People Who Have Been Clinically Dead Are Sharing What They Saw After

honestly forgot about this for the longest time, i just had that damn that happened moment. but yea, 19 years old and my heroine addiction just started to take hold of me, got a nice chunk of change and said fuck it and bought a gram, got to the spot and a few people i knew were there and they kept bugging me for some,

i didn't like them, I'm pretty sure they fucked me over in someway idk but they kept annoying me so being the prick i used to be i kept saying "yea hold up" "give me a sec." dumped all it out and railed it in one go. last thing i remember is telling this guy I'm going to lay down. then nothing. Black.

this is what i was told:dude stopped me told me i need to stay awake and i guess i told him i was going for a walk. i made it probably 10 20 feet and went down in the parking lot, idk if you know what rock bottom looks like but, but its a little something like this. so here i am dying out back in the parking lot of my dope dealers place in a dirty ass rundown part of town, and my buddies drive by, idk why whatevers looking over me saved me but it did because their the reason I'm alive.

anyway they got me in the car did cpr until i was breathing again, and this is were they fucked up and almost really killed me, they didn't take me to the hospital i don't know why but they just didn't , i guess it was a better idea to break into my parents house and drag me to my bed and leave me, great friends right. this is were i probably really was dead, but around 6 pm the next day my mom checked on me,

i was white as a ghost not breathing and didn't have a pulse so she realizes I'm fucked calls an ambulance, says a prayer stays by me for a minute and walks upstairs. this is were my memory comes back, i woke up to what felt like heart attack, my hearts pumping again, im gasping for air and trying to move but my body feels heavy as fuck,

and i probably have the intelligence of a newborn infant i remember my mom trying to talk to me and i kept saying i don't know a bunch of times. then I'm in the hospital staring blankly at a wall. then I'm back in my bed the time laps fucks with me thinking about it because I'm assuming i was there for more than a few days.

but yea i read some one talking earlier in the thread about recovering from lack of oxegen and having no heartbeat and yea its its own special kinda hell. sounds weird but i feel like i have memory of parts of all that, and part of me doesn't believe it actually happened, idk hard to explain. so to answer the question it was black. didn't really suck actually i guess, waking up did ,didn't bang 72 virgins at the pearly gates , or burn in hell. just black.

Username: cominforthabooty

I have a fairly unique perspective because unfortunately, I cannot be fully anesthetized. Under the effects of a heavy dose, I lose most of the sensation of pain, but I can still feel "pressure", if that makes sense. I'm also conscious, though I feel groggy like I just woke up after sleeping particularly hard.

6 ish years ago, a hole in one of the valves of my heart turned into a tear. The hole was originally a birth defect, but years of athletics had caused that valve to weaken. It was no longer closing all the way and I just felt like I could never catch my breath. It had to be fixed endoscopically.

Surgeons went in through my inner thigh and worked their way up to my heart. They stopped my heart, fixed the tear, then restarted it. Though heavily sedated, I was conscious throughout the entire experience.

Because my heart was otherwise healthy, I was not put on a heart bypass machine so I was clinically dead for around 40-50 seconds. Instead, I was on a ventilator but they had a plan for open my chest in an emergency if something went wrong. My heart was stopped ("relaxed" was the term the surgeon used) with some sort of potassium solution. I immediately felt my heart stop and this is going to sound corny, but I had an overwhelming feeling of utter doom.

Time slowed down. I felt parts of my body going "offline". I wanted to signal for help, but I just couldn't. After what felt like several minutes, my vision started to get far away, like I was rapidly moving below the operating table. A ringing and popping sounds in my ears slowly faded out like I was getting further away from it too.

Then I saw nothing, heard nothing, smelled nothing, felt nothing. It's very hard to explain because the first question people always ask is "you just saw black?". I didn't see black, I saw nothing. It's not like closing your eyes, it's more like not having eyes. I had the sense that I was falling but I couldn't feel air rushing around me. Despite that feeling, I really didn't seem bothered by falling; it just felt right. I have no sense of how long that lasted.

Coming back was a violent experience. To get the relaxing chemical out of my heart and restore a normal heartbeat, they had to shock my heart from the inside using the endoscope. Everything was turned back on, but since I went from 0 to 10 instantly, I just couldn't make sense of it.

Everything was too bright, everything was too loud, it felt like a truck had been parked on top of my chest and was crushing me, thousands of tiny needles were stabbing every part of my body from every direction, and I had the overwhelming taste and smell of copper in my mouth and sinuses.

I tried desperately to breathe, before realizing that the ventilator was doing it for me. I tried to remove it, but I was restrained.

After what seemed like several minutes, my vision focused and my brain started picking out voices and beeps among all the noise. My anesthesiologist was asking me if I was okay. I couldn't speak because of the ventilator, so I nodded my head a little.

After my heart rhythm stabilized, they removed the endoscope (which felt like it was tens of feet long). They closed the wound in my leg, then removed the ventilator. My heart valve had been successfully repaired. I was up and walking just an hour later. They removed my catheter some time that night and I was released from the hospital the next morning.

Username: Nevermind04

I had a terrible car accident 11 years ago. I had been fucking up in life pretty bad and just had no direction and didn’t know what I wanted to do. I partied a lot drinking at the bar and driving myself home almost every night. Every time I did this I’d pray that somehow my truck would crash into a pole and I’d be killed somehow. But nothing ever. Even went through a sobriety checkpoint and passed no problem right before Christmas despite having been drinking for eight hours.

I was getting tired of the bar scene and the way my life was going but I had no idea how to pull myself out. So I packed a bag and backpacked through Europe for a month to find myself. Came back home and felt great. Until two nights later when I found myself at the bar telling my friends my stories of travel. I really hadn’t been drinking because I was talking so much but I got a call saying that a friend was having a party at his house and to come over. I figured perfect! I can get drunk and sleep there.

I never wore a seatbelt until this night. For some reason I was afraid that a drunk driver was going to hit me so I put it on. When I started the truck I said to myself that the car was too big for me to drive, but of course I said fuck it and started heading over. I hadn’t driven for a month. There was a big curve in the road and of course as a young kid I was speeding and I looked down for a half a second to change the cd track and when I looked up traffic was at a dead stop.

I barely had the thought that this was going to hurt as I made impact. I had a Lexus RX300 and hit a Dodge Ram on a lift causing his bumper to hit my grill and the engine came back crushing my legs. Airbags deployed, windshield spidered, steering wheel into my chest and I felt the snap of my neck. And then there was just blackness. Total total blackness and a deafening silence. That silence was the loudest thing I ever heard. The movies really do a good job of showing this.

The blackness looked like when its snowing and you look into the backyard and then someone turns on a light. Its not scary but peaceful. I remember thinking, oh my God I just died. But I was totally ok with it because I had this weird like safe feeling. I can see the scene of the accident but everything is from up and behind myself. I can see myself sitting in that car and the people walking up to it asking if I’m ok. But I cant hear anything at all. Just mouths moving. A man came up to me and said I’m the limo driver and I asked him if he was taking me to heaven or hell and he looked at me weird. Apparently the Dodge hit a limo.

I know some people say theres no God but that simply isn’t true. That night I heard him and I saw his face. Only his face and he looked like he was mad at me and he leaned his face towards mine and said, “this is your last chance.” I knew it wasn’t my time and I had to go back.

I woke up on the curb and I have no idea how all those ambulances and fire trucks got there or really how I even ended up sitting on that curb because my lower left leg was basically detached from the top and just dangling there. I crushed my own leg between the seat and the dash. Someone gave me a cell phone to call my family. I wish I could remember that young mans face but it was like he walked over handed me the cellphone and then was gone.

They told me they had to bring me to the hospital and I said no its ok God is watching me and the cop turned around and said no you’re getting in this god damned ambulance. I waited a really long time for the xray tech to come and image my legs. When he finally got there he apologized for taking so long but that there was a horrible accident on Main St and he was stuck in traffic and he was sure that those people would be rolling in soon.

I said yea thats the car I was in. He said no theres no way you were in that accident and you’re talking to me now. I said yea the white Lexus truck? He said he couldn’t even tell what kind of car it was. I said well was it a white SUV he said yea and I said yea thats the car I was in. He just stared at me in disbelief.

They ended up pinning my leg straight for three months then it was months of physical therapy to learn to walk again and bend my leg. It was horrible. It took about two days for me to realize what had happened and the amount of damage to my legs.

Then for three days straight I did nothing but cry. Wailing crying. After those three days it felt like all my depression and loneliness just went away like as if it was some demon trying to get inside me and they just gave up and left. From that day forward I have never wasted a single moment of my life. I got my act together, went back to school to become a nurse and totally changed my life around. I always say my car accident was the greatest catastrophe that ever happened to me and I am so thankful that it happened.

Sometimes it makes my husband upset when I tell him don’t ever resuscitate me for any reason, just let me go. Not that I want to die, of course I don’t. But I’m not afraid of it at all. Death is not a bad thing. Theres something beautiful and peaceful over there.

Username: Jrose82

Heart stopped. Went totally WHITE OUT. Rose up and saw my body as I moved forward. There was a beautiful woman (long blond hair to her shoulders sparkling blue eyes) in a long white robe.

As I got closer to her I felt the atoms in my body begin to energize into this feeling of total love and euphoria that is coming from her. The love this being, is sending into me, I could LITERALLY feel in each atom of my being.

The atoms were emanating this zinger of loving light as they vibrated at blinding speed that was a HUM all over. (have no way to put it in words) No drug or orgasm has ever reached a minuscule amount of what that felt like.

She told me that in each "Chapter" of our lives we need to look for the "lesson". Once we get that lesson we can move on to the next "lesson" Then she said.. let me show you what I mean: All of the sudden I saw a 'Photograph" in the distance coming towards us at a very high speed.

Once it reached us we were "IN" the photograph and could look all around at what was happening. The first photograph was my Mother in labor giving birth to me. Then I saw the next photograph approaching and I was learning to walk. The next I am in school. The next I am being bullied. The next I am in the hospital in pain as a child. The next I am studying piano music.

Next meeting my good friends in high school. (Still friends to this day) Next falling in love. Etc. (Too many to write here and many too personal to share) These photos start coming at light speed. The two of us never move from our spots. The photos come to present day then beyond right up until the day I am dying. I am in my early 90s.

There is a nurse sitting in a chair. Above my head I see holograms of medical monitoring. From the ceiling I see a beam of light entering my left arm that is administering "light medicine". I feel my breathing starting to slow. I see faces starting to appear around my bed.

My parents and siblings and finally my husband. They all look young and are smiling and telling me not to be afraid that it is ok to let go. I start to leave the body and I am standing next to this woman in a field that has flowers and grass as far as we can see. She repeats to me what she said at the start. "Look for the lesson in EACH chapter of your life and once you get that lesson you move on to the next." She also says when you life is over you will have this kind of life review only with a difference.

You will see each chapter of your life and how your words and actions were felt by others. She says I will be heading back into my body and not to be afraid. She starts to walk away and I say "Wait! Who are you...I mean..who were you in the earth life?" She says, "I was the wife of a very famous rock star known the world over. He is still alive.

