An Extreme Near-Death Experience

This world is fueled by the last bit of brain activity she has left before she is fully deceased, and is influenced by the last few moments of her life. The human brain has roughly 7 minutes of activity after the heart stops beating. What isn’t as commonly known is in the 1990’s (when Marisol was produced) studies were beginning to come out involving dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a powerful hallucinogenic drug naturally released by the pineal gland upon death (QWIZX, 2013). Studies have suggested this to be the cause of ‘visions’ seen in near-death experiences. However, in a similar way that we don’t all have the same dreams, it’s peculiar that people would hallucinate the same things when exposed to this drug. Consequently, it is believed that people see what they expect to see when under the influence of DMT. This includes reported experiences of ‘seeing the light’, seeing life flash before the eyes, or meeting God, but in Marisol’s case, she hallucinates an encounter with an Angel due to the power of suggestion. The character Golf Club had just described his ‘encounter’ of meeting an angel in great detail (silver wings, leather jacket) followed by informing Marisol that she would experience the same thing immediately before her death. Enough of her believed what he was saying to expect this experience, causing her

Approximately three percent of the United States population says that they have had near death experiences, according to the Gallup polls. Near death experiences are often thought of as mystical phenomena, but research is now revealing scientific explanations for virtually all of their common features. Most people who have near death experiences have these three things in common: adrenaline rushes, a change in priorities, and time slowing down.

A couple quotes from people who said they felt nothing; “Overdosed on heroine, EMT’s said my heart stopped. Didn’t see anything, just like sleeping with no dreams.” and “Pure,perfect, uninterrupted sleep,no dreams.”. A quote from someone who felt like they could see what was happening while dead; , “I do remember a little bit of the ambulance ride, but not from my own body. It was seriously the strangest thing I have ever experienced. It could have been a dream, but I saw my own unconscious body completely flatlined in the ambulance. I remember the EMT who was in the ambulance with me (whom I did not see before I passed out)”. And here is a quote from someone who had an interaction; "I was standing somewhere. There was a fog all around me, and I saw my best friend (who at the time I'd been fighting with and he'd stopped talking to me) come out of the mist. He told me that I couldn't go yet, that I have to keep trying, and if I promised not to give up, he'd see me back on Earth. I wordlessly agreed, and I was instantly pushed (into?) my body.".

An out-of-body experience is explained by few as a sense of being detached from one’s body, and if associated with other factors like a sense that the world is not real, far away, or even foggy. This with the combination of failure to recall significant personal information, or the content of a meaningful conversation forgotten from one second to the next are signs of a psychological disorder known as Dissociative Disorder. Considered as a rare and mysterious psychiatric curiosity, Dissociative Disorders will be the psychological disorder that will be discussed in this paper.

In the short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, a man being killed is having an out of body experience while he is being hanged from the bridge (Bierce). He experiences himself escaping death, but in the end everything he was feeling was just himself dying, suspended from the bridge (Bierce). In his eyes, he experienced dying while staring into his wife’s eyes as he was about to embrace her, he was shot in the back of the neck (295). When in reality, all along, he was hanging by a rope from the bridge (295). His body died on the bridge, but his soul did not die until it stood in his yard staring at his wife (295).

The article starts off by explaining empirical evidence of life after death. It is said that most convincing evidence comes from near death experiences, out of body experiences,

I’d never thought enough had happened in the sixteen and half years I had been alive for much of anything to pass in front of my eyes during a near death experience. I was wrong. You know those nights when you lie awake in bed and replay interactions long forgotten by everyone but you? You wonder what people thought, what you could have done differently. This experience felt much the same. In your head is all of your missteps and slip-ups, the advice you should have taken but were too stubborn to listen to, the people you’ve let down. It all sprawls out in front of you like a sunset stretching across the horizon as you drive over a big hill.

Unresolved, complicated, prolonged, or traumatic grief can have detrimental effects on mental or physical health (Beischel, Mosher, Boccuzzi, 2014). This often leads to many individuals seeking understanding from psychics, friends, or their own emotions. However, post death contact may give the believed some sense of relief in the situation or even help them cope with the elements of death and dying, along with life and living, giving them a different perspective on death and a new outlook on life. Post Death Contact (PDC) is when a living individual feels that a person who is deceased is reaching out to connect with the living. Such experiences may be part of a model of grieving called Continuing Bonds (Klugman, 2006). In this model, a person does not get over or learn to forget about the deceased, instead he or she maintains a personal relational connection with an inner representation by using the body to connect.

