Have you ever had a near death experience? What happened?
Have you ever had a near death experience? What happened?
About 25 years ago when I was still in college I thought it would be cool to get a motorcycle. I rode it around for about a year with no problems until one day I was riding down this mountain road near where I lived and a deer ran out in front of my bike and I swerved to avoid it, I flew off my bike and into a ditch on the side of the road and was knocked out, my bike fell off the other side of the road and down a sheer cliff face. It was not obvious anyone has ever been there or that there was an accident. I laid there for almost a two days until people started looking for me after missing work. When I came to my legs were messed up, I had broken an ankle, elbow and wrist and couldn't move. I sat there for hours convinced I was going to die. I was pretty upset about it but after a while the anxiety washed away and I just went completely numb. My next memory was waking up in a hospital.
Thank god I was wearing a helmet.
How about you?
I put a gun to my head, ready to end it all.
Woke up in a hospital. No drugs involved.
I drove myself there. The gun was in the glove compartment. Apparently, I self admitted through ED.
I remember NOTHING from gun to my head to waking up in the hospital.
Not sure if that qualifies as near death, but I think I was.
I am better now. That was years ago, I came close again recently, but this time I have answers about myself and a place to start.
Sounds pretty fricken near death to me.
You need to be proud of yourself. That's a big thing
Glad you're still here with us!
I'm glad you are here friend
Makes me think about that line where Bruce Banner says "the other guy spit it out", referring to the Hulk when he tried the same thing with the gun in his mouth.
A bunch.
Two while snowboarding. First time I hit some rocks that were hidden in fresh snow. When I checked my helmet, a rock had pierced it in the back of my head. It was easily a fatal hit had I not had my helmet on. The second time I accidentally rode off a cliff (took the wrong line). I landed on my back in powder but a snapped branch was sticking up two inches below my left arm pit. Had I fallen four inches to the left, it would have impaled me through the heart.
I lost count how many while surfing. Lost a surfer I was trying to rescue and almost drowned myself.
Oddly, never while downhill skateboard racing.
Twice while riding a motorcycle.
Once in a car. A pickup hydroplaned on the interstate right ahead of me. It went in the ditch, overcorrected and came right at my door at speed. I turned my wheel into it so it wouldn't t-bone me but instead I missed it entirely and all I got was mud on my car and in my underware.
Blockage in three of my four main heart arteries. Two were 99% blocked. It required four emergency stents in my heart. I should be dead for sure from that one but a little voice in my head told me to skip the boat trip and go to the ER because I felt "funny".
Stage 3 cancer. Beat it but lost my singing voice. Fuck cancer.
I was around 21-22 years old. My step-dad got a boat and we had a big family picnic at the bay. We went tubing and started with the youngest sibling up to the oldest, me. Each of us got a progressively more intense ride. I knew I was up for a crazy ride, so I sat cross-legged IN the tube. That was a huge mistake and very dangerous, always lay on top of the tube in case what I'm about to tell you ever happens to you.
It was fine for a few minutes, despite the intensity. Suddenly, the way the boat turned combined with the wake and position I was sitting, the actual tube launched out from the cover/rope that attaches to the boat and that wrapped around my neck and luckily, one of my arms. I was pulled behind the boat for a few minutes, slowly blacking out, as I finally came to, floating naked in the bay. Luckily my step-brother noticed the tube was gone and told him to stop the boat. No idea when my bathing suit got ripped off but luckily it was floating nearby. I had a huge rope-burnrash across my chest, under my arm, and around my neck. Pretty sure if it wouldn't have went under my arm, it would have snapped my neck.
That was well over a decade ago and I haven't been in the ocean since.
That was really reckless from your stepfather. You must always have someone watching the tube at all times.
Thrice, all a long time ago:
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Driving back alone from a group camping trip. Got stuck in a freak snowstorm in the mountains, without chains. Stalled and started sliding back towards a really deep ravine. Hit the brakes, but it kept skidding through the sleet. Had the car door open, ready to bail. The car came to a stop, barely inches from the edge.
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Walked out of the shower in a towel. Faced a tweaker with a gun standing in my apartment. Demanded my wallet. Took out the cash. Wasn't much. He paused, trying to decide what to do next. I really wasn't sure which way it would go. He left.
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Flight instructor had checked off on doing a solo, then left town. Was nervous, but he had told me to put in the flight hours in his absence. Practicing short take-off/landings and go-arounds. Little single-engine trainer. On the first touch-and-go, I forgot to take off full flaps, which meant maximum drag on the wings. Got barely 1000 ft above ground, then the engine began to sputter. The plane stalled, and started a slow-mo, nose-down spin toward the ground. I remember stopping breathing. Then the brain kicked in. Figured it out. Recovered from the spin way too close to the ground. The most sphincter-clenching, stupidest moment of my life.