This is my work now to help Souls understand their purpose and give hope when appropriate." She smiles and turns to continue walking away. I feel my being pulled back back back and into my body waking up with a gasp and deep breathe. I don't say anything to the medical people who were working around me. As soon as I can see my husband (gay couple here) I tell him of my experience and then say " I wonder who that woman was?" He says, "My gut feeling? Linda McCartney!"

Now...I am not a beetles fan at all. I don't own even one song of theirs. I google her name and sure enough. It's the woman in my experience.

I've never shared this with anyone. Only the hubs. The love was beyond mortal words. I still think about it every day. The atoms in my being were each registering this over whelming love energy. Can't wait to go back there one day.

Username: TipToeThruLife

This is going to be a long one...

Ive knocked at death doors many times and I was rejected multiple times.

At 5 years old, while at summer camp, we were in the pool and I didnt know how to swim so I stayed in the shallow part. I figured if I jumped from the bottom to the surface to take a breath, I could go further in. Until I got to the crazy slope of the deep end. And I just sunk. I remember losing my footing. I remember sinking. But thats it. I still remember waking up chocking. Someone had given me CPR.

Youd think I would have learned my lesson. But little me didnt know better. At 6 years old, I was sitting on the side of a pool and turned my head and a bee decided to ram me right in the eye. I remember falling in the pool. I woke up to someone picking something out of my eyes. They said I fell in but nobody realized I was there until I came floating to the surface. CPR brought me back again.

The third time I drowned (happened again a year later...), I was playing with a stick on the side of a lake in winter and threw my stick a little bit too far. So I slowly started to walk on the thin ice. Yep. It broke. Woke up freezing in the house. I didnt "die" and didnt need CPR but that was another brush with death.

I became a foster child a year later due to many reasons. I eventually started thinking about suicide.

At 14 years old, I decided I was gonna take 20 sleeping pills and just go (we didnt have internet at my house, thank god coz otherwise I may have googled a better way). I took them... and passed out. Over the counter meds arent too powerful. I woke up a few hours later... feeling like I needed to puke. I didnt really control m body. I just got up while my head was screaming "Dont go, I want to die". I could barely walk. I was hallucinating like crazy. I made it to the bathroom and got very sick. No idea why my foster parent never woke up to the side of me puking. I woke up the next day, feeling high as fuck but I was completely fine otherwise.

A year later, I was still depressed. I figured this time I would drink vodka and take 40 of those damn pills. I didnt wake up that time. My foster parents came into my room because it sounded like I was on the phone but when they picked up, the line was dead. They came into my room and I was babbling away like a little kid on the phone. They thought I had taken drugs and was high. When they realized I was actually in shock and probably dying, they put me in the car and buckled the seat belt. The only flashback I have of this moment is when I remember seeing a park and I wanted to go on the swing so I opened the door of the moving car and tried to simply leave the car. Thank god I was buckled in. I dont remember much from there. I was in ICU for a few days and they pumped my stomach and made me drink liquid charcoal and put me in the psychiatric wing for a few weeks.

I was depressed for a few more years until 17 years old. My life picked up and dropped high school and then went back. Found a job, a girlfriend. Life was great.

Dark. Im alone. Why am I alone. Its so dark. Darkness. Emptiness.

My pillow is kinda yellow. Why is my pillow yellow. I need to go to the bathroom. Going to the bathroom. So dizzy. Oh right im in the psychiatric wing. Back to my room. Wait. Someone in my bed. Why is there someone in my bed. Nurse. NURSE. SOMEONE IS IN MY BED.

Its not your bed. Yes its my bed. No your bedroom is over there. No its not. Yes "Doctor, DOCTOR! THE PATIENT IS FULLY CONSCIOUS!".

Uh. Ive been here for a few weeks. Of course im conscious. Why is there someone in my bed.

They brought me to "my" room. Doctor comes. Whats your name, where were you born. Sir, my name is Summer, im born on that day.

What day is it?

Well... I came here after taking the sleeping pills... so I must be 15 years old?

Summer... what is your last memory of the past few months?

Well I finished high school and... wait... wait... wait... im not 15.... whats going on. Help. My memories. No no no. Whats going on.

Wait... whats this around my neck. WHATS AROUND MY NECK.

They calmed me down. I had a big bandage around my neck. I had once again attempted suicide. This time I had hung myself.

I was found, blue and not breathing. They cut the rope and started CPR. Ambulance came in and then I was put on life support at the hospital. I eventually started breathing on my own and was in a coma. I eventually "woke up" in a half vegetative state. But I was no longer myself. I was acting like a little kid that was 5 years old. Apparently, I had a moment of lucidity when I went to the bathroom and since the scene was exactly as 2 years earlier, it might have shocked my brain back into gear.

*Im sorry, im typing really fast and trying to relive the moment as I type and english is not my primary language so the writing might be all fucked up.

But wait a moment, I tried to kill myself? How is that even possible? I was happy for the first time in my life. They never believed me. I had left a letter behind. After weeks of being in the hospital... they let me read it. It was my writing... but it wasnt. It was hateful. I was wishing death to everyone... it broke my heart to read that. The second part of the letter was to my girlfriend and how much I loved her.

Eventually, aftertons of tests to make sure I didnt have any brain damage... I figured out that since I was 17 years old and not a danger to society, I was allowed to decline medical treatment. But they still believed I was a danger to myself and I was forced into juvenile jail until I turned 18 years old, which was 3 months later.

When I turned 18, I simply took my bag and started the rest of my adventure that is life.

So. Death? I never saw a god. But I do remember one thing. Darkness. And I didnt like it.

EDIT: I had one more suicidal episode but I couldnt bring myself to do it. I have since control of my life and I have a plan to realize my biggest dreams. But that is another story on its own :)
Username: [deleted]

I'm on mobile and have sausage fingers, so this is gonna be fun, but here goes.

It also kind of hits home because this could happen to anyone at any time.

I'll give a little back story first, I had just turned 19 years old, and I was flying to see my (now ex, I'm 27) girlfriend. I was flying alone, and going to see a girl none of my family knew about that I had met on MySpace. I was ready to ship for chair force when I got back from California as well. When I left I had strep throat and didn't really think anything of it, I was about 3 days into it and the worst was behind me. I get there and Tiana (my girlfriend at the time from MySpace) picks me up from the airport. I felt fine, a little cramped from flying but nothing felt off. We drove about half hour to her place.

Fooled around a little before her mom got home from work. Still, nothing felt off. We're laying on the couch watching TV when I suddenly get a small pain in my stomach. Like someone lightly punched me there, but no one had. I have a high tolerance for pain and would later be told that it should've been much more painful than it was.

But since it wasn't, I kept laying there like nothing happened, thinking maybe I was just gassy or something. After about an hour I had to pee, so I got up to drain it. I collapsed nearly immediately. When I regained consciousness, I didn't realize what happened or even consider how I ended up on the floor, so I jumped right up, and immediately collapsed again.

This time when I came back to, I knew something was off. I crawled in, sat down to pee, crawled out and passed out on the bedroom floor. I don't know how much time passed while I was there, but when I came to i was sweating and felt like hell. I crawled back into the bathroom, sat down on the toilet and started shitting, pissing, and puking into the tub all at once.

recall puking up blood, but i was so out of it I'm not sure and no one recapped the details to me. Tianas mom knew something wasn't right from how long I was in there and how little I said, so she called the paramedics. When they got there they found me naked in the bathroom, pale and sweaty. I had lost so much blood by this time that when they picked my head up I would lose consciousness. They couldn't get a heartbeat or a pulse, nothing. But as long as they kept me flat, I could talk to them.

They got me to the nearest hospital, and by that time, i couldn't even open my eyes anymore. I felt helpless. My body was shutting down, I couldn't move, I couldn't feel, and I didn't know why. They catheterized me while I was still conscious.

You wouldn't believe the pain, my eyes apparently shot open because I heard a nurse exclaim, "ohhh he has pretty eyes." I heard them calling my mom as I was losing consciousness. By the time I came back to all u could do was flutter my eyes, I couldn't see, I couldn't feel, I could hear mumbling in the distance.

Apparently someone had caught on to the fluttering of my eyes because I heard someone say, "you should make peace with whatever demons you have because you're probably not gonna make it to morning." And i slipped into darkness with that echoing into my head. Challenging that mentally with every bit of brain power I had, defiant that if I was going to die, I would at least do so with a fight, trying to force myself conscious again.

I woke the next day, though it felt like a month. I thought I was dead. I could hear voices that seemed miles away, I could only see slight shades of grey in the darkness. I teetered in and out of consciousness for an eternity. My body was rejecting the blood, I was packed full of painkillers, painkillers that I was having an allergic reaction to, and my body had completely shut down from losing basically all of the blood in it.

As I regained consciousness I could hear my mom talking to Tiana, the MySpace girlfriend she didn't know about (didn't help that I had a girlfriend back home in Ohio too, but moms was a ggg and kept quiet about it). I was so high on painkillers that my mom looked and sounded like Yoda, and believe me, Yoda looked interesting in my mom's favorite sweater.

My spleen had spontaneously ruptured inside me. They thought it was the strep, maybe had something to with the flight, but they couldn't find a real cause. There was a white light though, a higher calling. Not god, or anything, but the doctors who saved me, and the 40-50 people who's blood I received.

Without them, I'd be dead. The worst part of it for me was the confusion and helpless. I was dying and didn't know why. I was legally dead twice during surgery. I 40 staples in my stomach (exploratory surgery is a bitch) and had sex with Tiana in my hospital bed 3 days later. I never felt more alive.

Username: therobshow

I think I was between 3-4 years old when the first time happened. My pediatrician kept writing me off as having a cold until I woke up gasping for air. I ended up having pneumonia and was hospitalized for it.

They released me after a few days but I ended up having to go back soon after because I was still sick. The medication they put me on was heavy and my body was rejecting it.

I ended up getting colitis and becoming severely underweight. Doctors gave me something to harden up the stool sample but somehow they lost it and couldn’t do it again. I wasn’t getting better and my pediatrician came in and injected my iv with penicillin which I’m extremely allergic to. My veins rose to the surface and it was hard for me to stay awake and breath.

I remember my parents freaking out, my mom grabbing the pediatrician by her coat and screaming at her. As I was blacking out it was kind of blissful and everything felt like a dream. My parents later told me that the doctors came in and said I had died but my dad told them to keep trying.

So the doctors went batshit crazy trying all these different drugs to try to get me up (which was classified as malpractice) until my dad shoved them away and tried administering CPR. I eventually woke up after being in a coma.

We couldn’t sue the pediatrician or hospital because they refused to give us my medical records and the pediatrician fled the country. Now the pediatrician is back and opened up her own facility across the street from that hospital. We now call the hospital the butcher shop.

For the second time I don’t know if I was pronounced clinically dead but I was damn near close to it. I got attacked by a beefy pit bull when I was in highschool, tore off chunks of my head and my ear.

Like some redditors said above it is like bliss when you realize and come to accept that hey maybe you’re about to die.

