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Near-death experiences
This weekend, my spouse and I were hit by a car that missed a stop sign and crashed into our car head-on. It was the most terrifying moment of my life, and both of us thought it'd be our last. We ended up ok, but it definitely shook us. I feel immense gratitude to be alive and breathing right now.
What near death experience have you had, and how has it impacted your life afterwards, if at all?
I was on the opposite end of this story. I fell asleep kind of out of nowhere driving on a small highway. I didn’t feel more tired than normal getting into the car, it was just the warm weather and podcast voices that got to me and I fell asleep before I noticed how bad it was getting (also, being that sleepy degrades decision-making…)
I was probably going about 70 when I rear ended a car at a stop light. All I can say is crumple zones are incredible. My airbags didn’t go off and I didn’t realize how bad the crash was until I got out and saw my car! The car I hit had minor damage and was able to drive off without issue but my car was totaled. It wasn’t until I got home that I fully processed what happened and realized how lucky I was to be alive. Even though I wasn’t driving in a way that was dangerous, besides driving tired, it turned me into a much more actively careful driver.
DON’T DRIVE TIRED
The last time I drove tired was back in college--driving back to school after a weekend at home, I thought I'd be fine to start the 3 hour trip at 8 o'clock at night. Before long I was catching myself dozing off for split seconds at a time, until suddenly I was jolted awake by drifting down into the grassy median going 65 MPH. Luckily I was able to regain control and get the car back on the road, but it really shook me up. The impact of the moment was even greater when I realized that if it had happened 10 minutes further down the road I would have driven off of a steep embankment and likely suffered serious, if not fatal, injuries.
Since then, if I feel myself getting drowsy I'll either switch off with someone, or pull over somewhere and take a short nap. Be careful out there, people!
I have only fallen asleep once while driving. Thankfully, I slowly veered into the gravel at the side of the road and woke up immediately.
Now I pull over as soon as I feel my eyes getting tired. I'll set an alarm for 20 minutes or so and nap.
There's so many studies showing driving tired is just plain worse than driving drunk. Nobody should ever do so, you are putting not only your own life at risk but the lives of everyone in the road around you.
Unfortunately most people think things like this will never happen to them and they are a good driver and it's important for me to get to wherever I'm going... until they have an experience that makes them realize how bad it is.
There’s two other factors that are more difficult to wrangle with than driving drunk. First, I really didn’t feel that bad when I got in the car, maybe just the slightest bit tired. It was also 4PM, not midnight or anything. I had driven later at night feeling more tired at the moment of departure without issue. In comparison to a DUI, where you know you’ve been drinking, it was not obvious to me at the time that the situation was going to degrade like it did. Second, in Drivers Ed, they hammered home driving tired is as bad as DUI. They also hammered home that alcohol impairs decision-making. They did not hammer home that when you are that tired, your decision-making is just as impaired, so I wasn’t being as critical of my thought process as I should have been when I thought about pulling over.
I caught h1n1 when it erupted on the scene in mid 2009. I'd had other strains of the flu a couple of times before that, and they always make you feel like death for 2-3 days; and I'd also previously had mono, which is infamous for its lingering effects. But this one hit me like no illness ever had before. I was bedridden for two weeks, and then it was a few months before I started to feel reasonably normal again (although my lungs took a few more years). I am reasonably confident that if it weren't for modern medicine, I would not have survived it.
Years later, I developed an achy right shoulder that I could never quite fix. After about two years of it getting neither better nor worse, it suddenly evolved into the worst pain of my life over the course of about six hours. It was far, far worse than h1n1 — at least with that, I was bedridden — but with my shoulder inflammation, I could only sit straight up, as stock still as physically possible, or I would be swallowed with piercing, hot, boiling pain that emanated from my shoulder and rolled down to my fingertips (which I suspect is essentially what sepsis must feel like). It took about a week to get a diagnosis, in part because I was in too much pain to withstand most of the tests they wanted to do, and it was nine days before my anti-inflammatory medication eased it enough that I could lean over to sleep (before that, I would repeatedly nod off, slump over, and then get immediately woken by pain — for nine solid days and nights). In the meantime, I found myself secretly hoping it was terminal and that they would give me the news that I would pass away soon.
But I was not so lucky. As it turned out, I had developed calcific tendonitis, a completely non-life-threatening illness that resolves on its own with no lasting complications. My case was more intense than they usually are, but of no particular medical concern.
It's funny. When I look back on being so sick with the flu, something that did actually threaten my life, I am grateful that I did not die, and I would hate for my last moments in this life to be spent coughing up my lungs like that. At the same time, I do not particularly fear catching the flu again; for example, when my partner has the flu, I take care of him and take no precautions to avoid catching it myself, other than my annual flu vaccine.
