People Who Have Clinically Died And Come Back To Life Reveal What It Was Like
It's the only threshold many humans would never willingly cross. Death carries a finality that nearly all other human experiences could not bear to carry. Our only hope before hopping on that one-time ride is to make sure we've done as much as we can in our lives before the final threshold is before us.
But, not everyone greets death once, as evidenced by these answers to Reddit user, r/wookieoncrack, who asked:
[Serious] Redditors who have been clinically dead and then revived/resuscitated: What did dying feel like? Did you see anything whilst passed on?
You'll See A Far Off Dream
My heart stopped in a hospital. It was rather unexpected. I was watching the monitor hit 41 bpm then 0 and all the lines were flat. I had just enough time to say "huh?" before losing consciousness.
I had a dream that was very short and more disconnected than most dreams. I say confusing but others may say profound. The content was more or less about what was on my mind at the time and some of my interests. Mostly very familiar stuff. There is nothing after really. I can see how people could see their life flash before their eyes or see god if that is what was important to them.
You Might Really Crave Some Ground Beef
Drowned at a public pool when I was 7, woke up a week later @ children's hospital.
Apparently the first word out of my mouth was hamburger. I don't remember anything on how it happened. Sometimes I think I may still be dreaming and never know. Also had to go through some walking therapy, laying in bed for 7 days straight does a number on your muscles.
Sometimes, Nothing
I was really young at the time, I believe six. I didn't see anything but I woke up really confused why I was in a hospital and surrounded by a lot of my family. It honestly felt like I was just sleeping normally I guess. Felt well rested though, which was nice.
I didn't know I had died until I was told and an officer preformed CPR on me for about 15 minutes until I was revived by the doctors. Fantastic man and I wish I remembered meeting him.
Twice...?
I died at age 5, twice within just an hour or so. From what I was told I think I was gone for a total of about 5 minutes. The second time I was flatlining they kept trying to revive me for longer then they normally would have. (There's a time limit where they're recommending to stop because the risk of brain damage is too high.) I remember nothing but blackness. I did lose some short term memory due to the experience.
I had gone in early morning to get my tonsils removed.
When I woke up in the mid-afternoon I had absolutely no idea why I was there. Lost several days worth of memories.
"I'm Sorry"
Got hit by a car on my 5th birthday. I remember what happened before the accident and then I remember waking briefly in the hospital and then blacking out for like two weeks. The before "waking briefly" part was me being lifeless while the doctors were trying to resuscitate me.
There was nothing. No feelings, no senses, just simply nothing. One second I'm waiting to cross the street, the next second I get woken up by an unfamiliar voice repeating "I'm so sorry" over and over again. That's when I tried opening the eyes for the first time. Everything was so white and I couldn't focus anything or even distinguish objects. There was just this shadow of a man standing almost over me and continuously apologizing. I remember saying "I forgive you" and then blacking out again.
There really is nothing and I'm not sure if that's comforting or scary.
A Lucid Darkness
I used to be heavy in to drugs. One wild night when I definitely should have died 10 times over, I sat on a chair excepting death. Like everyone else says, complete blackness, yet a lucid blackness until E.M.T's faces came in to focus.
Until I fully came back 17 hours later, The only thing I could see was a tiny light that very slowly grew in to consciousness. I think it's your eyes dilating that causes the "light at the end of the tunnel"
A Car Crash With Zero Drama
"Died" in a car crash when I was like 22. Was like I blinked and woke up a while later.
Wish there was more drama and deep meaning but there just wasn't. Didn't even know what had happened.
A Slow Moving Helicopter
Severe car accident that killed 3 of my co workers, we fell off a 200ft mountain side(was working for a surveying company) I was thrown out the truck and rolled all the way down and only I lived. I was able to call for help on my radio, long story short, I remember seeing the helicopter and air lifting me away and hearing the paramedic say "stay with me, Christian, stay with me." I died and it felt like a dream or I dont even know how to explain it but I remember seeing the helicopter from above but spinning slowly, and I heard a voice say my name.
I saw everything l, past present and future but before I learned anymore I was pulled back to my body and saw the paramedic again saying "I got a pulse" passed out again and woke up in the hospital....
Everything Laid Out Before You
My grandfather was stationed in the South Pacific in WWII. He was cleaning his rifle in a shed which was struck by lightening. He and several others, including his best friend, were taken to the hospital. The MDs pronounced him dead, no pulse, no respiration, etc. His friend was next to him and insisted they work on my grandfather.
