but I can't really remember. But yeah, some crazy shit. There are times when I think about that story and can hardly believe it's something that happened to me and not a story I've read or movie I've seen. It was just that unbelievable.

Username: TTBHoneyBear

I've had too many for my age... considering I'm a 1st worlder. Plenty of evidence that I'm an absolute idiot but hey, here's my worst.

Was carefully stepping down a scree slope behind my friends along this steep 20-30 meter slope down to the beach. There's a few of those sturdy rooted plants that somehow are hanging on, and a few roots where their brethren used to be. So we're stepping along this small ledge on the slope, near the top still. And suddenly my foot slides a little, the ground compresses a tiny amount. Oh, and the whole ledge drops away and crumbles into a dirt and pebble avalanche.

At first I wasn't sliding, that's what go me. At first I was stationary, even though I didn't have anything gripping the surface. I was moving so slowly down hill it didn't seem that bad but I just couldn't get any grip. My shoes were flinging dirt as I dug the toes in, my fingers scraping along the surface as I went to my belly and made as much drag as possible. I hit a rock on my knee, then my elbow grazed a root and *holy shit*, I was going fast now. About as fast as I can sprint. Still, it's scary but I didn't think it was that bad.

I rotated so that I was on my butt, heels digging in to the ground as I tried to spot something to grab. Then I saw it.

Oh. Shit. The end of the scree slope was on the beach, where the water laps against the rocks at high tide. Today the water was out. What we hadn't seen from the top was that the scree slope only went down 2/3rds of the way. Beyond that the water washed the pebbles away and the last section was a straight down drop onto big boulders.

Now I had nothing to grab on to, I couldn't slide 2 fucking meters to my left and grab the bushes because I couldn't control my direction, I could only control my orientation. Dead ahead of me the slope just got steeper and steeper (we were going diagonally across it to avoid this steep section) and then I could see boulders. There was nothing to grab, nothing I could do. So I thought, hey... this might be it. I can't see anything else to do.

I kept digging my heels, scooping my arms. I dug my arms into the scree so hard the pebbles scratched up my arms and cut deep.

But I got lucky, a small bush about the height of my shin was in front of me. So I grabbed at the roots as I flew by (going FAST), the jolt of stopping hurt a lot, but it was kinda soft as the root flexed in the soft ground. The root then start to tip towards me as I dangled from it, trying to find a spot to rest my feet and take the weight off of this flimsy piece of plant before both of us tumbled down. It broke, very suddenly, and I started to slide slowly again. I turned over onto my butt again to look for something, anything else, and noticed just one more thing before the edge of the slope.

A small root, a dead bush had left behind. It didn't look great and dead roots normally are less firmly planted but it was literally ON the edge. I had to wait as I approached it, for fear of sliding off course. It came sailing up to me, and I turned on my side as it came by, using all my strength to slow myself in a smoother motion instead of jolting but at those speeds there's not much you can do.

My feet went over the edge. My arms locked fully outstretched and I felt the same jolt run through them. I was stopped, looking up at the root... it hadn't even budged. I pulled myself up off the edge of the slope (taking care not to look behind me) and over the root in a sort of spiderman squat... but not upside down.

My legs shook so hard they practically jackhammered into the slope. It was so steep I couldn't get back up, so I stood with my foot on the root. It took one friend holding another by the leg to reach down to me from a solid point and for about an hour or two afterwards I jittered like all hell. Took a long time to overcome the whole fear of sliding thing. The loss of grip was just so sudden and everything seemed fine. Within seconds of that I thought I was going to die for sure.

Username: Peregrine7

Girl set me up in an attempted robbery. Was young and supremely stupid at the time. Happened to also carry (in a city where carrying wasn't legal, blame the company i kept at the time.)