But when I look back on having calcific tendonitis, some instinctual part of me feels like I am living on borrowed time and should not have survived that. I am generally a very happy person — I have no particular anxieties, I am not depressed, I wake up excited to do things every morning, etc. — but if it happened again, I'm not sure that I would be willing to survive it. I feel much more ready to die now than I was before. I made peace with death then, and I know that I can again.
I was driving, going about 70 on a four lane, divided highway. Someone pulled into a crossover ahead of me, and I didn't think anything of it. Happens all the time on that road. This time, the person continued into my path, blocking both lanes on my side of the road before he stopped. I stomped on the brakes, and I can remember the clouds of smoke coming off my tires. There was just a second left, and I realized that I wasn't going to stop in time, so I pulled the wheel to the right. My little pickup seemed to slide sideways, instead of turning at that speed and I barely missed the front of his car. My truck fishtailed back at him, but again I missed him. After that I was fighting for control on the shoulder of the road, which was loose gravel, and it seemed like I was doing that for a very long time before I came to a stop.
My hands shook for twenty minutes.
No impact on my life afterwards, not really. I am more cautious on that highway.
Eight or nine years ago... I honestly can't be certain, I was riding home from a gas station having purchased a 6 pack of PBR "pounders". I had not had anything to drink, I don't ride motorcycles with alcohol in my system. However my wife and I were moving out to a new place and I was packing up my tools and I thought "Jump on the bike and get some beer and come home and pack up your tools." So I got on my KTM 400 RXC and I rode out to get some beer. On the way home a deer came out of the woods and hit the back of my bike a few inches in front of my rear axle. She was apparently behind me when she hit. I probably had little time, or chance, to react.
I don't know. I don't remember any of it. I know she hit behind my sight line from looking at the mark she left on my swing arm. I know she died on impact because my neighbor told me she was laying there after the accident. I know I was in the hospital for a long time and I am very lucky.
I know I wasn't speeding because the police told me I wasn't speeding. I don't know that they are right but this is consistent with my habits. I didn't want my neighbors to hate me so I rode like a gentlemen a few miles from the house.. I was ... reasonable away from the house.
I was in the hospital for a good long time. I was "normal" when they released me. I had suffered a "traumatic brain injury" A TBI. But I passed their tests. I got back to being me a few years later. I remember it. It's remarkable to wake up again.
I am very fortunate.
When I was in the coma a guy who I'm not going to name called me and got my wife on the phone. He asked her if I still wanted to be a RiderCoach for the MSF. She said "Well he's in a coma and uh.."
He said "Well if he recovers and wants the job let him know he has a spot."
So anyway I took the job. Awhile later. And I am back now. Waking up is a trip.
Feels like home after a minute though.
Wear helmets. Take precautions. Don't do (too much) stupid and best of luck.
Sometimes you don't see life until you almost lose it. -J
I have "bled out" three times in my life. I severed an artery in my hand that made me use all of my quick survival skills to stay awake for a few minutes before an ambulance could get there; it was craziness how prepared my mind was to slow everything down and hit every important task I needed to do before I could make it to the street. I was alone in a rough part of town and no one was answering my calls for help.
This put me in a tough spot mentally that I never had really realized and properly dealt with.
Fast forward years later...I was having issues with my liver due to self medication and lack of seeing doctors due to no insurance.
A family member found me throwing up blood in my sleep and I was able to make it through. I stayed for a week or so at the hospital and figured out ways to help myself.
After working on my health and starting to feel better, I was walking and felt something pop; a cyst had opened on my liver and I quickly was bleeding from everywhere. Luckily I was with family and the ambulance was a couple minutes away. I remember not breathing and trying to calm down in the ambulance before I went out.
Apparently after multiple attempts to repair and endless transfusions, I was put into a coma and my family came to say goodbye as I was in grave condition. I heard them discussing my coma the first time and remember a sense of calm. I tried to move or do something at all to no avail. Calmness surrounded me; I said a prayer and felt comfort telling myself it'd be okay, go to sleep now, rest and you'll wake up when you're ready and when it's time.
Four days later I woke up and felt like a different person. I have a physical disability now, but it's not going to stop me from continuing a life.
I will always remember the people that helped me and that continue to help. I will pay back the world I appreciate so much in the best way that I can. I now live a clean life and will never turn back.
There are always people out there to listen and help in the darkest and toughest times. I hope to at least help out someone because I am so fortunate to be here...hopefully for a while.
My experience wasn't truly near-death, but for a moment I perceived it to be, so the effect was similar. I woke up in the middle of the night to the sensation of my heart pounding in a way I'd never felt before. I felt awful in a way I couldn't fully comprehend at the time since I was still drowsy and disoriented from waking at such an odd hour. I was on the verge of calling 911 thinking I might be having a heart attack when I decided to google heart attack symptoms (smart, right?) and ended up looking at side-by-side comparisons of heart attack symptoms vs anxiety and panic attacks. Of course, one of the symptoms associated with both heart attacks and panic attacks was phrased as something like, "A sense of impending doom," which is exactly how I felt. Regardless of physical symptoms and sensations, I felt like I was about to die. Considering that I'm not dead, I seem to have assumed correctly that I was having a panic attack and not a heart attack. But that didn't make the feeling that I was about to die seem any less real.