He was brought back to life but described the events to my family. He said everything he did in life was played before him and there was a subtle change of color from light/dark depending on what he did. He was a devout Irish Catholic. I find it more interesting that they had already started sending the letter of to his mother and she received one saying he was dead.
My grandfather had 2 brother who she had also received letters saying they were dead. Neither of his brothers actually ended up being dead!
When Jet-Skis Make You Question Everything
When I was 12 I got in a jet ski accident. I was unconscious and not responsive for about 30 minutes. The only thing I remember after the accident was waking up in the ambulance with paramedics hovering over me. I don't remember seeing anything in the 30 minutes I was out. Ended up with about 120 stitches in my neck.
My sister told me after they had pulled me out of the water onto a boat. I don't remember that. I don't remember the boat trip to shore and I don't remember being loaded into an ambulance. After the whole thing was over I question an afterlife for the first time in my life. I was raised in a Christian family.
Looking Down On Your Body
I overdosed due to a suicide attempt (this was decades ago and I'm great now) in the ER my heart stopped and I had to be resuscitated. I recall vividly watching the whole thing from above my bed looking down. and even though I was unconscious, I accurately described events and conversations I saw and heard. I'm not religious by any stretch, but something exists beyond this life and I believe that as a fact.
During the events there was no fear, no pain, I just "was" HOWEVER at the very end I remember a thought of "how will I get back in my body" then I closed my eyes and when I opened them, I was lying on the bed, back in my body looking up.
Nearly The Longest Nap Of Your Life
I didn't even know til I was told. It was as simple as taking a nap.
At one point I wasn't awake, and then I was. At least that's all I comprehended.
[\_celli]1_
Dying Makes Me Mad!
Donated blood for lupus research since I wanted to contribute to finding out more about my disease. Went to whole foods with my bf suddenly felt ill and faintish, all I remember was my vision going dark, feeling so at peace and then nothing. Woke up to like 5-6 firemen and an AED. when they took my blood pressure and pulse it was 40/60 and my pulse was a 30. I was in and out the entire ride, had the guys in the ambulance pushing fluids through two IVs and one slapping me to keep me awake. Boyfriend is a nurse so he was trying to keep it together the entire time while calling 911 and starting compressions. He said he was terrified, couldn't find a pulse and I had no chest rising.
When I woke up I just remember being really pissed off. Went from a peaceful nothingness to what felt like a punch in my chest. I miss the peaceful nothingness but am grateful he saved my life. That nothingness still f-cks me up though, it was just nice.
A Change Of Life Experience
My brother had to be revived due to a drug overdose. His heart had stopped and (according to the EMTs) he was dead. He likes to joke around but if you talk about this with him, he is very serious and says he watched them revive him. He's not religious and doesn't have any thoughts about the afterlife but he said he was able to describe the scene to the EMTs after the fact, even though they said he was gone at that point. I assume it's just his brain creating memories but he's confident he saw it.
Painless Is All You Can Hope For
When I 'died' it was rather instant. Pulled from an American quarterhorse at full speed, landed on my head. Reportedly, I had grass and dirt crammed down into me throat with no heartbeat and my eyes were going in opposite directions "like a lizard." The last image I saw is burned into my memory. Probably be one of those things I'll remember into senility.
It was utterly painless. I was resuscitated minutes afterwards but I have zero recollection from the moment of impact to 2-3 days later when I was trying to write and found it difficult. My handwriting is still terrible.
I do believe there is something on the other side. I just don't think we teeter on the border of that next place. IMO we don't breathe our last breath here to instantly fill lungs in the next place. Likely just for events like this lol.
Two Tales
It's hard to say. When I was revived after a collapsed lung, I personally don't remember anything except that weird feeling of knowing I had a dream but can't remember any of it. As soon as I woke up I had that feeling. I remembered everything fuzzing out to black as I was being taken to the ER, then was suddenly in a hospital room.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, my girlfriend who was revived after she stopped breathing and flatlined described tons of dreamy type experiences. One where she was lost in a field of flowers, which transitioned into speaking nonsense to me and family before falling into nothing and suddenly being in the hospital room. Despite only being a very short time, she remembered what seemed like dozens of dream-like memories and wrote down several of the clearer ones in her diary.
Either way from what we experienced, it's not really scary, there's no walk through memory lane. It's just knowing you aren't breathing, and waiting for the black borders to close in. I doubt many people have tried, but if you've ever tried holding your breath until you pass out, it's that. Of course take this as just our experience with stopping breathing which lead to death. I can't say if any other type of death experience is the same.