I have next to no experience but from the few times I went on those planes I can say the G forces are much more then you expect. It's not just "oh cool I feel lighter", it's " oh god I'm falling to my inevitable death"
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Heart stopped beating. I could feel the lack of oxygen despite breathing like mad. Thought "Fuck, tomorrow my mom is going to find me dead in my bed" (I still was a student living close enough to university to commute). Luckily, one of the built-in safety mechanisms kicked in and my heart restarted. Spent some weeks in hospital after that so they could find me a better medication than the one I was using.
Heart stopped beating? That's a thing? Jesus
That is a thing if the medication you get does not really work out for you. I remember waking up one night a week before that where I started the blood pressure recorder, and it measured a heartbeat of 26 BPM. And that was when I was actually out of the valley and had enough energy to press the button.
Intense, glad you're still around!
Yes, me too. Not a good experience, I'll rate it 1/10, not recommendable.
And yes, quite some of your life passes before your eyes in those seconds. It is indeed very intense.
Almost choked to death on potato. Fell to the ground, which loosened potato.
Choking is the most terrifying and most unfair imo. I have a lot of siblings and every single one of them has had a choking scare.
This. My mother is has ptsd just from witnessing me and my siblings choke on stupid shit.
I really recommend people learn how to perform a tracheostomy in the event that the subject can't dislodge the object. Heimlich maneuver first and CPR if they lose consciousness, but if all else fails, sharp tube object, and spike the divot above the sternum.
How could brother potato do this to you
Similar to you, but I can't remember if it was a potato.
Like others, ive had things go down the wrong pipe before; everyone has. But this time it was completely blocked; no air in or out.
I live alone, so it was the scariest moment of my life. By the time I was able to dislodge it enough to breath by slamming my diaphragm down against the edge of a counter enough times, my eyesight had already begun to go dark.
Thought for sure that that was it for me right there.
Rode a horse.
Woke up in a hospital.
Discovered I'm like insanely allergic to horses; airway was completely fucked.
Someone hit me with an epi-pen after recognizing the signs - good chance I'd be dead otherwise. Unsure if it was a staff member or just a random person who happened to be carrying an epi-pen; I was pretty little when it happened, and only vaguely recall getting up on the horse and nothing after, but I'm told I just randomly went all dead-weight and flopped off and face planted in the dirt.
Thanks, random stranger with epi!
This is funniest one.
Wow, that is something I never considered as possible. I guess I'm glad I'm terrified of horses. I should carry those around just in case I see this happening even though I don't have allergies
It's not so much a horse issue as it is an allergy issue, and those are specific to the person. You can have a severe reaction to pretty much anything, and you don't know ahead of time unless you've been allergy tested for some reason - you'll just have a random exposure like mine to horses, and find out the hard way.
I'm guessing the person with the epi pen had an allergy to something else and was carrying for that; saw me and decided to intervene with their own meds.
Sorry that happened to you (regardless of head or hand).
That was a wild read. Glad you're still around.
. Exit wound
Does it count if I don't really remember it? I was 8. It was a week before summer break. I was waiting for my mother to come home from work (sitting on the front steps to our house). A friend of mine called me across the street. I went. I didn't make it to the other side. Hit and run driver crashed right into me, dragged me half a block and left me for dead. Neighbors said he didn't even look back. They never caught him. I don't remember waking up in the ambulance. I had a head wound and a broken leg (compound fracture, pierced the skin). I remember them having to set the bone and then take me to another hospital (a children's hospital). I remember being drugged. And waking up to my mom sleeping in the chair next to me. I have no memory of anything from the time I was crossing the street to the time I was in the ICU at the first hospital. They wouldn't let me move my head. I don't remember being scared or in pain or anything until they had to set the bone to straighten out my leg to splint it.
Even the aftermath (10 weeks in a body cast that went from my breast bone down to cover everything but the toes of my broken leg) is kind of a hazy mess. Except that I then fell down the stairs and broke my arm too. Added insult to injury.
Kids are weirdly resilient. It sounds like you should have deep scars across your body, but I know for a fact that they all probably faded in a year or two. Damn kids with their super powers.
I still have the scar from the head wound but you can only see it in winter time when I'm paler, and it's sort of receded some into my hair line. Even then. It's very faint. I don't have any scars on the leg (that I can see anyway) Or my back. It's the kind of thing that didn't seem scary or worry me at the time, but looking back I know I could have died. I think I don't remember a lot of things because I was on painkillers for a good majority of the time.