We get out of the car behind her building... she had talked me into "taking her home to change..." before we go out. Naturally I'm thinking "SCORE!!!" We walk about 20 feet and I hear running footsteps behind me. I spin towards the noise just in time to get pistol whipped in the back of my head by a guy in a black raiders jersey with a stocking cap over his face.

As he's hitting me he says "give me that shit," which was in the moment very strange as I didn't have anything visible he'd know about. As he's hitting me, I instinctively turned and pulled my gun out of my waist, aimed in his direction and squeezed. Click... click... we both stand there in what seemed like the longest moment ever, then I dashed behind a parked car, and spotted him, and raised up and squeezed two more times. Click...click....

A baby desert eagle 9mm has its clip release button on the side of the handle. This means don't keep it in your waist unless you want the clip to fall out when you draw.

I was firing with an empty gun. As I realized this, he decided to take off. I looked to my right and noticed he had ANOTHER GUY WITH HIM also holding a gun who seemed to be frozen at the whole scene, their intended mark going all Jason Bourne but at the same time no shots fired. As SOON as I saw him in my peripheral, adrenaline kicked to another notch, and I dashed as fast as I could towards the alley across the parking lot.

As I sprinted through the puddles in the alley, I fully expected to feel bullets hit me in the back and just prayed they didn't hit my head. As I hit the end of the alley I could see a cop car at the edge of the corner, so I mashed on my brakes, composed myself and stashed my gun under a dumpster, and walked up to the cop.

Now, we have a bunch of cops investigating the area I almost got robbed in, and could have shot at least one person a few minutes earlier. The only thought on my mind was WHERE IS THE FULL CLIP WITH MY PRINTS ON IT in this city where this is already a crime.

I scanned all over the pavement. An officer handed my my broken two way pager. My watch had come off, they found that too. As I scanned to the right I saw it glistening in the streetlight... my full 15 round clip. I calmly walked over to it and casually kicked it into the most convenient puddle in the history of puddles. As the girl who set me up finished lying to the cops about what she saw, I composed myself more and waited for the cops to leave.

I let her live with her story that she didn't know what was going on... but before she could go I made her go get my gun from under that dumpster. Looking back, I'm sure either that was those guys first robbery, they had BB guns, or both. Had they just said "YO!!" with their guns drawn at a distance they would have had everything they wanted from me, hell the gun too.

I no longer have that gun nor do I carry on the regular or make such dumb decisions. But that will always be a night to remember, and for a half second running down that alley, I did make peace with myself and hoped to keep running toward the light that I just knew was coming.

In those seconds I only could think about my mom crying. The whole 30 seconds seemed like an hour.

Username: broadwayallday

In 1988 I was aboard the USS Nimitz and had just finished up an 18 hour day working CAG-ARM DE-ARM on Cat 3. This meant I was "stationed" on catapult 3 (the right-most catapult on the angle deck) and was responsible for arming weapons on planes as they took off, then catching them as they landed and de-arming them before they taxied away to park and shut down. It was a long day and I had just made it down to my bunk when I heard the general quarters alarm.

If memory serves, this was just after midnight, so it was literally the middle of the night. My bunk was just under the "3 wire" and in the mornings when I'd go to work, I'd just pop up to the carrier flight deck on the port (left) side of the ship and walk across the flight deck. It was a shortcut to my shop where I worked. So when the general quarters alarm sounded (general quarters is "all hands man your battle stations") my instinct was to avoid the long way and just pop up to the flight deck and cut across.

However, when I went to the doorway leading to the catwalk that would take me to the deck, I was stopped by an obviously panicked shipmate who told me, "can't go that way!". When I asked why, his response was, "because it's all on fire!".

Well shit. I made my way to my shop which was near the front right of the ship, forward of the elevators and made my way to the flight deck. Sure enough, it was all on fire as far as I could see.

Apparently someone was testing the guns (M61A1 Vulcan Machine Guns) on an A-7 Corsair and had jimmied the "weight off wheels" switch to fool the airplane into thinking it was off the ground, bypassing gun safety switches. This enabled the gun to be tested on the ground as part of regular, nightly maintenance.