I remember watching my own blood hit the pavement and I stopped screaming. It’s like everything was in slow motion I couldn’t hear anything and then I blacked out. I don’t know how long I was out but I eventually jolted up after being splashed with cold water and given smelling salts.

Though when I woke back up I guess I had forgotten I was attacked and just looked around wondering where my dog was and then I looked down and saw flesh and blood all over me and the side walk. I started shaking pretty bad and reached up because I felt warmth on my neck but kinda stopped after I felt squishy liquid warmth and gaps in my skin.

I just handed some stranger my phone and told her to call my moms number in the contact. I think I blacked out again because when I woke up I was being shocked in an ambulance and given oxygen.

I remember about a week after when I was given my phone back it said I had a voicemail or a recorded message and that was probably the most spinechilling thing I heard in my life was hearing myself screaming bloody murder in the background while the stranger tried to explain to my sobbing mother that I was attacked.

Username: UsagiBlitz

I've posted this before, but it fits the question.

I am originally from Georgia (state, not country), I live in Los Angeles now. Was out surfing one morning, alone. It was eerie and the marine layer had yet to dissipate, creating one of those steam rising off of the surface effects. Very "sharky" as people have been known to say.

I paddled out and i remember it being especially cold this morning. The Pacific is always cold, but this morning was an exception to the norm. I wore my 4:3 suit and I had my Roberts 6'2'' fast leashed to my right ankle. I paddled out.

It was a heavy morning at "drainpipes". A lot of heavy sets with nothing really great to paddle into. I didn't mind as I was killing time before class and I only really wanted to get some exercise in. After a bit the sets got bigger and bigger. They weren't towering, but at my skill level they were tall enough to put the fear of God into me whenever I'd paddle back out from riding one in.

The problem was they were "heavy". Just absolute crashers..So I got to the point where I was cold as hell and was ready to ride one more in. The sets started shifting further out so I was swimming further and further out to catch them. I finally got past the break and saw another set coming in.

I caught the second wave in the set and dropped in. Everything is going well until I get up and try to carve down the face. Problem was that this fucker was overheard and it came crashing down on me causing me to toe out and barrel roll/rag doll before being sucked under. I felt my board violently being jerked around as I was in "the washing machine". It's fucking freezing. I'm trying to figure out which way is up when I hit my head on the sandbar. My ears start ringing pretty intensely and i'm still rag-dolling and then SNAP my leash breaks.

I get a nice jolt of adrenaline, my vision blurs, and i start choking on the water. This whole ordeal felt like 5 minutes of hell, but it couldn't have lasted for more than 8-10 seconds. I finally surface and I'm choking up foam and the rip current is pulling me towards another face coming right at me. I focus on duck diving under the wave right as it's about to crash, but I'm getting exhausted and my body isn't responding from the mixture of the cold and the dizziness from smacking my head.

I'm struggling to breathe and I make the best effort I can to dive under this wave. I barely make it and I can feel the undercurrent trying to pull me with it. It pulls my legs and brings me back under into the depths. Luckily, I resurface and try my best to stay calm and keep my wits about me. I look to the beach and i see my board is washed up in the shallows bobbing back and forth in the foam. There's no one on the beach. I am half hopeful that someone will come to rescue me, but I try to tell myself that this is not a life threatening situation as this point and I'll be fine as soon as this set passes. That's when another wave comes and throws me back under.

I manage to get to the surface and I start swimming towards the shore on my back. I'm absolutely fucking exhausted and am truly thinking I am about to drown at this point. I remember gasping for air and salt water coming out of my mouth. My whole body is numb at this point and I'm trying not to give up, but it's hard. Another wave comes in and crashes down and I just don't have it in me to duck dive under it.

The foam is rushing towards me as I am on my back facing it, the back of my head is pointed toward the beach. I close my eyes and dip my head into the water like i'm sitting in an office chair and craning my neck over the back of the chair. The wave grabs me and encumbers me. I'm underwater again. I have no air in my lungs, i'm just fucking done. I'm under for a good 5 seconds or so and I resurface yet again. I look up and there's the beach, 10 or 15 meters away. I turned over on my stomach and made one last breaststroke and as soon as i did that, the current pulled me to the beach. I crawled for a minute and stood up only to stumble and collapse on the beach, frozen, absolutely exhausted, teary eyed, and choking for air.

I just laid there on the beach, realizing how close I was to drowning. My board was washed up about 50 yards down the shore to my left, i must've been caught in a pretty strong current. 3 minutes pass and the sun comes peeking through the marine layer. I just remember looking up and seeing blue sky and sunshine peaking through the clouds and how great that sunshine felt as it hit my cold body.

Username: [deleted]

Yeah.

How i ended up dead is kind of a long story, anyways i had gone to bed one night and i hadn’t been feeling well for a couple of weeks, thought it would go away eventually..

I remember feeling confused, and somewhat found myself in a dream like state although i was pretty lucid in it as well. There was quite a bit of psychedelic like experiences and it felt like such a long dream it just kept on going and going i didnt have a body anymore, and I actually asked myself am i dead? Since this couldn’t be a dream, usually when i become aware of dreams i wake up, and i wasnt waking up. It felt like it went on for so long.

What was going on, this part i had no recollection of, i guess somewhere or sometime in my sleep i had stopped breathing (i may have had a seizure at some point) and i was pretty lucky family had stopped by the house to check on me. Noticed my car was still in the driveway which meant i wasnt at work, and i wasnt getting the door, but looking through the window they could see me just laying there in bed not moving. I wasn’t responding either so they went through a window and i was unresponsive, 911 was called etc.

I believe it took them a couple hours trying to get me back and keep me stable, but my lungs weren’t working so they had to intubate and i was in a coma with life support all that fun stuff for about two days. They ran a bunch of tests i don’t remember getting a spinal tap or catheter or all the ivs and blood draws etc.

I was still pretty much in the other place for a long time. It felt like i was traveling through space or something i saw and experienced a lot of amazing things I can’t explain or remember well anymore but i did try to write down some of it later.

I wasnt scared. It felt like a really long journey, i didn’t necessarily see anyone for a while but i didn’t feel alone. I felt the presence of others. It was like i was around everyone i ever knew or something it felt quite familiar in a way. There was this black infinite darkness and it was the most wonderful thing. It was like i could create experience with my imagination, there was no sadness, it was all bliss without worry. And it was very hypnotizing. I really considered letting myself go into it. Just letting go. (My lungs were not kicking in on their own if they had not then im told i couldve stayed dead, been paralyzed, or end up a vegetable).

I didn’t want to let go though. I have a daughter who is my world, she was just about a year old at the time, and i kept thinking of her and her mother, it kept me from just letting go into that peaceful bliss. I couldn’t leave them.

I did get some of that “life flashing before you” type of experience, it looked like a projector was cast a bit infront of me and kind of like a movie, but I didnt see myself or anything like that. What i saw was almost like memories, except i hadnt had these yet. I saw my kiddo and her mom (maybe cause id been thinking of them a lot?) and they were smiling and happy. My daughter looked a couple of years older in that vision though. There were a few visions but all i saw was them and I remember it made me feel quite happy, i wouldve smiled and cried if that had been possible. After that it was getting quiet and dark.

I remember it was all black. I didnt know how to get back. Black black the darkest ive ever seen and felt so empty, not scary but i was in some infinitely large void. Time wasn’t really a thing but i was just sort of there for a good while.

I remember seeing a tiny little dot of light so far away just a little . And it was the only thing different from the blackness. Then i felt i was falling towards it or being pulled by some force. It felt like i was travelling very fast- like through space again, but it still took quite a long time and the little thing got larger as i got closer. It was the size of the moon eventually. I just kept falling towards it. Eventually when i got close enough it felt like i was thrown back into myself with really great force.

The white was blinding and as i was back in, all my field of vision was initially incomprehensible but the light died down and i was able to make out shapes etc. i was still comatose, I couldn’t move or speak or anything. I saw what looked like a hospital room and at this point i still was not sure if this was real or not.

No way. Nope. This cant be a dream though they don’t last this long and dont feel this real. The world still didnt make sense either. I thought id died and gone to hell or something and id spend eternity trapped in my body unable to move or do anything.

I could hear sounds. I saw a clock on the wall and id look over but the time seemed all wrong or it would jump around. There was a board on the wall with writing but it made no sense. A window, tiny window on the left side the only window to the outside but all I could see was a brick wall. And a tv playing some nature stuff that really freaked me out. I couldn’t see people for a while which had me questioning reality. Id see nurses kinda go past, but they didnt seem real at all. Almost not even 3 dimensional and choppy unrealistic movement. Theyd pass by but it was almost like no one really noticed me. I knew it was real, well either i was in the hospital or i was dead and in some sort of hell.

Everything was becoming more detailed as time went on. I could read the board, people looked a lot more real. I felt the breathing tube and my arms had been restrained so I wouldn’t tear it out if i woke or something. I still couldn’t talk or move or do anything though. I remember seeing some family and friends asking me to wake up, crying, telling me a lot of things holding my hand, and i couldnt do anything.

That was the worst part for me. Seeing how hurt they were. Crying and telling me i had to fight i had to start breathing on my own soon. I couldnt cry. I was trying to yell but nothing. I couldnt grasp their hands.

Time was weird, i dont know how much passed or whatever in between the several moments I remember. I know eventually i was by myself again. A dr. Came in and i guess i had regained a little movement and my lungs finally kicked in. She took out the breathing tube (it was bugging me when i had started to be able to move a little) and the catheter came out. (Didnt feel it).

Family was able to come in an hour or two later. I could hardly talk, just barely move hands, arms a little. Turn my head a little. I developed the worst migraine ive ever known. Worst pain ive felt, and that carried on for about a week non stop.

I got to hold my baby eventually! I have a picture of that somewhere. I dont know where i got the strength but i picked her up and smiled. Hugged her. After i lost all my strength again. Took a while but i got to talk to a lot of people and drs. In the following days etc. slowly recovering but in that time i couldnt eat really i basically had water when possible. I couldn’t keep food down for at least a week. Or sleep, i slept once for 30 mins or so but i felt the pain all the way through.

Probably by day 3 or 4 i was able to start getting up and walk to the bathroom etc. i was hospitalized for about a week before i could go home.

This was a year ago. Im still trying to get past that experience.

I suppose i developed ptsd and my anxiety got so bad in the following months going into full blown agoraphobia. I had insomnia really bad for a while. I still do actually. For about a month i had nightmares about hospitals and feared id stop breathing if i fell asleep.

Uncontrollable crying and broke down a lot when i had first came to and for a good while after.

I felt guilty because i missed being on the other side and had really considered just letting go into that amazing bliss. That peace.. i missed it and at times wished i had just stayed there.

I left out a lot but thats all i could get down at the moment.

Username: Ivn0

I don't know if I died for a bit or what, but I woke up from whatever it was with my heart going BAM

One night, in 2010 or 2011 I remember waking up in a room, at that quiet blue hour just before dawn. I was surrounded by a two or three dozen other people, all still sleeping. It was a room about 60, 70 feet wide and forty feet from front to back with a few of what seemed to be really long seats, like pews, toward the front, two, I think. Behind and to the flanks of those seats was like a split-level sort of square U-shaped platform area, with two levels, where everyone was laying down on the floor. On the walls opposite the doors were fairly tall, translucent windows, like they were frosted, and only the general color of outside light could get through.