Of course the other thing is that I have to go off the accounts of people who were there at the time and they were mostly kids (and one person's mom) who couldn't give the cops a good description of the guy or the car or anything.
Bumped my head with another kid in 6th grade at recess. When we went back in for reading time I realised I couldn't read and had a headache, so I told my teacher and went up to the front office. I remember sitting down waiting for my mum to pick me up, then next thing I know I'm laying down in a hospital bed. Apparently I got a really bad concussion and went crazy and I don't remember a thing, I'm glad I don't lol.
There was an icy patch on the playground one day and people were taking turns sliding on it. One kid fellover and I went down after him and my stomach fell on his upturned shoe. All the wind rushed out of me and everything went black for a few seconds until I woke up on the ground
Wow, that is really scary. It is kind of funny/sad how delicate our heads are and they just kind of hang there on top of everything exposed
I know right, it wasn't even that hard of a hit. Apparently it was just in a sensitive spot
I fell out on fent twice, both times I ended up in the ICU. I experienced the exact same shit I felt from a MeO-DMT trip. And both times a clockwork elf literally put their long weird arm on me and said "it's not your time yet friend." Then I felt felt extreme whiplash and despite not being fully conscious I distinctly remember hearing the pulse monitor beeping and knew I wasn't dead.
Glad you're alive and hope you got off that shit
Sober from all drugs except weed and nicotine. Literally turned down opiates in the hospital after I got stabbed repeatedly.
clockwork elf
Every time I've had a nightmare, it's usually involved a wolf with glowing red eyes appraising me followed by a wizard in blue robes kindly waving his wand to wake me up. It's a recurring motif in my life
I've been on a motorcycle for over 25 years now and I've had some near misses but nothing serious.
That's an amazing story and lucky you for making it through. I've known of two people in my circle who died from motorcycle accidents and a few more in my community and region who died .... it's also amazing to realize that you don't need to be riding fast in order to get killed on a motorcycle. One woman in my town was at an intersection, moved across in an awkward way, got hit by a truck and neither were moving fast, she just got hit in a particular way, knocked down, pinned down by the truck, crushed and then died on the way to the hospital.
My near death experience was not as dramatic as yours. I was a dumb teen on a four wheeler on gravel. I did a major jump without knowing it out expecting it, launched about 20 feet in the air, landed front wheels first, launched forward and smashed my face in the gravel. Thankfully the atv went flying in a different direction and didn't land on me. I also didn't have a helmet on. I didn't get knocked out and I was aware the whole time. I was just lucky I was fit strong and landed in a lucky way that didn't hurt me too much.
I have a cousin who fell off an atv as a passenger, landed the wrong way, hit her head (again no helmet) severely injured, treated in hospital for a day before she died from injuries.
Motorcycles and ATV are dangerous machines
High stress job led to alcohol, smoking, high risk lifestyle almost ended me at 27 with a bleeding ulcer. In bed for a day or so before my then girlfriend found me and called the hospital. ER, blood transfusion, 2wk stay, 2wk recoup at home with daily iron injection, prescription meds for a month to keep the acid low.
Special diet for a month (no processed food, no caffeine, no nicotine, no pepper, no hard foods-spft, mushy, etc.
Got my shit together, woke up. No more smoking, alcohol (eventually) in moderation, healthier coping mechanisms- at one point when the stress ramped up in the job (still in the same career field) I was training/running triathlons. Married that then girlfriend, 25+ years on, 2 grown ass kids.
27 club is no joke...just happy I wasn't a celebrity.
Glad you turned it around. Alcohol is no joke
Yeah also found out during a follow up exam that cigarettes cause an increase in stomach acid.
Everyone I have met who rode motorcycles has a story like this. Then they lift up their pant leg or shirt to show you ghastly huge scars.
Nearly drowned once falling into a lake and not knowing how to swim. I didn't think about death, it was more "how do I get out". Luckily someone else got my hand.
Kid me was pretty stupid. My mom, sister, and I went on a trip to Hawaii with my mom's coworker. At that time, I was really bad at swimming. One of the beach trips we went to snorkel. I was left unsupervised for a while and ended up following a sea turtle way too far out. I ended up getting water in the breathing tube, and I panicked. I think I was flailing around for about two minutes going up and down the surface of the water until my mom's coworker noticed and dragged me back to shore. Was pretty sure I would've just drowned if no one noticed.
Overdose (Xanax and Alcohol)
I was meeting a friend from out of the state and got a bit big for my britches trying to show off how cool I was and made some poor judgment.