Unfortunately, this time they had left the gun connected, meaning it was a complete circuit and it accidentally fired several armor piercing, high explosive rounds into a KA6D tanker sitting about 10 yards away, igniting the fuel that began to pour all over the flight deck setting everything around it on fire. A couple of people working there died instantly and I was arriving to a scene of utter destruction.

I was quickly assigned to a hose team forward of the fire and began putting it out. With me was one of my best friends. We both started to do our job and tried to contain the fire but it just kept spreading... and it was spreading further and further forward, trapping us on the bow of the ship.

I remember as clearly as it was yesterday that there was a moment in time where it became obvious that we were either going to die standing right there fighting that fire, or we were going to have to make the conscious choice to jump over the side, 100 feet up, in the middle of the indian ocean in the middle of the night. Now that might SOUND like the better of two options, but trust me, the chances of them locating us bobbing up and down in the ocean in the middle of the night are miniscule. You're going to die either way.

I just remember being very calm about it, and the only thing I was concerned with was, "I hope they tell my mom I died doing my job and wasn't afraid".

There were two things that happened that saved our asses. One, the wind shifted because they were able to turn the ship in the right direction before we died. Two, someone FINALLY hit the AFFF (Aqueous Film Forming Foam) and that created a hole for us to fight our way through.

I'll never forget it and when I close my eyes almost 30 years later I can see it plain as day.

Username: JeffRSmall

I was flying to Miami but had a layover in Charlotte. We got to Charlotte but there was a righteous storm and the pilot couldn't land. Instead he circled waiting for the storm to either abate or pass or at least find an opening.

We circled for what felt like forever. At this point we already missed our connecting flight. Eventually the captain came on over the speakers and said "This is your captain, we're running low on fuel and can no longer circle. Please remain seated and have your seatbelts buckled, and I'm going to take us in for a landing and it's going to be rough."

Now, I've had "rough" flights before. Some intense turbulence, which can be a wee bit nerve wracking, so I felt pretty prepared. This made those other experiences seem like the world's smoothest flight. We rocked, and we rolled, we swung back and forth and up and down. And we got hit by lightning, many many times, which shakes the whole damn plane up and seems like the worst possible thing that can happen.

In actuality, the last time lightning took down a plane was in 1967. In fact, every major airliner currently in service is struck by lightning an average of once per year. Since 1967, much more has been learned about how lightning effects planes, and modern planes have to pass a rigorous set of lightning certification tests to verify their safety. It is quite safe for today's liners to be struck by lightning. Even multiple times in a single flight. However....

I did not know this at the time. Neither did the rest of the passengers as our plane was wildly shaking and repeatedly being stuck by lightning sending massive **BOOM** noises through the air. The passengers, predominantly black, were all yelling and screaming and praying. "AWH LAWD JESUS" amongst other things.

I was sitting by myself, my friends a few rows ahead of me (we booked last minute and couldn't get seats together). One of my buddies looked back at me and gave me this look like "dude holy shit" and I just kind of nodded back.

"This is it" I figured. "This is how it all ends." No panic, just calm and acceptance. Oddly enough I never thought about my family. My thoughts were "Did I get laid enough? I slept with enough attractive women right? Yeah I guess I did. I did well for myself. I guess I can die happy." I don't think that's what you're supposed to think, but apparently I attribute the value my life to the quality and quantity of women I've slept with. These are the kinds of things you learn about yourself when you think you're about to die.

Anyway, sitting there awaiting my death, lo and behold we land. Cheers and applause erupt from the plane and continue from the time we hit the tarmac to the time we come to the gate. As we get off the plane people are shaking the pilot's hand, giving him high fives. I can't remember what I did, I thanked him in some form or another, but I was really thinking about getting my ass to the nearest bar.