As I woke up and kind of oriented myself, the doors opened quietly as a couple of people shuffled in, as if not to unduly wake anyone. There was some sort of hall beyond the door (not a hall*way*, like a corridor, but a *hall,* a large open space), well-lit. I could see a couple of structures like where actual hallways began, and I could tell there were a good number of pretty people bustling about. The people in our room left, quietly closing the doors behind them.

After a few minutes(?) the doors opened again, gently, but this time completely unapologetically, and the lights came on. I could now see that the room was white. A small line of people from the hall filed in, but I was kind of too taken in by the dawning realization that I was dead to pay much more particular attention to them (I'll get to this in a bit).

To describe the atmosphere, I might refer to the feeling kind of like when you're on a long international flight and they use those dim "morning lights" as they start making the final approach to your destination—kind of a muted feeling, with most people asleep, a couple people stirring about, occasionally opening and closing the overhead compartments. Really low energy at first, but as people come to, the place livens up. For anyone who hasn't experienced that, maybe think of a sleepover with friends where you kind of all crashed in the living room and your parents are at first cautiously navigating your scattered bodies as the sun begins to peek over the horizon and into the windows, and everyone kind of starts waking up on their own and sitting there sleepily.

Going back to my previous statement, by this point (I'm not sure who else), I had come to realize that I had died. I didn't have any context of how or when but I didn't care, and I remember feeling absolute *warmth* and *peace* and the thrill of learning whatever was to come next. It was a true sense of home and belonging, even though I didn't know anyone there. I was free of stress or anxiety or the pressure of time limits. As in I wasn't even aware of those things—it's only in retrospect that I noticed any of that. That's just how *gone* time was, how absolutely *free* I had felt. I could tell in my bones that this was simply the next step, and I couldn't wait to get started.

There was a trio of guys, brothers, I think, and as they were waking up, they were completely disoriented. They didn't know where they were or anything, and they were a bit upset, trying to figure out amongst themselves what had happened. All they remembered was being on a plane home and now they were here. I actually watched them a bit with excitement, and my feeling was like "wait, do they not get it? Don't they know?"And I was wondering if I should break the news to them, and I even asked one of the people who was working there if it was against any rules to do so. She smiled, amused, and said no, it was fine, but I decided that it would be more interesting for them if I let them figure it out on their own.

Other people started coming into the room, not workers. Other people, like us, but who had been there for some time. Because I was so caught up in the feeling I didn't notice specifically how the other people were interacting, or what they were saying. I only knew of one of the people who came in, but he wasn't someone I'd known personally in life. I approached him, but I can't remember at the moment my short conversation with him, and other people were wanting to talk with him, too. I had so many questions. I'm tempted to write what I think he said, but I don't want to fill in any cracks with things I'm not 100% remembering. I think I wrote this all down some time after, but I don't have access to that journal right now since I'm stuck in Japan because of COVID. Maybe I'll find it someday and update this post, as if it will matter by then..

Anyway that was about when I woke up at some odd hour and I felt my heart just *squeezing* the blood through, kind of painfully, then pounding, as I opened my eyes.

Again, I can't say without a doubt that I died or anything, but the heart thing had me seriously wondering, and more than that, given how vivid and real the place and the feelings were—especially considering I'd struggled (without really knowing) with the scars of an abusive home life, and the absolute night and day contrast between how I always typically felt and how I'd felt *there..* It was like when you put on glasses for the first time, and you wake up to all the details you'd long forgotten ever existed. It was like that for my heart—perfect, heavenly *clarity,* with no anxieties or hangups about the past, no shame or fear or regret or longing or anger or grudges or frustration with what I'd been robbed of. None of it mattered. From there it was only onward and upward, building on a foundation of a difficult past whose only purpose and effect was to make me who I had become so far, nothing more, nothing less.

I was so terribly, profoundly disappointed to be waking up again to this limited, chemically imbalanced bag of flesh and electricity.

Username: ninthtale

I had a terrible car accident 11 years ago. I had been fucking up in life pretty bad and just had no direction and didn’t know what I wanted to do. I partied a lot drinking at the bar and driving myself home almost every night.

Every time I did this I’d pray that somehow my truck would crash into a pole and I’d be killed somehow. But nothing ever. Even went through a sobriety checkpoint and passed no problem right before Christmas despite having been drinking for eight hours.

I was getting tired of the bar scene and the way my life was going but I had no idea how to pull myself out. So I packed a bag and backpacked through Europe for a month to find myself. Came back home and felt great. Until two nights later when I found myself at the bar telling my friends my stories of travel. I really hadn’t been drinking because I was talking so much but I got a call saying that a friend was having a party at his house and to come over. I figured perfect! I can get drunk and sleep there.

I never wore a seatbelt until this night. For some reason I was afraid that a drunk driver was going to hit me so I put it on. When I started the truck I said to myself that the car was too big for me to drive, but of course I said fuck it and started heading over. I hadn’t driven for a month.

There was a big curve in the road and of course as a young kid I was speeding and I looked down for a half a second to change the cd track and when I looked up traffic was at a dead stop. I barely had the thought that this was going to hurt as I made impact. I had a Lexus RX300 and hit a Dodge Ram on a lift causing his bumper to hit my grill and the engine came back crushing my legs.

Airbags deployed, windshield spidered, steering wheel into my chest and I felt the snap of my neck. And then there was just blackness. Total total blackness and a deafening silence. That silence was the loudest thing I ever heard. The movies really do a good job of showing this. The blackness looked like when its snowing and you look into the backyard and then someone turns on a light. Its not scary but peaceful. I remember thinking, oh my God I just died.

But I was totally ok with it because I had this weird like safe feeling. I can see the scene of the accident but everything is from up and behind myself. I can see myself sitting in that car and the people walking up to it asking if I’m ok. But I cant hear anything at all. Just mouths moving. A man came up to me and said I’m the limo driver and I asked him if he was taking me to heaven or hell and he looked at me weird. Apparently the Dodge hit a limo.

I know some people say theres no God but that simply isn’t true. That night I heard him and I saw his face. Only his face and he looked like he was mad at me and he leaned his face towards mine and said, “this is your last chance.” I knew it wasn’t my time and I had to go back. I woke up on the curb and I have no idea how all those ambulances and fire trucks got there or really how I even ended up sitting on that curb because my lower left leg was basically detached from the top and just dangling there.

I crushed my own leg between the seat and the dash. Someone gave me a cell phone to call my family. I wish I could remember that young mans face but it was like he walked over handed me the cellphone and then was gone. They told me they had to bring me to the hospital and I said no its ok God is watching me and the cop turned around and said no you’re getting in this god damned ambulance. I waited a really long time for the xray tech to come and image my legs.

When he finally got there he apologized for taking so long but that there was a horrible accident on Main St and he was stuck in traffic and he was sure that those people would be rolling in soon. I said yea thats the car I was in. He said no theres no way you were in that accident and you’re talking to me now. I said yea the white Lexus truck? He said he couldn’t even tell what kind of car it was. I said well was it a white SUV he said yea and I said yea thats the car I was in. He just stared at me in disbelief.

They ended up pinning my leg straight for three months then it was months of physical therapy to learn to walk again and bend my leg. It was horrible. It took about two days for me to realize what had happened and the amount of damage to my legs. Then for three days straight I did nothing but cry. Wailing crying. After those three days it felt like all my depression and loneliness just went away like as if it was some demon trying to get inside me and they just gave up and left.

From that day forward I have never wasted a single moment of my life. I got my act together, went back to school to become a nurse and totally changed my life around. I always say my car accident was the greatest catastrophe that ever happened to me and I am so thankful that it happened. Sometimes it makes my husband upset when I tell him don’t ever resuscitate me for any reason, just let me go.

Not that I want to die, of course I don’t. But I’m not afraid of it at all. Death is not a bad thing. Theres something beautiful and peaceful over there.

Username: Jrose82

>What did dying feel like?

It felt like my insides were made of jelly on fire, every breath I tried to take was more fire, and my bones magically disappeared. Turns out that last one was because they were broken. Trying to stand on a leg broken in dozens of places is... well you just *can't.* The moment you put any weight on there, all the broken bits move around and you just fall over. Which *also* doesn't feel particularly good. It's like... if you've ever had a splinter that was broken glass, but on the inside, everywhere, at the same time. Broken ribs weirdly stopped hurting when they punctured my lung and split open my abdominal wall. then it just felt like I was really wet and warm, while the rest of me was made of being-on-fire-and-also-stabbed.

>How it changed your life?

It made everything a thousand times harder, every task takes four times as long, and I have the stamina of wet cardboard. It dramatically drops my ability to relate to other people- I'm sure your headache is *so* terrible, Karen, but I can feel my once-broken ribs crackling with every breath and my ears haven't stopped ringing in a decade. Please, do go on about your stiff neck.

It also makes trying to get other people to relate to *me* incredibly difficult. How do you describe to someone who has never broken a bone what it felt like to have jagged shards of your skeleton tear their way out of you? How do you tell someone about the time a loop of intestine- swelled up with normal "ate bean soup" gas- got trapped in a tear in your abdominal wall and just kept swelling and swelling and swelling until it nearly burst and every second was screaming agony like a TV on white noise at 150 decibels blasting all thoughts out of your brain?

All my clothes don't fit right *somewhere*. Shirt that doesn't squish up against the basketball-sized scarring on my torso would drape over the rest of me like a circus tent. Pants big enough to fit over the scarring on my lower back, hips, and ass are too wide for my waist and too long for my now-shorter cyberleg, even though they fit the normal leg fine. Which means my fashion style is "schlub", loose fitting frumpy as fuck clothes that make me look like a ball of unfolded wrinkly laundry.

It makes most of the things I used to love physically impossible. Can't go hiking because my shiny-robot-joints canNOT handle that kind of strain unless I want them replaced every ten years. Can't do martial arts because one solid body blow could rip open my already-swiss-cheese abdominal core and spill my guts like one of those novelty snakes-in-a-can. Learning new skills is a thousand times harder, since the traumatic brain injury causes my brain to just randomly do memory wipes- I can sing the Gummi Bears theme song word for word, but I can't remember something I learned an hour ago. Can't go swimming because four strokes in and I can barely breathe and my limbs are made of lead and pain.

I often lose track of what I'm doing, get confused or misunderstand or just plain don't hear someone speaking to me. I'll tell the same stories a thousand times, because I never *really* know if I've told them before- or it could be the only story I can remember that day.

It means finding hobbies that don't need much physical ability. It means having to try ten times as hard to commit things to memory, constantly repeating myself, constantly asking other people to repeat themselves, and even pre-plague spending most of my free time by myself so I'm not dragging anyone else down.

It *also* means having to be far more patient about things, and far more tolerant of mistakes. It means forgiving quickly and easily, since I will likely completely forget whatever the issue was in a matter of days. It means being a weird mix of totally honest and super guarded- it's hard as hell to trust people, but when I do, I'll blab for hours about whatever flits in and out of the sieve that is my brain.

