Have you ever died? Didn’t think so.
Thing is — and it’s really crazy to think about this — some people have. The phenomenon known as Clinical Death isn’t very common, but it can happen. There are a variety of factors involved, but most commonly it happens when you technically die in a hospital, and a doctor is able to bring you back.
Crazy, right?
Well an AskReddit thread about what the experience of clinical death is actually like got even crazier as 13 people stepped up to share their experience. Spoiler Alert: None of them met God or Xenu.
1. From user monitormonkey
I always get nervous about having surgery, but this time I knew something was going to go wrong. It sounds silly but I felt so strongly about it that I wrote a will and left it on my dresser just in case.
Anyway, things go wrong during the surgery and I start to bleed out. Things went even further south and then my heart stopped beating. I found out later that I was dead for several minutes.
Now I don’t know if this was real or a hallucination or a mixture of the two.
I woke up in what looked like space but there wasn’t any stars or light. I wasn’t floating so to speak, I was just there. I wasn’t hot/cold, hungry, tired, just a peaceful neutral kind of thing. I knew there was light and love somewhere nearby but I had no urge or need to go to it right away.
I remember thinking over my life, but it wasn’t like a montage. More like I was idly flipping through a book and snippets stood out here and there.
I don’t remember making a decision to stay or go back, I just woke up in the ICU two days later.
Whatever it was, it changed my thoughts on a few things. I am still afraid to die, but I’m not worried about what happens after that.
2. From user TheDeadManWalks
The worst part of it all, looking back, is how peaceful it can seem. When I started vomiting blood, I went into shock. Hitting the wall to get my mums attention was a subconscious thing, the rest of me just… stopped caring.
When the doctors were trying to save my life, I just wanted to black out again. I didn’t want the lights to hurt my eyes and the doctors to hurt the rest of me any more, the unconsciousness seemed easier. And that’s how it felt when I was in the ICU for a few weeks after that, doped up on ketamine and slipping in and out of life. Being asleep was easy, being awake meant more pain and less dignity.
So if you want to know what it’s like to be that close to death, it’s tempting. It’s like wanting to hit the snooze button on your alarm at 7am. And maybe you do hit it once or twice but then you remember that you have work or school and that sleep can wait because you’ve still got shit to do.
3. From user TheBawlrus
It was like turning off a TV. One second things were working and the next im waking up surrounded by doctors and nurses with my feet in the air and a unit of blood being shot into me at high speed.”Heeeyyyyy budddyyyy…how ya feeling? We uh..lost you for a minute there.”
4. From user Schneidah7
I passed out while cruising along at about 50mph (they still have no concrete idea why) and I was thrown into a light pole. I only have two clear memories of that event. The first is being upside down and wondering idly why the opposite road was passing by inverted. The second is hitting the pole and stopping. It hurt, a lot. I cannot accurately describe how badly that hurt but suffice it to say I’m a person with a high pain tolerance to begin with and if I had been in my right state of mind I would have wept like a child. I just remember being on the pavement and things slowly going black and quiet, which honestly was a relief because it made the pain feel more distant instead of the crushing immediacy it had before. The only reason I didn’t fall asleep was a bizarre moment where I heard someone yelling “Ranger up you candy fuck! Come on man, get up. Get up. GET UP!” and then someone slapping my helmet (which was basically smushed really hard onto my head; the faceplate was bent up into my face and a good chunk was more or less shaved off). When I opened my eyes I saw my brother squatting on the pavement next me to. This was odd because my brother has been dead from an OD for several years. I couldn’t really gather the presence of mind to speak so I just looked at him.