Since we missed our connector we had a few hours to kill before our next flight so we went straight to the bar. After that ordeal I remember I ordered bourbon on the rocks. The bourbon (probably equivalent to 1.5oz) was $13 and I got charged $3 for the ice! FOR ICE!!!

A drank my tiny ass bourbon on the rocks, felt nothing from it, and went to the gate to wait a few hours to catch the next flight. Airport bars are way too expensive. Maybe I should have gotten beer instead. Anyway I guess that's it.

Username: Loverboy_91

This was nearly 20 years ago now. I was at Freshwater Beach, in Sydney with my girlfriend,best mate and his wife. It was an unplanned trip, so much so we ended up buying a swimsuit for my gf before heading to the beach.

So we are swimming, having a good time and everyone bar me and my mate gets out of the water. It was a beautiful weekday, and we were the only people at the north end of the beach. I am a reasonably strong swimmer, and in the best shape of my life due to my outdoor, physical job.

My mate swims back in, but I enjoy some more time in the water before heading in. I'm paying more attention to the waves breaking on the northern rocks, and the water around me than I am my proximity to the beach. I finally turn around, and see that I've basically drifted about 200-300 metres off the beach. No worries I think, I'll start to swim back in.

I start swimming, but after a minute or so I realise I'm not making any headway. I'm in a rip. For those that don't know, a rip is a narrow, fast current that moves away from a beach and will drag you out to sea basically. So I start to swim sideways in an effort to make it out of the rip.

After a couple minutes, I turn back to land and start trying to make forward progress again. At this point, panic has well and truly set in. I am not making any forward progress at all and I'm starting to tire. I start contemplating swimming for the rocks, which had some reasonably large surf breaking onto them and I'd be risking some serious injuries. I decide however to swim back to shore instead.

I put my head down, and start to power towards shore. I decide not to look up at my progress because I know if I look up after minutes of swimming and find I'm no closer I'll likely give up there and then. In the back of my head is that if I'm still in the rip, all of this effort is for naught and I'm going to drown today.

Prior to me making this effort, I'm treading water and waving to my friends on the beach and screaming for help. However, they can't hear me and think I'm only waving hello.

At this point, I've stopped panicking and my mind is a blank. I put every ounce of strength into my swimming and I swim harder than I have ever swam in my life. I'm literally on autopilot, like an animal fighting for it's life I have no conscious thought other than to expend every ounce of energy before I die in an effort to live.

Time was pretty fluid at this point, but I was told later that I was out in the water by myself for about half an hour. I think deep down I knew I was ok when I felt the waves crashing around me, but I didn't stop swimming until I was pretty much crawling up the sand onto the beach.

I collapsed on the sand, with the water breaking around me. My friends still don't realise how serious it was, as I lay on the beach in the most exhausted state of my life. I am almost hyperventilating trying to catch my breath, and once I do I unfairly berate my friends for almost letting me drown. My best mate was a very good swimmer, lived next to the beach all his life and I thought he'd know what it looks like when someone was in trouble in the water.

I honestly can't remember anything from that point I decided to do or die swimming back to that beach, my brain stopped recording memories for a little while. I just remember knowing if I can't do this, I'm dead and that my life is completely in my own hands.

Username: greywolfau

Ever since coming to college my health really wavered. I had pneumonia every fall of school, and my allergies had also become worse (I've asthma to top it all off). The spring of '15 was the worst: sinus infections, allergy-induced bloody noses, asthma flare-ups, and even my face would blowup from coming in contact with peanuts/tree nuts (before, I would just sneeze and get hives or stomach cramps if I ate it). It lasted that whole spring, and after that I guess my body toughened up and I've not been sick for well over a year.

Fast forward to this past Autumn, where I had an allergic reaction to something that was cross contaminated with some peanut or tree nut oil. I made it to a practice room before I really noticed my face becoming hot.