Then there's the body image thing. Wasn't great beforehand, but *after...* oof. Having a team of grown adult professional doctors all stare intently at one's asshole to see if there's a piece of tailbone trying to work its way outta there is a great way to diminish the shame reflex. But on the other hand, seeing my reflection in the mirror and being able to *watch stuff move through my intestines* as the skin covering them squishes and roils... blegh. *Blegh!* I simply cannot process the concept of people with not-destroyed-parts disliking their intact bodies. Boggles the mind.

>Did you see anything while passed on?

For some reason, this question is one that people fixate on. I didn't see any light. Or hear any voices. Or sense anything at all. There was absolutely nothing, which is *not* the same as "darkness" or blackness or a void or any of that. If I had to give it a color, be kinda... tan-ish. Quiet. Lukewarm. Completely and utterly unremarkable in any way.

Username: captain_borgue

This is going to sound weird: I’ve never clinically died or anything like that, but I have had an experience where I questioned whether or not I was dead.

My family and I were on vacation in Utah and we were playing golf. I had just graduated high school. A thunderstorm started, and I suggested we turn in.

My family, because of a phase I went through in 3rd grade where I was paranoid about thunderstorms, decides that my opinion is worthless and that there is absolutely no reason why swinging long metal objects in a thunderstorm should be a cause for concern. We pass an employee at the course and ask his opinion, and he tells us to keep playing. My mind does not change.

Anyway, we keep playing, and we get to like the 14th hole or something. The storm has definitely gotten worse by this point. I reiterate that we should stop playing, but again, no one listens.

All of a sudden, as I’m standing in the middle of the fairway, I hear an incredibly loud boom and crack, and in that instant I see nothing but blinding light in every direction surrounding me. My first thought is that I had been hit by a bolt of lightning, and as cliche as this is, my life flashed before my eyes.

But not just the things that I had already experienced; I also thought about the things I never would get to experience. Then I felt slightly annoyed that my family hadn’t listened to me. It’s weird to think that all this can go through your head in a split second, but I don’t know how else to explain it.

But then the blinding light faded, and i saw an enormous number of those purple specks that you see after you look into the Sun, to the point where it was disorienting. I noticed that I was still standing in the middle of the fairway. It was at this moment when I questioned whether or not I was dead or alive. I was pretty convinced I had been struck by lightning, but I realized that I hadn’t felt any pain, and I wondered if that may have been because I was killed instantly.

But then I began to wonder whether or not I was still alive. I looked down at my hands to see if they were scorched, they weren’t. I then looked on the ground for my body, and I didn’t see it. I reached out for my golf clubs to see if I could touch them, and I still could. But I still wasn’t totally convinced.

Finally I heard my mom yell my name, and that’s when I realized she could still see me, so I must be alive. Apparently the lightning had just struck very close to us, close enough to have that effect. We turned in after that.

But the weirdest thing about the whole experience was that when I thought I might be dead, I wasn’t really all that worried. I felt kind of okay with the idea. How I felt when I was trying to figure out whether I was alive or dead was more curious than concerned.

I definitely don’t want to die anytime soon. I’m 26 now and still have a lot of life left to live. But my reaction to this situation told me a lot about how I might react to death.

Username: jrob1235789

I believe I have at least a partial answer to the question: "What does it feel like to be dead?" Here's my best from "memory". First of all, you "wake up". This process is because when you actually go through death, you do go unconscious for any amount of time - from a brief second to weeks or months depending on how you die (comas, etc.).

At this point, a lot of us don't know what to do; either we just lie there trying to figure out what happened and why we're "awake", or something forces us "up" (like the urgency to go to another room, to go talk to or see someone, etc.).

Just like every person's understanding is different, so it goes through death - because you are the same person. However, as most every birth is similar, so are deaths.

Moving on - after figuring our you're "in another realm", you feel so light that you could float, almost like a huge burden has been lifted from your shoulders. Also, there is a vibration in the air: some can "feel" the electricity in the air (vibrations of sound, movement, etc.), and some can hear a sort of buzzing (also from the energy around you).

Depending on where you are when you die, and how you die, your experience will be different. If you die in a car accident, you will feel and hear much more than a person who dies quietly at home.

A piece of advice to all those who are terminal - or more terminal than others: As long as you are alive, try to figure out ways of knowing that you are.

When you are getting close to the end, either have someone you trust tell you this each and every time they talk to you (they'll understand the importance), ask a question that wouldn't be answerable if you're dead ("What's on the menu for tomorrow?"), or watch a clock closely. Not sure of everything yet, but I do remember that sometimes clocks act weird in the spirit world.

Also, the closer you come to dying, the more likely it will be that you'll begin to see spiritual things, like others who are gone (just regular people, might be a happy person, might be a grumpy old guy who wonders where his Lazy-Boy went), or objects that are where they shouldn't be - like walls if you're in an older house or building that's been remodeled.

If you get to the point where you "wake up" and think you're dead, or just feel the need to test it out, try to get up without moving your body. Sounds weird, but spirits can do this.

Can't remember exactly, but we do have spirit "muscles". I know you use your will and mind. And don't worry if you go too far too fast. You can stop, and you can come back down. Been there - done that, and I am afraid of heights!

I hope this helps. I could write more, but am not sure any one will believe what I've written. BTW, am a 45 year-old Christian woman, raised pretty normal, living pretty normal (as normal as can be with 3 teens). Not into anything new-agey, just have been blessed by God to remember much of what He has taken me though.

Username: lovingsister77

I am sure this is going to get lost but I answered this question a few years ago. Here is my account.

I thankfully have a pacemaker now but for about a year of my life I went into full blown cardiac arrest once a month. Depending on how fast they were to respond they would use chemicals or paddles to revive me. Each of those feels different coming back but the leaving always felt the same.

The first thing that happens is my vision starts to go, peripherals first narrowing into tunnel vision, then greening out before going black. At this point I can still hear, and if I am standing up I start to go down. It feels like my body is swaying back and forth, like I am rolling in the waves of the ocean.

But I have been told I'm not actually moving during this time. My brain is still functioning and I can think things like "oh shit not again" or "try to get a grip."

Then I can hear my heart beat in my ears louder and louder until it starts to slow down, then I listen to it slow down until I lose my hearing completely. If people are around me at this point I stop hearing them too.

Then the blackness ensues and it feels like there is an elephant sitting on my chest, like the whole universe is being sucked into my chest creating this crazy amount of pressure and pain, but not real pain. I don't want to scream out, I just want to give into it. To make it go away anyway I can. I am being crushed to death and I know it but there isn't anything I can do about it.

Then there is always an instant when everything stops, my thinking, the pressure, the pain, life...

The next second is when they bring me back. If it's with drugs it's always much more gentle. I start to hear my heart beat again, pounding in my ears and my chest, my hearing comes back but it's like I am underwater. I get the absolute worst headache you can ever imagine and my whole body gets tingly. Like when you have been out in the cold and then run your hands under hot water. You feel like it's burning hot, yet somehow it doesn't hurt.

If they have to use the paddles it's a completely different story. It's more instantaneous, that elephant that was on my chest leaps off and at the same time it's like the universe that was sucked into my chest explodes out, tearing me open.

My ears are assaulted with every noise around me at the same time and it's confusing. My entire body hurts like I ran a marathon and didn't drink any water, sore, tight, burning all at the same time. But at the same time that is the moment when I feel most alive as well. It is the best and worst feeling in the world.

Whenever I come back I am never fearful or worried. I don't remember being gone. Just silence and darkness. But I seem more at peace with everything. More in tune with the world. And I know weird things about people that I shouldn't. I even had a nurse remove herself from my case because of this once.

Username: iGrope

Between the ages of 17 and 19, I O.D.'d 8 times on heroin. Most times, one minute I'd be shooting up and the next I'd be in a hospital bed, and i don't remember anything in between, but the very first time I remember clearly.

I was on the toilet, peeing and shooting up, bullshitting with my friend, when instantly, I was laid out on the front bathroom floor with a bunch of people in the room. In reality, I'd stopped answering my friend's questions, so she checked on me then ran and called 911 while I was slumped on the toilet.

The part I remember skips forward a few minutes to when the paramedics were working on me. So I'm on the floor with people bustling all around me, but I dont physically feel or see anything. I'm enveloped in total, perfect bliss. Nirvana. This isn't the regular old "I'm on heroin" calm, this is complete, "nothing can harm me ever again", catatonic Buddhist monk calm.

I can hear what's happening in the room, it sounds like its happening a million miles away, and i feel about as invested in what going on as if I were watching it happen to someone on tv. I'd hear "she's not breathing" and think, " oh, how interesting, she's not breathing" or, "I need [insert dose here] of narcan!" .... Nothing seemed to affect me emotionally or shock me, I was just there, observing.

Then the Narcan hit me and I was slammed back into my body, which I hadn't realized I wasn't inhabiting. Instant pain, shock, and emotional turmoil. I started screaming and crying, it was like being chucked into a frozen lake, still asleep and cozy from your nice warm bed.

I was taken to the hospital, and everything was fine from there. There were no angels, no bright lights, nothing overtly supernatural. I'm sure what I experienced can all be explained by science as we know it today. If that is what comes after, though, I can't wait....it was sublime.

Here is the creepy part of this story, though: when I was a kid, I was obsessed with the paranormal and supernatural. I used to make Ouija boards and play with them constantly, alone and with friends. Once I asked one when I was going to die. It didn't answer. So I asked, "will I die young?" yes. "Will I die before im 13?" no. "Will I die before I'm 18?" yes.

That first overdose was not even 2 weeks after my 17th birthday. I overdosed another 5 times before I turned 18, then another 3 before I turned 19. It didn't matter how little I did, to try and be careful. Once I dropped off 1/16th of a point.

That's miniscule. This was way before fentanyl became a problem for street drug users, too.

Anyway, that chapter of my life is long over, and i obviously survived past 18. It's interesting though. Kind of a chicken or the egg question.

Or maybe just a coincidence? I dont know, whoever was handing out NDE trips forgot to add the "angels tell you all the secrets" aspect to mine I guess

Username: Adelephytler_new

This may not be what you’re looking for, but it’s my experience.....

I was driving and had my 3 year old daughter strapped into her car seat in the back, who’d been asking for her “pink baby” (a pink teddy bear) since we’d pulled out of the driveway. I retrieved pink baby from the front passenger seat and handed it back to her. The paramedics tell me that as I reached for the bear with my right hand, my left hand (which was on the steering wheel) compensated by dipped down just a little bit.

We were driving on a narrow road with storm drainage ditches carved into each side of the road, essentially rendering every driveway a makeshift “ramp” if one were to go off the road. So yeah, my little left hand dip took us off the road, directly onto a ramp, launching us airborne and headlong into a utility pole.

I must have been knocked out but remember waking up to the sounds of my daughter screaming from the backseat. Odd as it sounds, her screams were almost comforting because it meant she was alive. I, however, couldn’t breathe. The front end of the car had folded up essentially into the dashboard and the impact of my body against the steering wheel had broken each rib and collapsed my lungs. I’d also suffered a fair amount of head trauma.