Somehow ended back in my apartment with a bunch of medics checking me out, I don’t even remember getting home from the bar.
First and only time ever using Xanax
Yeah, I had a similar but less severe experience with my first and last time trying xanax. I started to flip out a bit but definitely not remembering what was going on. I ended up picking a fight with a friend of mine who punched me in the face to get me to stop wiling then dragged me into my home and put me in my bed. I never thanked anyone for punching me in the face before or since lol
This must be how kids feel when they fall asleep in the car and wake up the next morning in bed. "Huh? Did I die and teleport here?"
Found out I'm allergic to a medicine after being administered via IV in one shot, luckily for me I was already at the hospital and the nurses figured out what was happening.
Lights turn green, I step on the road, I have no words for this other than spidey sense tingles, I step back, car shoots past me.
I believe god was with me that day because I did not see or hear the car approaching it was that fast.
That is so scary. Whenever I visit the US I feel like this is going to happen to me when I have to cross a street, glad you got the spidey sense!
You were knocked out for a day?
No, I was knocked out for an unknown amount of time but definitely less than a day and possibly not even that long. The passage of time wasn't extremely clear. I was awake for most of it but immobile. I was in a lot of pain and the entire event feels like looking back on a really bad dream. I have been told it was a unlikely that I should have survived.
Not really, just some high-speed near-misses on my motorcycle.
You can accidentally double dose on Trazadone like I did and have it feel like life is slipping away as yoy fight with every ounce to keep your eyes open while everything goes dark.
But really you just sleep extra hard.
Lived in Florida for almost a decade
I have two from when I was a kid. Once I was waiting at a traffic light with my mom. The light turns green and I jump out onto a street without looking. Not even half a second later a car whizzes by just centimeters in front of me. It went by so fast I have no doubt it would have killed me had it hit. That was probably 20 years ago and I still always look both ways even when the light is green.
Another one was at the beach. I couldn't swim (still can't) so I was walking parallel to the shore in water up to my shoulders. At one point there was a drainage pipe or something and the current from it seems to have eroded the bottom, so as I'm walking the ground suddenly goes out from under me and I feel like I'm getting pulled deeper in the sea. Luckily my mom was nearby and pulled me out pretty quickly. I don't like going deeper than waist height into the sea since then.
I also had a more recent scary moment, which wasn't really near death, but could have easily been very bad if there was an oncoming car. Get good tyres and don't fuck around in the rain, kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXTThHtUqLk
A couple of years ago my (now ex, for urelated reasons) partner got ahold of some molly. I was pretty new to drugs, but trusted her to keep me safe. We tested a small portion of it, and it came back clean. That night we took it with us to some club and did some lines in the bathroom.
Unfortunately, I was unaware that the chemicals in those test kits have expiration dates, and no one had ever explained the chocolate chip cookie effect to me. Either we just missed the chunk that had fentanyl in it, or those expired tests just weren't accurate, but either way I ended up overdosing.
I'm told my heart stopped for about ten minutes. Fortunately for me, the boyfriend of one of the performers had narcan with him. I had collapsed in front of the bar, and woke up laying in the parking lot with a bunch of strangers crowding around me. My partner ended up bundling me into the car and driving me home. I'm pretty sure I ended up with some brain damage. Years later though, I feel like I'm pretty much recovered, fortunately.
A couple of heart attacks. Only sad when thinking how sad my mom and dog would be if I died. Otherwise, pretty chill. Once the morphine kicked in I didn't care about anything.
A few, 7yo appendicitis which ruptured in surgery. 15yo Fell from 3 story high scaffolding and landed on my back. 11yo an adult repeatedly slammed my head onto a wooden floor: maybe not a near death but I had thought that that was the end. 18yo big hill at night friends figgered we would ghost it, brakes off keys out of the ignition, find break don't work and scrabbling to put keys in ignition.. I was drunk so I don't remember much else but we all survived car had a dent on the bumper.
Got SIBO from a liver or gallbladder issue. Went through 1 to 4 bottles a month of antibiotics. 2 for 2 weeks then next 2 weeks 2 different ones. Done that 15 times. Was given 4 to 8 weeks max to live losing 2 to 4 pounds a week at 105 pounds. Still not sure how I beat it. I'm still struggling but doing a bit better. Hospitals are shit, most Dr.s are shit. Health is wealth!
I don't know if that was a near death experienced, but one time I have nearly collapsed when commuting on a bus, after I drank 5 cups of coffee. My blood pressure went through the roof.
It also made me think some things in my life.
