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Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

I had a near death experience when I was 10 years old. I’ve never found a valid scientific explanation for what I observed, considering I never heard of NDEs and this was pre-internet, and I had a classic NDE with a life review etc. Really can’t logically explain this

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Life review is a stereotypical effect of some psychedelics such as ibogaine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXjLD1tDC7k

Now consider that your body naturally produces psychedelics, including DMT.

I've read a theory about maybe the brain releasing DMT as a panic response to dying? Hopefully you are ok!

Considering how clueless we still are regarding how the brain works, and have only started to comprehensively map out the brains of the tiniest organisms, I really don't find it surprising that there's not yet a rigorous or even a reasonable approximate explanation for such a high level experience.

Wow. Glad you are ok! If you are comfortable with this, would you be willing to share what the NDE was like?

I was choking. I realized I was likely going to die, and I was very disappointed. My vision started to go fade even though my eyes were open. I saw vignettes of my life appear coming from the left, then playing like a video in front of my vision, then fading and going to the right, as the next vignette appeared. I was not scared so much as disappointed. The whole thing lasted somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds, at which point I snapped out of it, and grabbed some stranger's soda and poured it down my throat, which dislodged the food I was choking on.

You were choking so severely that you were beginning to black out, and then went another 30+ seconds (maybe your sense of time was altered?), before solving the problem yourself. Were there other people around that noticed you almost choked to death?

Do you think people who have NDEs only have "classic" NDE symptoms because they've read about them and that's what they expect to experience?

The poster you're replying to said "I never heard of NDEs" for the exact reason you are mis-correcting: to show that they were NOT simply regurgitating a cultural stereotype, but that it is in fact a real phenomenon.

Here's a tip for the Internet and for Real Life: Assume the most charitable interpretation when conversing with someone, not the least. It is more often correct, and it doesn't make you needlessly look like an asshole.

> to show that they were NOT simply regurgitating a cultural stereotype, but that it is in fact a real phenomenon.

Right, but does anyone think that that's what people with NDEs are doing?

I don't get what the poster was trying to say. It's like they're trying to debunk something that doesn't exist to need debunking? And the article isn't even about NDEs, like, at all.

I'm just really confused what the point of the comment was?

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