I thought maybe I could breathe if i could lay down, so pushed the driver’s side door open and slumped out onto the road. I woke up to a paramedic telling me that I’d been in an accident, telling me that my daughter was ok, asking me my name and where i lived. “I can’t breathe” was all I could try to say. “We’ll breathe for you” she said.

My daughter was taken to a local hospital via ambulance where she was treated for bruises from the baby seat restraints and released to my mother and father in law. I was helicoptered to a nearby trauma hospital and, because the medical team didn’t want me moving due to the massive internal bleeding, was intubated by the time my wife and her friend arrived at the hospital. The doctors told her “we’ll do everything we can”.

I was out for close to two weeks. Contracted a blood borne staph infection while unconscious. For the first week they didn’t think I’d be able to pull through. Now, I simply don’t remember much of what happened between the time we hit the pole and the time I finally stopped bleeding internally and woke up a couple of weeks later. That said, I vividly remember a sort of dream. In the dream, I was driving, my daughter was in the back seat, and there was this beautiful, just striking, black girl in the front passenger seat. That’s all I remember.

The three of us driving down the road. Whether it was right after we hit the pole or while I was unconscious, I have no idea when I had this dream but I still remember it vividly. Clear as day. For days after coming out of the medically induced coma I asked my wife about my daughter and the girl in the passenger seat. My wife actually began to fear that I’d sustained permanent neurological damage because I kept asking about this girl although, on multiple occasions, she’d told me that there was nobody in the car except for my daughter and I. I finally decided it was a dream or something and stopped asking.

It took about a month for me to heal up and to get my strength back to the point where I could walk again, after which I was discharged from the hospital and sent home with a visiting nurse service. I’d been home for about a week before i finally felt strong enough to go outside and have my wife drive me down the road to look at the scene of the accident. My wife told me that a man who lived near the scene had heard the impact, called 911 to report the accident and was probably responsible for saving our lives.

There wasn’t much to see at the scene of the accident. The utility pole had a bit of an impact scar (those things are sturdy as hell) and I found some broken glass, but that was about it. So my wife drove me to the house of the man who’d called 911 so that I could thank him for what he’d done.

He was a genuinely lovely man. Very gracious and kind. “I really didn’t do anything but make a phone call...I’m just glad you’re all ok” is what he said. I thanked him again and again and assured him that my daughter and I were indeed ok.

Then he asked about the girl in the front passenger seat. No shit. HE asked about her. I asked him to hold on a second, called my wife out of her car and to the guys front door and asked him to repeat the question. The guy said “listen, I heard the crash, looked out the window and thought I’d seen a woman get out of the passenger seat and walk down the road so I wanted to know if she was ok.” “Maybe I was wrong” he said.

Yeah. Maybe he was wrong.

Username: DannyJayy

In 2011 I had my tricuspid valve replaced amd lead wires for a defibrillator for furure need. My heart stopped for 2 min and 22 seconds. Perhaps I was lost somewhere deep in my subconscious, maybe something else. Not a super spirirtual person but I can tell you what happened to me was.......odd at the least, at least what happened when I was in recovery.

I remember the nurses in OR prep and my mom telling me everything was going to be okay. They gave me a shot of something in my thigh, told me to count backwards from 100 and the last thing I remember before surgery was the bed bouncing when they let the bed brakes off. The next thing I remembered was running. I dont remember starting to run. Its like I simply was. There was no start. I do not really know how to explain it.

There were skinny trees EVERYWHERE but they had leaves. It was daylight but not sunny, like an overcast day. I remember thinking ow it felt like I had been running for a long time but was not out of breath, I just felt anxious and knew I had to keep running. There was a steep incline and I could see the top of trees to my right and the bottom of trees to my left and realized the reason my footing kept getting messed up was because I was running adjacent on a hill, an extremely steep hill.

I wanted to stop but something in the bad of my mind screamed that stopping was nit an option. I starred to notice flashes of color in the trees and realized people were everywhere around me..running. About five feet to my left was a large black man running. He looked at me and said " she is gone".

His face crumpled and he ugly crying, running neck and neck but uphill of me. He was wearing a blue t-shirt, black athletic shorts, and black socks and shoes. I saw so many people, adults mainly, some what looked like maybe teenagers all races and some of them would be running and loose their footing and fall.

The trees to the right canopied what seemed like a bottomless pit. I couldnt see a forrest ground and when people fell they just disappeared into the tree tops down the hill. I didnt feel like I was being chased or run faster or anything, I just knew I couldnt fall or walk. At some point I heard my Mom and felt something warm and wet on my face. A nurse was wiping a cream they put over patients' eyes during surgery and the they were waking me to pull my respirator tube out because I could breath on my own. I chalked it up to crazy drug induced dreaming.

I told mom about the crazy dream but she was so excited I was alive I am not sure she ever really heard me. Now, here is the weirdness....tgree days before my dc date, a man was being pushed down the hall in a wheelchair and with my door opened I would hear the man was being dc'd home that day. I could see his ankles even though he was wearing red sweatpants and knew he was a black man.

When the wheelchair wheeled past my room the black lady pushing it, I remember she was wearing a really colorful orange dress with pretty designs all over it, stopped when she saw my mom and they were talking but I was staring at the man....and he was staring right back at me. It was him. I could never forget his face, crying like a child while running through the trees. Neither one of us said anything. What do you say? Hey guy, didnt I see you crying and running in a frikin dream? I saif nothing.

He said nothing. He looked so sad. My mom was hugging the woman and the woman said something to me about feeling better. Him and I never said a word. Mom told me afterward the man came in the ER the morning I went in for surgery.

The man and his neice were in an accient when he was taking her to school that morning. The neice did not make it. My mom and the lady, who was the younger sister, not the childs mother had been praying and getting coffees together since they shared loved ones in OR recovery and had become friends.

So there you have it. When I " died" thats what I saw. That is what happened. You asked. Take it or leave it.

Username: unicornCOTA

I had a massive OD on heroin and when I died I could see a window above me and I could see my body laying on the kitchen floor. I was also in my own body which sounds paradoxical but I could see my hands and I could feel them and I was floating downward descending if you will, towards a massive desert full of holes.

The mud was cracked like it had been wet and then dried and there is a mountain range in the background and a very dim light lit the entire landscape.

A dark light if you will.. I then headed towards a very specific hole where I was lowered into it and I was screaming for somebody to help me as my feet lowered into the hole I stretch my arms out as wide as I could get them to grab onto the hole before I went into it I could feel small roots and dirt underneath my fingernails and as soon as it got up to my neck I lost my voice I was descended deeper down into that hole.

When I died I had one boot on and one boot off and I remember being lower down into the hole as I looked up towards my body through the window I could see my brother my now brother-in-law giving me CPR and everybody else around me was screaming that I was dead and my friend Luis was crying the further down the hole I went the smaller the window got.

The further down I went the more I realized that the light at the end of the tunnel was not a tunnel at all but it was indeed a whole and the light from what I could understand was the last of my human existence. When I reach the bottom of the hole which felt like it went on forever I could feel dirt beneath my one sock that I did not have the boot on.

I was done shown everybody I had ever known in my life and they all had forgotten who I was almost as if I had never existed at all. When somebody spoke to my mother and told her that her son had died she looked very confused and said I don't have a son by that name.

My little sister was told of my passing and she seemed to shrug it off and just say no big surprise. This went on with everybody I had ever known. I was shown more of life and as it moved on without me I realize this was my hell, to be forgotten. Time there was different.

I spent what felt like years there although in reality I was dead for 23 minutes being ventilated by my brother-in-law. It took 5 doses of Narcan to bring me back to life and when I came back it was instant and I was strapped down on a stretcher with one boot on and one boot off.

I will never forget that and it is helped me remember that there is more to this life than what I was spending and wasting it on. Today I am almost a year clean and I vow I will never return to that place I believe I have a different destination today.

Edit: I almost forgot the last part. When I was being revived I remember being transported to a pitch black space. My sister was there on her knees almost as if she was praying and I was trying to get her attention but she could not hear me because I still had no voice. It looked like she was looking at something and I couldn't see it.

Suddenly she turned to me and said this is the last time he will pluck you from the darkness if you want to save your life throw yourself at the foot of the cross. Then I was revived instantly I was back in my body on that stretcher.

It makes no difference to me if y'all believe this or not I can say with complete confidence this is what happened to me when I was dead and it is a miracle I suffered no brain damage and I'm here to tell the story today. I had one last OD after that and then I turned my life completely around.

Username: Yousuckbutt

Heart stopped. Went totally WHITE OUT. Rose up and saw my body as I moved forward. There was a beautiful woman (long blond hair to her shoulders sparkling blue eyes) in a long white robe. As I got closer to her I felt the atoms in my body begin to energize into this feeling of total love and euphoria that is coming from her.

The love this being, is sending into me, I could LITERALLY feel in each atom of my being. The atoms were emanating this zinger of loving light as they vibrated at blinding speed that was a HUM all over. (have no way to put it in words) No drug or orgasm has ever reached a minuscule amount of what that felt like.

She told me that in each "Chapter" of our lives we need to look for the "lesson". Once we get that lesson we can move on to the next "lesson" Then she said.. let me show you what I mean: All of the sudden I saw a 'Photograph" in the distance coming towards us at a very high speed.

Once it reached us we were "IN" the photograph and could look all around at what was happening. The first photograph was my Mother in labor giving birth to me.

Then I saw the next photograph approaching and I was learning to walk. The next I am in school. The next I am being bullied. The next I am in the hospital in pain as a child. The next I am studying piano music. Next meeting my good friends in high school. (Still friends to this day) Next falling in love. Etc. (Too many to write here and many too personal to share) These photos start coming at light speed. The two of us never move from our spots.

The photos come to present day then beyond right up until the day I am dying. I am in my early 90s. There is a nurse sitting in a chair. Above my head I see holograms of medical monitoring. From the ceiling I see a beam of light entering my left arm that is administering "light medicine". I feel my breathing starting to slow. I see faces starting to appear around my bed.

My parents and siblings and finally my husband. They all look young and are smiling and telling me not to be afraid that it is ok to let go. I start to leave the body and I am standing next to this woman in a field that has flowers and grass as far as we can see.

She repeats to me what she said at the start. "Look for the lesson in EACH chapter of your life and once you get that lesson you move on to the next." She also says when you life is over you will have this kind of life review only with a difference. You will see each chapter of your life and how your words and actions were felt by others. She says I will be heading back into my body and not to be afraid.

She starts to walk away and I say "Wait! Who are you...I mean..who were you in the earth life?" She says, "I was the wife of a very famous rock star known the world over. He is still alive. This is my work now to help Souls understand their purpose and give hope when appropriate."

She smiles and turns to continue walking away. I feel my being pulled back back back and into my body waking up with a gasp and deep breathe. I don't say anything to the medical people who were working around me. As soon as I can see my husband (gay couple here) I tell him of my experience and then say " I wonder who that woman was?"

He says, "My gut feeling? Linda McCartney!" Now...I am not a beetles fan at all. I don't own even one song of theirs. I google her name and sure enough. It's the woman in my experience.