[Cynister\]1_
Boats On A River
Had a gentlemen come in my class talking about cardiac arrest and CPR. We know that religion is touchy in colleges so I sucked it up and asked did you see a light. He said no but he talked about a friend who was watering plants then bam on the ground and woke up in a hospital. The guy said he saw a dock with boats and people in a line. You would step on the boat and it would take you into this bright light. He cut the line and tried to get in the boat but a man held him back saying sorry it's not your turn. He said no that's my boat as a person stepped on that boat and went into the light. He tried to get in the next boat where the man held him back saying no this is not your time, your time will come. Then he woke up.
Being from Minnesota this has to be the most Minnesotan way of seeing the light, boats on a river.
The Mandalas Tell You To Return
Saw a huge burst of mandalas as I was slipping away, but it went to black like everybody is saying.
I heard a voice saying to let go but maybe it was me telling myself that. Then I thought of my parents and pulled myself back. This was during brain surgery
Time Loses Meaning
I went to sleep. Black. Then I feel the most peaceful, joyful I've ever felt in my life. Then everything gets really bright. Then I open my eyes. It's the lights from the hospital. I am wearing a hospital gown, in a bed. The nurse says good morning. She tells me Ive been conscious for 2 days, this is the first time I remember waking up, it felt like I'd been gone for a couple of seconds. She tells me I've been there 14 days. The next three days I had three of the weirdest, most vivid dreams I've ever had, my head hurt throughout the day (because I chugged a bunch of pills that mess with your brain)
I remember a little bit how I felt, when it was dark, it felt so good. Unexplainably good. Like everything was absolutely in order, everything is perfectly fine.
And Sometimes, There's No Answers
There was nothing. Not a blackness, I mean literally nothing.
It was like I blinked. One moment I was struggling for air, the next moment I was in a hospital bed.
H/T: Reddit
But eventually, we need to face the facts, and these Redditors are ready to deliver the harsh truths about what it means to be human. SomeWillingness2960 asked:
What is the truth humanity is not ready to hear?
Let’s start with a few of the light ones, before we dive deep in what we’ve been overdue to hear.
Starting off with a very controversial one.
“The air in chip bags is important.”
“They replace the air (which contains oxygen and water vapour) with nitrogen so the chips don't get soggy or oxidise.”
“And they "over inflate" the bags on purpose to cushion the chips from crumbling during packing / transport.”
A universal work struggle.
season 8 episode 23 GIFGiphy“No matter where you work, or what you do for a living, there will always be That Person that nobody can figure out how they got hired, never mind why they are allowed to continue working there.”
“I remember seeing a post on Reddit that seems to answer it. It basically says that to keep most jobs you just need to tick two out of three of the following attributes(I might have misremembered 1)
- You actually show up on time
- Your work is
good/up to standardis not the worst and passable - Your colleagues and bosses
like youdon't hate you the most out of your colleagues
Edit. Adding 4 and 5 based on below discussions which can supercede the above 3 while also ammending the above three slightly
4. It's more difficult to kick you out than to keep you
5. You have some control over those in charge (some kind of relation, having some kind of incriminating evidence, etc)”
What is “normal”, anyway?
“We will never have a good sense of the world's "normal."
News won't focus on it, because it's boring by definition. Social media won't focus on it for the same reason. Word of mouth and fiction too. Statistics may get us close, but they're hard to picture in terms if human experience, and of course, more exciting stats get repeated more.
Our view of the world outside of our own personal experience will always be shaped by the outliers, and there's not much way around it.”
Ok, now it’s time to dive deeper. Prepare yourselves.
This one hurts.
“Most people simply don't care about the things you're passionate about no matter how much you try to convince them that they should be.”
“As I've gotten older I've had to learn that my friends don't find joy in the same things I do. It's nothing personal.”
I’ll never understand this.
Mermaid Man And Barnacle Boy Superhero GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy“Much evil not only goes unpunished but is rewarded.”
“Not only that but a lot of evil behaviour is rewarding itself for many people.”
Unfortunate truth.
“The loudest among you are mostly a bunch of wankers. Unfortunately you usually let them lead you.”
“A big part of that is because they tell us what we want to hear.
You ever hear a politician go "We're going to have open borders, lower corporate tax rate, higher sales tax, reduced prison sentences, laws forbidding employers from looking into if they're hiring a criminal, a ban on beef, and we're doing it all because that is what the experts say we should do and I have a giant book of sources on that"? No, because even though that's very much what experts advise, it's not at all what people want to hear.