I was itchy and sneezing all of a sudden, etc. the usual allergic reaction symptoms, but then my face began swelling ( and at the time I didn't know how severe it looked. I thought this would end up fine and was dismissing others help so I could just get to the bathroom for a wet paper towel to drape over my eyes). I was trying to be calm about the matter but my breathing started to become compromised.

Once that happened, I tried to force my "calm" self to walk to my instrument locker (a few yards away from the bathroom I made it to), open it and then my instrument case that holds a spare inhaler.....just to find that my inhaler isn't in there, my head is becoming really light, and it's becoming harder to feel things.

Thank God one of my TAs found me, saw my face and immediately grabbed my hand so he could walk me to the band office. He didn't have a car, and didn't know much of the area yet (he's a foreign student who just arrived for his masters).

The secretary there had an ice pack for my eyes to reduce the swelling, called the nearest health center to prep them for my arrival for an epipen shot and crushed some Benadryl for me to stick under my tongue.

I felt surprisingly calm about the whole matter, and what felt like slow moving time really was about a half hour of me foolishly trudging around to try and fix my allergic reaction the way I normally did. After the epipen though, everything hit me at once and I called my mom crying because I really could have died because of how stubborn I was.

What made it even scarier was that I went to that same health center a WEEK BEFORE this whole ordeal for a checkup and the particular Doctor I saw noticed that an epipen was not on my list of medications that I have. When he asked me why I didn't have an epipen as a last resort for my allergy I had told him "my allergies never get that bad, so I don't normally ask for one", and my mom honestly thought I wouldn't need one partially because of a fear that it would cause cardiac arrest or something.

His exact reply (I'll never forget) was as follows:

"In all my years of working in this field, I've only had one person die in front of me, and it was a child who didn't have an epipen for an allergic reaction that became really bad."

Needless to say, I've an epi pen now.

Username: PmknSharkLatte

I was stabbed/sliced across my throat and then into my cheek back in college. At first I thought I had been punched but I fell to the ground and saw blood squirting everywhere.

My attacker ran off and eventually other people saw me and helped hold towels over the wound. During this time I was trying to talk to the people around me but blood was squirting whenever I tried to talk. I "knew" I was going to die based on the people's looks around me.

The first stage of this I remember was the "making peace" with it phase. I remember thinking "well this is it" and that I was just going to slowly drift away and that was it. I remembered alot of good things that had happened, but mostly things I wish I would have changed. During this time I was kind of fading in and out and telling people to tell my mom this, tell my dad that, tell my brothers and sister I was proud of them, etc. It was pretty surreal.

After this part though I remember I started fading out and wasn't able to talk anymore. This was probably after about 15 mins of laying there still waiting on an ambulance and I kind of just felt at peace. Everyone has there own beliefs and I've heard of people saying they got a feel for the afterlife and all that, but for me it was simply just going black and I was prepared for that to just be it.

Eventually the ambulance and police and everything were there and rushed me down to the ambulance....i was in and out during this but remember talking with a paramedic. He was asking me what happened and about if my parents knew/where they were etc and trying to keep me awake. I began to drift off again and remember him saying"get the defibrillator ready, we're losing him."

At this point I remember thinking about my funeral and my parents and everyone there, especially my Mom and how theres just no way I wanted them to go through that. I kind of caught a second wind and was just like "fuck this" I am not closing my eyes again and just fought as hard as I could to not fall asleep, I don't know how to explain it.

Eventually I made it to the hospital and i don't remember a ton. I woke up and had 44 stitches across my throat and 10 in my cheek. My parents and some friends were around me and had clearly been crying all night.

I found out that I had lost over 1/3 of my blood and that the knife came within 1 mm of slicing my jugular. When the doctors called my parents at 3 am, they told them they didn't expect me to make it. The doctor also told me multiple times how he doesn't understand how I made it and how lucky I was to be alive because in any kind of research or whatever that has been done, I lost alot more blood than what someone should be able to lose without dying.