Until then, I had thought that was something that happened if you were the one dying, and perhaps it is. But it does happen if someone you cares about becomes deceased. At least, it did for me.

Patrick Daniels, Tom Benecke, and Brian Ingalls all made choices before there near death experiences that may have caused them to occur. Patrick Daniels was in charge of packing his own parachute, instead of taking his time and doing it correctly he rushed through it and packed his parachute incorrectly causing his first parachute to not open when he jumped from the plane. Tom Bencke did not realize he made a choice by stepping out onto the ledge behind his window, he choose to risk his life over a piece of paper that would further him in his work causing him to have his near death experience. Brian Ingalls also did not realize that when he started to defend himself in a moving vehicle from a wasp that he choose to kill the wasp and risk his and his car’s life. Making the wrong choice in a situation can put you in a near death

Some people who suffer from dissociation and its negative experiences do so due to a history of childhood abuse, like Julia, one of the author’s patients, which most often leads them to believe they can hide away their selves: “Because children dissociate readily…they easily split their consciousness into pieces. The self is put aside and hidden....This coping strategy becomes dysfunctional only later, after the child is grown and away from the original trauma...But through the years of intensive use, the self-protective strategy has developed a hair trigger…” (Pg. 391) Probably the worst consequences people can experience from dissociation are when their dissociation becomes chronic and horrifically persistent, which is another reason why it becomes such a detrimental experience in their lives. During this level of dissociation, the patient begins to behave self-injurious and habituates addictive behaviors in order to gain a temporary relief. At this stage, dissociation becomes so continual that it begins to limit the patient’s perceptions. This is evidently displayed by Julia when she poses one of the best questions the author has ever heard: “Well, do you think I dissociate from my body, too? Because if that’s what I’m doing, then it’s the illusion from hell…And even if it doesn’t kill me, what’s the use

When you almost meet death straight on and barely miss it, you feel like it takes an eternity. Now, that may be an exaggeration, but it does feel like it is longer than what it truly is. Most near death experiences are quick like the speed of lightning, but your mind tends to make you believe otherwise. For example, Isabelle stated that when she was in the wreck she felt as if someone had paused all the motion going on around her then all at once everything started to play in slow motion. Tom Benecke had felt the same way, but instead of his being a car crash, it would have been a crash to the hard concrete eleven floors below. As Tom states “ It wasn't possible, but only eight minutes ago he had kissed his wife good-by,” (Pearson, ) showing that he felt as if he had been there for longer than what he truly had. For Patrick, he felt like he was falling from the sky for what seemed like an hour before the backup parachute finally escaped from the bag, but it had only been a second. As for Scott he felt like it took hours before the helicopters got there to evacuate him to the hospital so his wounds could be tended

I would awake in a darkness that was consuming me. Not knowing where I was, how old I may be, or even who the hell I was. It was like an out of body experience, yet I was not outside viewing down, instead I was viewing through eyes I did not know. No thoughts entered my mind, no day dreams, no memories, it was lonely, cold, and distant. During those times I would see someone or something, and it was as if a small thread that glowed in the darkness, beckoned me, begging for me to grasp a hold of it. Except, no matter how many times I would reach out to that thread and try to grab it, it would disappear as soon as it appeared, leaving me in the darkness once more.

My experience with death and dying has not been very extensive because I do not believe I have had any close family or friends undergo such a process. I think that I have attended a funeral only once in my life when I was in first grade. The funeral that I attended was for my childhood babysitter, Ms. Linda. Although I do not remember many details about the funeral, I recall many of the attendees wearing black clothing. Additionally, I believe that there was an arrangement of flowers placed near her coffin. Some other experiences I have had with death included those of former classmates due to accidents or bodily illness. Furthermore, I had been informed by my parents that one of my cousins had passed away due to a drowning incident a few years ago. However, other than these few instances, I have not had many personal experiences with death and dying.

It was a warm fall day in early October, a day that I recall quite vividly. The smells of the transition from summer to fall were in the air, accompanied by the sounds of birds singing and the wind blowing through the trees. It was on this beautiful day that my existence was almost terminated. A quick hunting trip could have ended my life.