So instead, when you hear someone going "Don't listen to that guy, what we really need is better border control, huge taxes on corporations, no taxes on the poor, criminals get treated like the scum they are, and corporations are the main ones behind climate change, and don't ask me for sources", you're still much more likely to support him. Because when you want to believe them, they're so much easier to believe.”
Those would be some very smart monkeys.
“There's a good chance that humans simply don't have the capacity to fully understand the universe.
A monkey will never be able to comprehend calculus, macroeconomic theory, or how a car works. It makes sense that we too have an intellectual ceiling that will prevent us from ever understanding how the universe works.”
Ready to face the music? Keep reading.
Oof.
Giphy“Humanity is the largest threat to itself. Not some natural disaster or outside invasion. We will kill ourselves off at this rate.”
“Yes. It's sad that the most successful and intelligent species in the solar system is most likely going to cause its own downfall.”
Same.
“For most people the last thing left of them will be an eroded name on a headstone.”
“I want to be one of those taxidermied drones.”
Username checks out.
“Are you special? Maybe a little bit. Are you as special as you think you are? Certainly not.”
“We are all the same decaying organic matter.”
Well, I hope y’all aren’t too messed up from reading that. Especially that first one about the chip bags. How dare they.
But in all seriousness, just do your part to make our world a better place. That’s all we can do.
Most of us would be content making sure our family and friends were set for life and bettering the world the best we can.
Redditor ApArAmY wanted to hear what everyone else dreamed of doing if they had no limit on funds.
“What is the first thing you would buy if you had infinite money?"
Dreaming of affordable health care? Must be from the US...
“Every single medical provider facility in the world. Make healthcare free for patients. Since I have unlimited money, I can afford whatever drug/device/material/salary/etc that would treat patients.”
“Then everyone can get on with living life knowing that they'll get good medicine and not be saddled with high costs. And taxes could go down because governments wouldn't have to pay for healthcare.” Specialist-Ad475
20 trillion, no big deal...
“I'd fund all efforts to further the fight against climate change, global warming, pollution, etc. I'd probably try not to spend that much money for a while so as to prevent inflation, but adding ~20 trillion dollars to the global economy wouldn't be that bad, right?” PixelGMS
The orange one wouldn't like this idea...
“I'd buy Mar a Lago, make it into a homeless shelter and install wind power turbines on all 18 holes." Mr-Warmth
Someone come get their dad!
“A new butt, my old one has a crack in it!" drewdwagy1966
seth meyers dabbing GIF by Late Night with Seth MeyersGiphyHuman rights and green energy...
“Buy Amazon, Nestle, and as many $1billion+ corporations as I can. Once I'm CEO, I would stop every human rights violation they cause and give all the profits (since i have infinite money I won't need it) to charities and funding to green energy and stopping climate change." crispier_cream
So pure...
“It sounds silly, but an ice cream sandwich. Several years ago, I was living paycheck to paycheck and had a fair amount of credit card debt. I fell behind in my mortgage and lost my home to foreclosure. Shortly after I was notified, I drove over to a 7-11, bought an ice cream sandwich, and ate it while crying in my car.”
“Unfortunately, every time I eat an ice cream sandwich, it's still a bittersweet feeling. I always think of the day my favorite childhood comfort food became forever intertwined with my sense of complete and utter failure. After coming into life-changing money, I would hope that an ice cream sandwich would taste as good again as it did when I was a kid.” Steve-in-rewrite
“Just….. a huge chunk of land.”
“Land. Just….. a huge chunk of land. Build a house for my parents, one for us, and one for my In-Laws, and another small house for the family to stay at when they come to visit. Maybe two. We got a big family. And then just spend my time building my farm." Unusual_Amphibian_20
Just make sure to funnel it through a PAC first...
“A US Senator! Or several of 'em. I've always wanted my own senator.” a_dangerous_noodle
Susan Collins Thank You GIF by Election 2020GiphyThe who’s got a bigger one game...
“Judging by the world we live in, apparently I'd enter into the private space race.” Cool-breeze7
Back to the bartering system perhaps?
“I would distribute it all evenly so that it's literally worthless. I would expect this to collapse the economy but what do i know, I'm not an economist.” Jham_jam
It seems like mostly these Redditors want to help others and the planet. Although for that one person, may all your ice cream sandwiches be delightful.
Want to "know" more? Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again. Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.