Still don't fully understand everything and how the human body works....but I do believe and know 100% I could have let go and died that night. Not sure what effect the mind has on keeping the body going in circumstances like that, but the whole thinking about my mom at my funeral just changed everything for me.

If you're interested in reading the story of what happened and some pics, I did a post on a similar thread awhile back:

Thanks for reading.

Username: GoPanthers88

I grew up in Indiana. The weather there was pretty easy and consistent. I moved out to Colorado and made new friends. We are not the most responsible guys though.

We decided to go camping on the first warm day, it was around 70. We got out late because we didn't pack the day before (i.e. Not that responsible), and set up camp. The next day we travelled off trail down a steep ravine. We camped out near a river.

That night it snowed. Most of us were inside hammocks near a campfire. Those that were in the hammocks got up and set a tarp up around them. We fell back to sleep. That morning we woke up to a lot more snow... And it was still snowing. We left behind our trash and a tent, and we destroyed my pillow to stuff extra socks with the stuffing so we can have warm gloves.

The tarp was also left down there. Free shit if you want it. We trekked back up the mile long ravine in about a foot of snow. Most of us did not have boots. For some reason we split up. The two that went on their own we're going to get to the car first and warm it up for the slower four of us.

The two got lost and when us four finally got up the ravine we heard yelling. Luckily we met back up. Now at this point the person who knew this place told us that he did not recognize anything. We were lost. We trekked up a hill and I was slowing down. I was also wet from a combination of snow and sweat. At the top of the hill the wind picked up.

A blizzard hit us. One half of our group decided to start a fire I don't remember what the other half was doing. Me and a guy who's feet were no longer feeling and that guys brother were trying to start a fire, but the wind was too strong. It didn't help trying to set it up behind a rock.
This is when I noticed that my cloths were soaked. My friends noticed that I was shivering.

My face turned blue. The older brother told me to take my cloths off. I was contemplating this for a while. I did and jumped in a sleeping bag, while the other two continued to start a fire. My shivering intensified and I felt frozen. They tried to keep me awake by asking questions I guess at one point I could barely answer.

I sincerely thought I was dying. I thought in the next two hours, or hell the next ten minutes, I was to be dead. I had accepted death.

I told my friends that I loved them and I said something corny about saying that to my parents and brothers. That is when the older brother freaked out and yelled for help. He got the attention of the rest of the group. Since the ongoing blizzard was blowing out our fire they made a choice to make a fire in a valley between two hills.

I was still dying and could not move. They dragged me (inside of the sleepingbag) to our destination. They set up one of our tents. They threw me in with the brother with the frozen feet. I was still soaked and could barley stay awake. We used our bodies to stay warm. The rest of the group managed to start a fire.

With one percent remaining on our last phone we called 911. This was around 12:00 they found our cars at 3:00 and the search and rescue got to us at 9:00. We made it out of their with all of our fingers and toes.

Username: I_Hump_Rainbowz

30y/o male. I have a defective appetite. I live alone. About a year ago I had gone 2 days without food without notice - it was a stressful work week and the weed just wasn't stimulating my stomach the way it normally would (munchies are a blessing).

Anyways, I got up to use the bathroom and got light headed, I leaned on the sink thinking it was just a normal head-rush from standing up too fast. I made the decision to head back to the couch after it wasn't subsiding - a few steps into that decision I collapsed in my hallway. I don't know how long I was out. When I came to my first thought was "WOW I'm drunk as fuck!" and I got right back up, took 1 step - everything went white, then dark.

I heard crashing sounds and recognized that I was no longer on my feet and I was out again. I wasn't drinking that day.