I've had the whole life flashing before your eyes thing.
The night I lost my virginity. Got high with this girl and watched a movie that was terrible and then we ended up hooking up and I'd put so much expectation into what sex was going to be like that when it actually came to it it just wasn't what I thought it would be.
Couldn't cum. So after doing everything I could possibly think of to do for about an hour I gave up and really shittily faked my orgasm and then I took the girl home.
Got back home and I blue balled myself so I took care of it and right after I came I had an epiphany. Being a kid and hyper sexualized I had messed around with my brother and sister, never going so far is actually having penetrative sex or anything but yeah. All of that shit flashed before my eyes and it hit me like a bolt of lightning out of the blue.
The stress was so much that every single bone in my rib cage right down my sternum cracked. It sounded like a gunshot had gone off. And it set my heart on fire with pain and misery and shame and guilt and an absolute detestation of my very existence that I that that I just I can't express it it's the only thing I understand in this universe to be "ineffable" is what I felt at that moment.
And I don't know if it was a blessing or a curse.
I spoke to my siblings after I had recuperated some and apologized for my wrongdoing in our childhood and for the most part we worked all of that out but God damn. Like, I was not mentally prepared to get drop kicked in the soul on the same night that I lost my virginity.
There were other things going on at that time too. I had been writing poetry and sometimes when I would write poetry I would feel like this flash of fiery warmth and it's like I would automatically know what the poem is going to be and it would flow out of me in this beautiful golden Rush.
I had books and books and books of poems I had written like this.
And I was attempting to write a poem when all of this happened and instead almost like I was possessed like it was automatic writing I wrote out all of my sins on several sheets of paper. My heart burned like someone had dropped an ember of burning hot coal on it as all of my sins were ripped out of me against my will.
It left me so shook that in all of the years since then I have only been able to kind of sort of cry a single time.
It felt like being abandoned by God, or rather it felt like suddenly getting caught by him and immediately thrown into hell for 5 minutes, only to be dragged back out with the fires still licking my skin from the inside and then being left to think about what I had done.
I'm talking about the bad side of it but there was a good side too because it opened my eyes to how I was living and what I was doing and even though I'm still horribly imperfect and terrified of being imperfect but helpless to not be imperfect, I am not as bad as I was I think.
And there were other times too where that same golden warmth would come up to me in the middle of a conversation and I would be talking to someone and all of a sudden I would know exactly what to say and in those moments where this would happen it's like pleasure and joy and fire would rise up out of my heart and reach out to the other person and touch them and in those moments I know the words that I have said have made a positive impact on someone else's life, but they weren't my words, they were the words of this fire and spirit inside of me.
All these years later that fire still burns. It never stops. It cannot be forgotten for me. And no matter how many times I explain it, people just generally do not believe that this actually happened to me. They think that it is a mental break or a bit of psychosis or some self delusion that I have put myself under to deal with the trauma of the incest and unfettered sexual promiscuity of my childhood.
And sometimes I'm afraid that that event was my soul leaving my body. And sometimes I'm afraid that it was the sudden inrush of the inhabitation of God that I had been searching for.
And as far as I know no one else has ever felt the way I feel. I can't find any literature on it. The closest I can relate to are those Christian iconographies of a heart with a crown on it and barbed wire and fire.
But you would think that if that was the inhabitation of God that the inclination to sin would have been driven away from me and yet I still sin just like everybody else.
So I don't know. I don't think I would recommend it to anyone else. Just wish I could meet someone who had been through that and knew what it was and could guide me.
Ive read that one in three people is affected by incestuous sexual activity. Thank you for talking about something millions of people suffer from but too few speak about.
You're doing a good job.
Oh man, I had a few of those. For privacy reasons I won't disclose any of it but I've spent some chunk of my life in hospitals. What I can tell is that none was a life changing experience. I did made some adjustments to avoid such issues in the future but the whole "I almost died, it made me a different person" wasn't my thing.
I used to work at a new car dealership, I didn't have a whole lot of experience. I get a new truck in that the customer wants running boards installed on. I get it up on the lift and start working on it. I get one side loosely on and bend down to do something then the back of the truck falls off the lift and the sides land on the lift arms. For some dumb reason my instinct was to try to catch the truck. Fortunately I wasn't crushed. The problem was that the lift arms did not lock into position, the lift pads were round rubber pads which were pretty smooth and the truck frame had just been undercoated. The lift arms just decided to both slip inwards. They said it wasn't even the first time something like that had happened with that specific lift.
The damage was pretty bad because that running board that was loosely installed bent up the rocker panel. Both bed sides were damaged.