While the incident didn't radically change my life overnight, it did serve as my personal example of the classic experience of a brush with death forcing a change in one's perspective. After the main symptoms passed, I was still rattled for a few days, and I thought a lot about the "what if I died that night?" question. Some things I'd been obsessing over didn't seem to matter so much, and other things I'd been putting off seemed more important. I was already aware of the "memento mori" concept, but that experience nudged me toward actively embracing it. I still fail to engage with it on a sufficiently regular basis, but I've slowly been getting better about being more mindful of passing time and deciding how I want to live my life.
When I was three years old, I was found lifeless on the bottom of a swimming pool on a vacation. A young man found me and got me up on the edge of the pool and performed CPR on me and I survived with no harm done.
I have no recollection of the entire event (even though I remember other parts of the vacation that were much less intense, like getting ice cream), but in a weird way I sometimes wish I did remember.
I have been told the story so many times and I’m much more careful around water today, but I sometimes feel like I got nothing good out of a bad experience, which of course is a lie, as I’m able to sit here and write this, 30 year later. It’s a weird feeling to have today.
Two for me:
As a child, about 5 or so, a teenage babysitter used the gas cooker we had at the time and did not understand that the fire being out did not mean no more gas was coming. Apparently we were all out by the time my parents arrived home. Luckily all were fine.
About a year ago, my house was petrol bombed while I was inside. There was a drug dealer who had recently moved across the road and there was a dispute going on between dealers in my city. I never did learn who exactly did it, and why my house. Whether they got lost, or whether they thought hitting the dealer's house directly would provoke more retaliation than hitting a nearby one to make a point.
Man, at the time I wasn't afraid, because I was young, dumb and at a bit of a difficult time in my life. But looking back ... fuck. I was 18 and I had recently left an abusive mother and was living on own for the first time, I was lost and confused. I'd gotten interested in psychedelics and thought they might provide me some kind of insight or revelation to help bring me out of the turmoil I was experiencing. Bereft of money and contacts I learnt that a nearby park was known for magic mushrooms, so consulted the online resources that were available in the early 2000's and went about searching for them. I found what I believed to be liberty caps, went home and ate them. Nothing happened. I didn't trip, but wasn't sick either. I had no idea what I was doing and if I had got the wrong ones, things could have gone very bad, very quickly.
EDIT: To answer the second part of your question, not much. Just be careful. I can't say I've heeded that advice consistently over the years.
Speaking of psychedelics...I took a decent dose of DMT around a decade ago. I'd had it a few times before, but this time was different.
I made so much peace with death that I recall wanting to just be still and stop breathing so that I could completely allow the experience to take over. Death just felt so enticing, so comfortable, like it was drawing me in. I had very little sense of having any sort of human form at that point.
I highly doubt I was in any real danger, though I was told afterwards that I was indeed holding my breath in between gasps for air.
Only lasted a few minutes but I think the experience will stay with me for a lifetime. I'm no longer afraid of dying. Haven't had any DMT since, I feel like it taught me what I needed to know.
My near death experience happened when I was young so I didn’t really register it and it hasn’t impacted me really.
I was a young mechanical engineering intern working on switch gear, designing mechanisms and linkages.
One of the things I was around pretty often was very high capacity capacitors.
They often needed to be discharged to make them safe to work with after being on a test bench.
One day I was using a wrench to tighten some bolts and there was a capacitor nearby.
I was fiddling inside the enclosure. I stepped back, and dropped the wrench, it made contact with the capacitors and acted as a big resistor. It was still charged enough to fuse the wrench to the capacitor contacts. If I had still been holding the wrench I would have been toasted.
I have two moments to share.
The first one is from when i was a chili, maybe 5 o 6 years old. I vividly remember i was playing with lego blocks in the living room of my grand parents. I was alone there because... i dunno... maybe they were in the kitchen. And the lego blocks were the classic one, not duplo. I am not quite sure duplo esiste at that time... anyway i was there, playing and there were 2 small pieces 1x1 stucked together. I wasnt strong enough to break them apart so I made the only thing a sensibile child would have done. I tried to separate them usino my teeth and it worked. Sadly one of them flied into my throat and I started to gasp to breath. I was in panic.
I have been lucky enough to barf the piace after a few seconds... i guess... but those seconds lasted aeons in my head.
The second one instead happened when i was 11 years old. It was sunday and I woke up before my parents and I thought.... let's read some comics. The curtains were closed so I decided to turn on the lamp but when i clicked the button it didnt work. So I got out the bed to check and the Jack maybe had a wire that was not 100% covered so I got the shock :/ i survived because the circuit breaker but I remember i was almost paralized for minutes? Every muscles in the body ached.
Anyway... the 80s were wild...