Conciseness again returned. My ears were ringing, my vision was unreliable - sparkly as I recall. I was sweating profusely and very cold. I slowly raised myself recalling what had happened the last time I stood quickly. The only thought going through my mind was "this is it, I've had a heart attack at 30 or a stroke or whatever" "phone. 911. Phone. 911. I need help. NOW. PHONE"

I crawled to the couch I was at before this went down in search of my phone. It wasn't there. "SHIT SHIT SHIT Was I holding it? Is it in the bathroom? - Can I make to to the door and yell for help?" My vision has calmed down and I could hear normally again after this I was fighting off a panic attack (which I have a long history with) and gathered my sense.

I played it safe and crawled, shivering and sweating but determined, to the bathroom to find it and it wasn't there. I grabbed my blood pressure cuff from the drawer and strapped it on - Haven't used it in a while, let's see if this shows something super serious going on. Dead batteries.

So here I am, sitting on the toilet seat with a dead blood pressure cuff, no phone, sweating, confused, freaked the fuck out, and completely alone. I needed a game plan - It was now becoming obvious that I wasn't dying as my faculties returned.

I was realizing I hadn't eaten for days. I made my way to the living room again to grab the batteries I store in the entertainment center - searching for my phone on the way, never to find it. I took my blood pressure. I don't even remember what it read but it was close enough normal to calm me down.

I just sat there for a while, retracing my steps. Coming to realize I had only eaten 1,000 calories or less over the last 4 or 5 days except for 3-4 beers the day before. As my body returned to normal over the 10-minutes or so, I measured again and we were coming back down to normal.

Needless to say, I threw a bunch of fruit/veg/supplements in the blender and forced fed myself.

That's the only time I thought I would truly going to die.
I now make sure I always have meal replacement mixes around. Even when I'm off food, I can always drink a shake or 2 as needed. I don't let myself go longer than a half day without sustenance any longer.

Username: 419tosser

One year after Christmas, my wife (gf at the time) and I were driving back to her place in Pittsburgh after visiting her parents in Boston. The whole drive was somewhat uneventful, lots of traffic between Boston and NYC, then lots of dead time, no deer or anything.

Then the snow started. Not really a major snowstorm, just enough to make you drop 5 mph off the cruise control. Then we crossed a river and got into the blizzard. The can't see a quarter mile, don't go faster than 15mph kind of blizzard. Dropped 2 in. of snow in about an hour and a half.

We finally got to Pittsburgh, and we're driving through 4-6 in. of snow on 376 heading north from Squirrel Hill Tunnel (if you're familiar with the area)... and I see this dog trotting along in the "shoulder" at the center lane divider.

Me being the bleeding heart that I am, I decided to stop and rescue this poor dog before he causes an accident.

So I pull over, get out and start offering this little bastard treats, tennis balls, anything I think might be his favorite thing. He's having none of it, and is running away from me.

I decided to give up on him, thinking that if he's gonna run away from someone in a blizzard, he's gonna get what's coming. So I turned to look for a gap in traffic so I could cross back over to the real shoulder, and I see it.

The Tahoe, going 55 mph when everyone else is doing 20. Careening down the on-ramp. Time slows down as I see him clip the taxi, then divert course straight for where I'm standing.

I can't see what's on the other side of the concrete barrier, but it can't be worse then the 2 tons of steel coming at me, so I jump the barrier. The other side has been plowed, so all three lanes are in use. I make myself as small as possible, laying on the rumble-strip width of pavement between the yellow line and the concrete wall. All I can think of is the line from Hank Williams Jr.: A Country boy can survive.

I look up to see the roof of the Tahoe increase in angle from parallel with the ground. All I can think of is that my girlfriend is going to watch this Tahoe flip over the barrier wall, and then she won't know if I'm dead or alive.

The Tahoe settled on the original side of the median, it hadn't flipped over like my fight-or-flight center told me it certainly would. It ended up about 40 feet further down the road from where I'd been standing.

Right between the handprints from me vaulting the barrier, there was a divot about 1 in. deep in the concrete, and about as wide as my chest. Literally right where I had been standing.

Username: 96firephoenix