I've never shared this with anyone. Only the hubs. The love was beyond mortal words. I still think about it every day. The atoms in my being were each registering this over whelming love energy. Can't wait to go back there one day.

Username: TipToeThruLife

This is the first time I will have ever responded or posted anything ever on here, but I felt compelled to share my experience for some reason. I suppose because it’s one of the few things I seem to have quite a bit of experience with.

I’ve attempted suicide multiple times in my life since the age of 13. Nearly every single time, I landed in ICU on life support. There was one time I overdosed at the age of 15 and apparently died in the ambulance after my lungs shut down. I was in a coma for a week.

Towards the end of that week, I could remember hearing the voices of my family and medical staff, but could never see them and could never respond but I also wasn’t afraid or upset that I couldn’t. I remember finally waking up to my grandfather’s voice and that was the comfort that brought me out of the other world I was stuck in and back to this one.

Another time I overdosed and that time I did have a legitimate out of body experience because after I was dropped off at the hospital, I remember being able to see the friends that dropped me off on the other side of the doors as I was being wheeled off on the the bed and was apparently coding.

I remember watching someone jump on top of me in the bed with me and start performing chest compressions on me as we were both being wheeled down a hallway. I remember seeing my clothes being cut off of me. I was watching all of this as if I were looking down from ceiling. I don’t remember much else other than that.

My last suicide attempt which I wasn’t hospitalized for, but I feel was the most severe, I tried to overdose consuming 2 bottles of benzodiazepines and a bottle of blood pressure pills. It should’ve killed me, but it didn’t. When I woke up the next day, I apparently tried to hang myself.

I have zero recollection of doing this, but the state in which I woke up indicates otherwise. I guess I’d tried to hand myself and the noose had come unraveled. I woke up in a haze on the floor. I had a huge gash in my neck from rope burn, my tongue was swollen and blue, there were multiple burst blood vessels in my eyes and I had lost all control of my bowels and bladder.

I could not stand, all I could do was crawl to the bathroom and then to the bed. I remember being certain I must have actually died. I don’t know how to explain it, it was just a feeling of knowing...and my experience with death was nothing but blackness and darkness and emptiness, but not in a scary way. This is what partially contributed to a lifelong atheism being extended many more years.

There was also an unintentional, but not unwelcome heroin overdose in which I had to be narcaned back to life. That also was a dark, empty black void of nothingness that I wouldn’t necessarily object to, but it wasn’t anything I would choose, either.

There were many other serious attempts but I don’t recall anything that changed my perspectives or thoughts about the afterlife or anything any more interesting that stood out in my mind than what I’ve just discussed.

Im not sure what determines the kind of experiences one will have in a near death experience, but I do believe a large part of it is dependent on the things that are important to you enough so to keep you grounded to this life in this world and that a large part of it must simply just be random. At any rate, this is one of the most interesting topics I feel any human can discuss and I’m glad to have stumbled across this one.

Username: LetLoveKill2020

Dying is very easy. I think the people we leave behind are the ones who suffer the most. Ironically after having died myself, my partner passed away a couple of years ago.

Having experienced both, I'd say that it is much harder to lose someone and endure it all than to die and just stop functioning, feeling, thinking, seeing, hearing, etc. I was told family members that I was clinically dead for some time and it was ridiculously amazing that I suffered no detectable brain damage from it. I like to blame my derpiness on this event.

I had heart failure when I was 19. It's not the kind of heart failure where the heart slowly gets worse over time. It was the kind where I would have died in my sleep if I did not get to the ER immediately.

I had classic cardiac symptoms such as shortness of breath, chest pain, and low blood pressure, so I was admitted with high priority. Prior to realizing that something might be wrong, I had gone to the normal doctor for "not feeling well". Don't underestimate the "not feeling well". I thought it was just a flu or cold.

The nurses thought I was overdosing on drugs when I did go to the ER. Given I was young, I guess they get a lot of people in for things like that. Anyway, I remember fainting very well. I was sitting and I couldn't see anymore and things went white.

The last words I said was "Mom, I think I'm going to faint." I can hear my mom yelling "NURSE HELP!" and that was that. Since medical science and staff are so amazing, here I am today, because I would have died.

I wasn't conscious for a very long time. I think they let me wake up from the medically induced coma about 2 weeks later. I still don't know much about what happened and I can't remember much, but I do know that it felt like a deep sleep of nothingness.

There's no seeing my life flashing before my eyes. I was out very quickly. I did remember waking up a few times, but I was just so sleepy and kept going in and out. Some things I saw included adorable dolphins swimming and leaping on swirling blue oceans, and ceilings with bright green leaves and branches swaying in the wind.

My initial thought was that the hospital sure has some fancy decor. I've been told that there was no such thing by my sister. I also remember feeling like I was on a boat and rocking back and forth while being surrounded by lots and lots of machines, wires, tubes and computers.

From what I was told, the machines part was legit. They had a second ambulance just for my medical equipment when I was being transferred. I had to learn to live with an Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) for a while.

If only camera phones/FB/Instagram were a thing at that time. I wish I could show you the awesome cable sticking out of my chest.

Username: nanabeams

This isn't exactly what OP is asking for but it was the moment just before. I was in active labor just waiting my for water to break when the Doctor came in to suggest just going ahead & breaking my water herself. The moment she does I see a look of panic on everyone's face and then everything turned super serious.

She looks at me & tells me that on my next contraction I have to start pushing because my son already had his first bowel movement so he was at risk of ingesting it. Well I immediately start pushing and pushing and pushing but turns out he was lodged. ( we didn't find that out until later )

I had been pushing for so long & so hard that with each following contraction I could literally feel the life draining from my body. I remember focusing on my husband to tell him I was sorry and then all of a sudden peace.

The whole time it had felt like I had been fighting my sleep but once I gave in there was instant peace. I really can't communicate through text the calmness I felt especially while just being in the worst pain of my life but it was truly a state of bliss.

This whole time I was in this state I wasn't aware of my body , memories , or surroundings but somehow I knew that this was in fact death. Even though I was in a state of bliss at first I was entering into a state of nothingness.

The only way I know how to describe it is to imagine you're consciousness just disappearing into a black hole. As you're entering this black hole you lose everything no memories, thoughts ,or even awareness.

I felt like I was losing everything and I didn't know if there was anything on the other side of this black hole or this was truly the end of me. I could either come back & face the agony that was waiting for me here or I could let go into nothingness & see where that leads me.

Still to this day I don't what it was that brought me back but once I opened my eyes again they were preparing for an emergency C-section. He was perfectly healthy and had no problems from the meconium.

I honestly thought I had just been dreaming because the next few days I stayed passed out but my husband told me what happened once I finally came too long enough.

I've never shared this with anyone besides my husband partially because it really messed with my head. Before I was terrified of death but now I sort of welcome it. Even if my conscious disappears into nothing, there is nothing I've experienced in this life that compares to those moments near death.

I can't help but wonder what, if anything, is on the other side of the seemingly black hole of death.

Username: Rikcole

My last semester at a certain college I was assulted by a football player for walking where he was trying to drive (note he was 325lbs I was 120lbs), while unconscious on the ground I lived a different life.

I met a wonderful young lady, she made my heart skip and my face red, I pursued her for months and dispatched a few jerk boyfriends before I finally won her over, after two years we got married and almost immediately she bore me a daughter.

I had a great job and my wife didn't have to work outside of the house, when my daughter was two she [my wife] bore me a son. My son was the joy of my life, I would walk into his room every morning before I left for work and doted on him and my daughter.

One day while sitting on the couch I noticed that the perspective of the lamp was odd, like inverted. It was still in 3D but... just.. wrong. (It was a square lamp base, red with gold trim on 4 legs and a white square shade). I was transfixed, I couldn't look away from it. I stayed up all night staring at it, the next morning I didn't go to work, something was just not right about that lamp.

I stopped eating, I left the couch only to use the bathroom at first, soon I stopped that too as I wasn't eating or drinking. I stared at the fucking lamp for 3 days before my wife got really worried, she had someone come and try to talk to me, by this time my cognizance was breaking up and my wife was freaking out. She took the kids to her mother's house just before I had my epiphany.... the lamp is not real.... the house is not real, my wife, my kids... none of that is real... the last 10 years of my life are not fucking real!

The lamp started to grow wider and deeper, it was still inverted dimensions, it took up my entire perspective and all I could see was red, I heard voices, screams, all kinds of weird noises and I became aware of pain.... a fucking shit ton of pain... the first words I said were "I'm missing teeth" and opened my eyes. I was laying on my back on the sidewalk surrounded by people that I didn't know, lots were freaking out, I was completely confused.

at some point a cop scooped me up, dragged/walked me across the sidewalk and grass and threw me face down in the back of a cop car, I was still confused.

I was taken to the hospital by the cop (seems he didn't want to wait for the ambulance to arrive) and give CT scans and shit..

I went through about 3 years of horrid depression, I was grieving the loss of my wife and children and dealing with the knowledge that they never existed, I was scared that I was going insane as I would cry myself to sleep hoping I would see her in my dreams. I never have, but sometimes I see my son, usually just a glimpse out of my peripheral vision, he is perpetually 5 years old and I can never hear what he says.

EDIT (24 hours after post): never though anyone would read this, I changed a line so that it no longer seems that my 2 year old daughter bore a child.

I have never seen Inception or the Star Trek episode so many have mentioned (but I will eventually)

I will not do an AMA

I've had many PM's describing similar experiences and 3 posters stating such experiences are impossible, I'd say more research needs to be done on brain functions. Pre-med students, don't assume you know everything.

A few have asked if they can write a book/screen play/stage play/rage comic etcetera, please consider this tale open source and have fun with it

Username: Belazriel

Some really great comments in here so I feel compelled to share my stories as well. I am an asthmatic who has experienced a near death experience twice. Each was a completely different experience.

The first time it happened I had an unusually bad asthma attack and was being driven to the hospital by my aunt (we lived about 15-20 minutes from the nearest hospital so it was much quicker to drive rather then call an ambulance).

During that particular incident although I can not confirm that I was "clinically dead" when I was revived but that outcome to me seemed inevitable and on that occasion I actually had a little time to think about what was happening. I remember sitting in the car, struggling to breathe and thinking to myself, "I'm not going to make it this time" and a feeling of panic started to set in.

The panic quickly subsided and was replaced with a concern for my family and those that would have to deal with my death. Finally, right before I lost consciousness a sensation of calmness and acceptance washed over me I just let go. Once unconscious, there was nothingness until I awoke at the hospital. The time between my blacking out and awaking was probably 7-10 minutes on that occasion.

The second occasion was a little different. I awoke one Sunday morning after a long night of partying with my friends, and was having an asthma attack. Fortunately my cousin happened to be standing there as I reached for my inhaler to take a puff.

The inhaler wasn't relieving the symptoms and I think my cousin started to notice that this was no ordinary asthma attack. He asked me if he should call someone to help, to which I stubbornly declined. That was the last thing I remember before waking up at the hospital.

According to my cousin, after I said "no" I just collapsed to the ground and started convulsing. They called 911 and my aunt started cpr until the paramedics arrived. I received a shot of adrenaline while be wheeling into the hospital on a gurney.

