Is a near-death experience like a DMT trip? One neurosurgeon experienced both.
There were many similarities, but also profound differences.
Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon, had a near-death experience in a coma and then went on a psychedelic trip after ingesting a potent DMT variant. Since it is widely theorized that DMT produced in the body causes near-death experiences, Alexander’s two experiences, although anecdotal, provide interesting insights: both DMT and the near-death experience evoked a sense of transcending time and space, a glimpse into the multiverse, and simultaneously a sense of unity and love and love at the same time. But there were also profound differences.
In 2008, Dr. Eben Alexander contracted a rare bacterial meningitis. The pathogen attacked his brain, and as his brain swelled and filled with pus, Alexander fell into a deep coma. There was no hope of survival. But he survived. Four years later, the neurosurgeon recounted his experience in a best-selling book.
I had no center of consciousness,” he said. I didn’t know who I was, what I was, or even if I was myself. I was just …… There I was. In the soupy, dark, muddy nothingness, there was only one consciousness. ……” He writes.
More recently, a popular article about Alexander’s near-death experience caught the attention of Pascal Michael, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Greenwich. Michael met Alexander after seeing him speak at a conference and was informed that Alexander had experimented with 5-MeO-DMT, a psychedelic closely related to DMT secreted from the glands of Colorado River toads.
NDE vs. DMT
Michael was intrigued because of his current academic focus on psychedelic experiences versus near-death experiences. It is widely theorized that the psychedelic drug N,N-dimethyltryptamine, more commonly known as DMT, can cause near-death experiences because the brain may be filled with it as we approach the moment of death. DMT is produced in the body and small amounts in cerebrospinal fluid Michael has shown that near-death experiences are associated with DMT.
Michael reasoned that Alexander experiencing both a near-death experience and a DMT psychedelic trip was a rare coincidence and could provide a fascinating anecdotal comparison of the two events. Michael interviewed Alexander in November 2019 and subsequently summarized what he learned from it in a scientific paper. This article was published in Frontiers in Psychology.
In the interview, Michael asked Alexander to describe both experiences in depth. According to Alexander’s recollections, both evoked a sense of transcending time and space and glimpses of the multiverse, as well as a sense of oneness with his surroundings and a deep (almost divine) love for everything and everyone.
The most important similarity between Alexander’s near-death experience and the 5-MeO-DMT journey is the “death of the ego,” or dissolution of self-consciousness. The disappearance of the individualized self and all its attendant autobiographical memories, though temporary, often produces the experience of being a ‘cosmic being,'” Michael explains. This is the key to the psychedelic mystical experience and the potential benefits that come from it.”
Alexander also explained the many differences between the two events, revealing that during his near-death experiences, he encountered both menacing and divine beings and even temporarily stepped into another world. On one occasion, he passed through “a place filled with a profound emptiness, yet nurturing light,” and encountered a “threshold” where a feminine presence prevented his crossing.
Because of these dissimilarities and the fact that, at least for him, the near-death experience far outweighed that of the psychedelic, Alexander does not subscribe to the theory that DMT causes near-death experiences, preferring a transcendental explanation, namely, a fleeting glimpse of something like an afterlife.
“[5MeO] is like looking through a small peephole as opposed to being full bore swimming and immersed in the Pacific Ocean of being fully in that oneness experience [of the NDE],” he told Michael.
Michael notes, however, that all the contrasting moments of Alexander’s near-death experience are broadly characteristic of DMT’s psychedelic journey. Thus Alexander’s episode by no means disproves the broader theory that near-death experiences may be caused by an internally produced psychedelic compound in the body. Nor does it corroborate it.
Source: Is a near-death experience like a DMT trip? One neurosurgeon experienced both.
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