At that point I awoke, a little confused but with quite a bit of enthusiasm and feeling pretty good considering the circumstances. There were six or seven people staring down at me and one of them said, "phew, that was a close one".

Besides feeling great I also noticed that I was wet. I found out later that my bladder had released while the paramedics were dragging my up the stairs (bedroom was in the basement). This time I was unconscious for at least 45 minutes. Judging by the expression of the medical staff's faces I would say that that one was the real deal.

No, I didn't see a light, or demons, or anything for that matter. But the experience did changed me forever. I no longer fear death and have gained a much greater appreciation for many of things in life that many overlook or take for granted.

Not long after that last asthma attack, I moved about 1200 miles further south and I haven't had any serious breathing issues since.

Username: rbmrph

I’ve never really told this story to the world before but here it goes. I have asthma. I broke up with girlfriend at the time and moved in with my grandmother for awhile, working odd jobs, mostly delivery jobs. One morning I woke up with some trouble breathing. I used my inhaler and it didn’t work.

Puff after puff and nothing helped. I used my nebulizer, didn’t work. I realized things wouldn’t get better so I told my grandmother to call 911. I kept using the nebulizer while waiting. After like 3 treatments my breathing only got worst. I tried keeping my cool but panic started setting in.

My grandfather yelled at me to try and breath some fresh air from out the window, so I ran over to the window but the ac was in it and I couldn’t just open it, especially bc we were in the 4th floor of a building in the middle of Brooklyn.

That ac could have fell on someone, so I did what I thought at the time was a good idea and punched out the glass above the ac. I still have a small scar on my pinky from the glass.

Stuck my head out the shattered glass and tried breathing but after a few seconds the reality of the situation started setting in. It was a big building with 2 sides.

Police often get lost trying to find the right apartment and I knew that the EMS would also get lost in the building thus lowering my chances of survival. I felt the encroaching darkness at the edge of my vision.

I thought to my self, I’m going to pass out, I’d rather pass out in front of my building bc I would be easier to find. It’s crazy how you can think of so many things in such a short time when your in a panic. I thought about when I was about 13-14 a local, well known lady of the night also passed out in front of my building, also with asthma.

She was super nice and I’d never heard anyone talk bad about her and she died right in front of my building by asthma attack. I thought of my kids, growing up without a father, I had two boys at the time. A 3 yo and a new born, they’re to young to remember me, I would just be stories to them.

I made my way through my grandmothers apartment and as I walked down the hall in her apartment towards the door the darkness started taking over. It starts at the edge of your vision and slowly creeps center and once the darkness covers everything completely, your out. Nothingness.

I would call it darkness but it’s more than that, it’s nothing. No sight or sounds, no touch or taste, no thoughts or worries, just nothing. The one thing I can say for sure is that it was peaceful and the only reason I know that is bc when I woke up I felt my insides wet, my body aching my throat sore.

I felt my body again. I was in and out for about a day, I remember glimpses of people visiting me and bring me gifts but nothing much. One thing I can say about death that I believe I know from experience is, there’s nothing to fear about it except the thought of it.

Username: Nolobrown

This happened back in the early 1990's, to my grandmother. I was about 19 at the time.

Granny was a wee Scottish born woman who emigrated to Australia in 1956. She was a sweet, loving woman, who was also tough as nails. She had a long-standing heart condition which was monitored by her doctor.

Part of this was having periodical angiograms. It all started when she had to have one of these routine monitoring angiograms. She went in, had the procedure done, spent a day in hospital afterwards and was then discharged home. She lived alone.

She started feeling unwell a few days later and took herself to the doctor, just in case. He said she had an infection and gave her antibiotics. She did start to feel better. The next day she came to stay at my family's home because of various family things that were going on, it was just easier for her to stay with us as she didn't have her own car and never drove. Just as well she did.

She started feeling unwell again after only a couple of days on the antibiotics, so she saw our family doctor and he gave her something else, but said that if she wasn't feeling significantly better in 48 hours, go to the hospital. It was less than that.

By the next day she was vomiting and couldn't even keep plain water down. In the end, my mother insisted on taking her to the hospital. Once there, they took one look at her and took her straight in. I'm not surprised. I have a vivid memory of helping Granny into the car and looking at her as we helped her put her seatbelt on.

She looked like death-warmed-up. Once in Emergency being tended by the staff, she said "I don't feel very well ..." and she went into cardiac arrest. She was "gone" for 3 minutes.

I asked her some time afterwards what it felt like and she said that it wasn't scary, but that it was like that soft, warm darkness you experience as you're drifting off right before you fall asleep, only it wasn't for a short time. It felt like hours.

That it wasn't like floating or drifting, it was just 'being'. And then in true Granny style, she said "And then I could hear someone shouting my name over and over again, and "can you hear me?" Of course I could hear him. I'm no deef!"

After the Emergency staff had brought her back, she was off to the ICU for the evening (and a few days after that). Next morning, in ICU, Granny is demanding breakfast. The doctor came in to see her and discuss what had happened.

First thing she says to him is "When am I getting outta here?" (She was never fond of hospitals). He replied something like "I honestly couldn't say. According to the test results from last night, you shouldn't be here now." She paused and replied "Well I havenay got time to die. I've got too much to do."

And that pretty much sums her up. She passed away in August 2012, aged 91 and a half.

Username: squirrellytoday

I smoked 20x Salvia over Spring Break and I believe I experienced death. Within seconds of exhaling the smoke of this extremely powerful drug, I was thrown into another world. A world that I had never seen before. A world where every law of physics and science no longer existed.

I didn't really know where I was or what was happening but I felt some sort of infinite looping sensation and I thought it would never end. "Looping sensation" doesn't do it any justice but those are the only words I can think of. It was really uncomfortable and I thought someone was playing a joke on me.

I remember my reality in front of me being split up into separate slices. Each slice of reality represented a second or a moment in time and these slices were getting shot up into the sky. As soon as I thought the looping sensation would end, it would just keep going on and on.

I began moving my arms around me to feel my surroundings. It all felt so real and for a while, I was convinced it was very real. I did not even remember smoking the salvia.

After a few minutes (which seemed like a few years) I looked behind me to my left where I noticed a group of "people" hiding behind a wall staring at me talking among themselves. I felt as if they were welcoming me to this new world now that I had discovered "the truth." Truth of what? Couldn't tell you. But these people were expecting me.

My friends recorded it and I can be seen twisting my arms around me with a look of confusion and fear. Words were being mumbled but those words were not English. My friends were standing directly in front of me but I didn't even know they were there. I was so immersed in this new world that I couldn't even see them inches in front of me.

I felt like I had to adapt to this new world and my new life. After about 10 minutes, I got a glimpse of my friend standing in front of me. At this point, I remembered smoking the salvia and I was aware that what I had just observed was a result of the powerful drug.

I was so incredibly relieved to be back on Earth with my two friends and not in that terrifying world. I was in and out of this world for the next 20 or so minutes. I decided to lay down on a cold slab of concrete trying to make sense of what had just happened but I couldn't. I could not find any words in the English language to describe it.

My brain felt very clouded for the next hour and all I could think about was the trip I just had. I didn't care about anything on Earth. My life on Earth felt so insignificant and meaningless.

Anyway, that was my salvia trip and the only logical explanation was that I momentarily witnessed "life after death" I guess.

Username: kushmaster10

Drowned in the Caribbean at 14. Stung by something on a night dive that stopped my heart. Revived on boat shortly after. Declared dead for just over a minute.

It was... interesting. There was a sudden awareness of just how big the universe is, and just how small I was in comparison. It’s hard to describe, but it was like looking into a massive sun that kept calling me towards it.

The void surrounding it was massive, but still traversing the distance between here and there felt easy. Time doesn’t exist as it does here, so when I was brought back it felt like I had been gone for a very long time.

With that came the feeling of pointlessness that took a long while to process. When confronted with true grandeur as whatever that sun was... everything else seems small. Nothing had value over anything else, as they all were so insignificant when I’d try to compare.

I think that’s where the real test is, which some refer to as “the choice.” You can either look away and reject the experience, trying to rationalize what you saw by whatever framework you were raised with, which rarely works; or you can stare right back at it, and accept that there are things that exist too great to contain within the boundaries of a human mind.

I went with the latter. I stopped trying to prove my greatness. I stopped believing that I was subject to limitations set by others, as having perceived something so beyond what anyone had ever known proved that human thinking is limited.

I see no scripture or authority as absolute, and any time someone asserts that there is something so described I am compelled to prove them wrong by any means necessary.

As a result of all this I became more capable. Not being bound by human expectation made doing what I really wanted to much more satisfying. Granted, difficulties come with that. Being broken off of the stories most people live places a burden of discovery on you that isn’t easy to handle.

There’s also the fact that to this day I can still hear the call of that thing beckoning me back as though some kind of cosmic mistake is trying to remedy itself. I have a morbid fear of the ocean because I fear that my instinctual self will compel me back under the tide, and that this time I won’t be strong enough to drag myself back out.

So yeah, I hope this helps. I don’t personally think this kind of thing is something people should seek out, although they do.

Personal rebirth is a painful experience where success is the exception, not the rule. I’ve met others like myself who’ve lost that fight, and it’s not pretty.

Username: JinnDiZanni

I have not been "clinically" dead and needed resuscitation or anything along those lines, however I have experienced something that a high percentage of people have not which is the chemical known as dimethyltryptamine AKA DMT.

DMT is a chemical known to be found in all living organisms, some organisms have more than others, and is prevalent in humans mainly during sleep (i.e. the chemical that causes dreams to occur) and highly prevelant during near-death experiences.

You can extract this chemical from certain plants that have a higher concentration than others. The most common method of consumption is by smoking it or vaporizing it sometimes edible (depending on the activation method).

The extracted DMT induces a psychedelic state that has been known to induce what's called a state of "ego death". During this time you experience a combination of all human emotions and concerns be stripped away from you.

Following is a luxurious adventure that people refer to as "breaking through" into a world of geometry and other-worldly dimensions and visualizations.

It has been known to humans and from my own experience that DMT is the closest thing to real death that we can experience in this realm and come back from, In my opinion is that if what I have experienced on DMT is what will happen to me after I die in this "realm" - I would be more than pleased to be there.

I have been in a state where I completely feel like I have died, otherworldly beings have and carried me through the doors to salvation, stripped away everything I am, everything I was, and everything I will be, but part of me was still there in some form or another.

I have had the sensation of being ready to die and accepting my fate as it was in that Divine Moment of Truth.

The only reason I held myselfheld back from letting this overpower me and take me away from this physical realm is my "souls" state of completion on this Earth (Terra), and those around me who I would affect without being able to explain why I left them (or could I?).

I came back to finish what I had started and spread the word of what I know now to influence others to not be afraid of death, to embrace and experience life in its fullest, and to be exactly who you want to be before your time "here" comes because people neglect what we have here. 99% have no idea what life is.

I believe that we do move on after life and depending on the way that you experience it will determine what you experience when you reach the next level of existence.

Username: dillontuckr