I “died” and felt complete bliss

[woofwag]

I'm no stranger to experiencing death, whether trauma or drug induced. I've also had many suicide attempts in my life, and although I didn't medically die, I consider it a type of death. I think there a lot more ways to die than just physically. But these times were different.

I've tripped on DXM four times now, two of which induced an ego death. In both experiences I had the same outcome, but in completely different ways.

The first time I died, I felt serene. I became a hill with grass so thin I looked like a smooth green egg. Everything was smoothed over as if it were airbrushed, from the cloudless blue sky to my grassy surface, even the quiet background noise in harmony with us. Everything hummed to the same frequency. All precise, all exact. But not sterile: it was perfect oneness.

I remember I wordlessly asked the world if I would experience an ego death. Some void entity chuckled and explained that this is it. This feeling of distinction from what I consider to be my normal self turned to being a stretch of blissful scenery, that's me experiencing my ego dying. I remember saying, "Oh. Ok," and going back to being a hill. I wasn't disappointed, just mildly surprised that that was it. And then once more, not surprised at all. Because I guess it kind of makes sense. If you go back to being in the void when you die, whatever that means, then I imagine you feel some kind of oneness with everything. Or maybe you feel nothing at all, I don't really know. That's just what my experience was.

The second time I died, I tripped first on DXM and then smoked a bowl of weed on the tail end of it. I think it was the weed that did it for me. When I died, I experienced that blissful oneness, but this time in the form of pure ecstasy. I'm still terrified of how good it felt. I'm terrified of the high praises I gave it. I have a page of notes and three voice memos explaining how we have to die, how it's everything we've ever thought it would be, how amazing it feels to be one with the universe and how all that fear and pain and misery you trudge through melts away when you die.

I think a lot about the light I heard in my voice when I said, "We don't have to make up for anything. We don't have to make up for failing, for making mistakes, for any of those dumb fixations we had on people. We don't have to make up for being us. None of that has ever, ever been our fault. All we have to do is die." To provide clarity to the "we" thing, I have DID so I'm a system (although at this point most of my alters have gone dormant), but I think the other "we" side of it was referring to being the universe. I know kind of what it felt like, although most of that memory is obfuscated from sleep and soberness. But I wrote this about the feeling:

"i wish u could feel this again
this kindness
this crushing blackness
that fulfills a sensory need.
the blackness is crushing in the same way a weighted blanket is. it's comforting."

Not only am I tired of fighting the misery I feel within me, that I see and hear everyday outside of me, and that I impart on myself, but now I have to deal with the fact that I really like the feeling of being dead. I remember the only bad thing I felt on that trip was the anxiety of being alive, the generalized kind I have that never goes away. In one of my voice memos I laughed and said, "How do you even deal with this feeling all the time?" And I realized that I kind of don't. I don't cope with it at all, just as I don't cope with any of the other stressors or negative emotions I feel. I just try my best to avoid it and distract myself from it. But every time I step away from the distractions, it's like waking up from a too-long nap: the world is dark and fuzzy, I can't feel much of my body beyond the droop in my eyelids, thinking maybe part of it isn't being tired at all but trying desperately to shut out reality, stumbling up and realizing I hate the idea of going back to sleep just as much as I hate the idea of being awake.

One of the other worst things about it is that the version of me who died respects me. They wanted us to die for real and talked about how much they liked it, but ultimately they accepted that I will make whatever decision I please. It's a kindness I don't feel from the parts of me who scream at me to kill myself, and it's a kindness I don't feel even from people who want me to live. I know everyone here understands how propagandized anti-suicide campaigns are, to the point that people will deny folks with terminal illnesses in extreme pain the right to end their life on their terms. We're told from every angle that not only is death a horrible thing to do to the people around you and to yourself, but that it is not a choice to make at all. We aren't allowed to even die. The one thing everyone is supposed to be able to do. And here comes this experience of death, words from whatever voice that came out of me explaining that not only is death beautiful, that to be nothing is be bliss, but that it respects my right to die and to keep living.

It wrote, "i am oneness, i am death. i am your subconscious. death is the way to go. death is the way to heal. i think this might scare you, but believe me, it's true. or maybe you won't be scared at all. maybe this feeling will carry over... whichever path it may be, i hope you can hear me say that i love you." And I've never felt that sentiment to be more true through the words on a screen.

I'm not really sure what to do with all of this. This isn't to try to convince anyone on here to die, myself included. But it has definitely freaked me out, and excited me a bit too. I do like the struggle sometimes. That sometimes through all the pain and the shit there's some feeling of happiness or connection on the other side of it that makes it feel all the better to have achieved that good feeling. Being dead is sort of the same thing all the time. But maybe it is as electrifying as I experienced it that second time. I'm still scared of whatever the truth is. I'll stay alive for now. Just thought you all might find some interest in it. I don't know how to cope with it still.

 

[butterbutter143]

oh my god. i read through all of this, my god it is beautiful. i kinda want to experience what you experienced too, through death or dxm or otherwise. i really like the idea that to die is to make you one with the 'void' I guess, for lack of better wording.

i mean in a way, we've already experienced it. it's what we were before we were born, and it's what we will be when we die. our sense of self will blend into the universe, until our sense of self becomes the universe. i don't think us having a sense of self is so healthy for us humans, as it separates ourselves from each other and divides us. we are always alone in our struggles even though people may insist that we aren't, but they can't ever truly relate.

i suppose letting go of your sense of self would be very cathartic, because it's that letting go that will allow you to finally assimilate with the world that made you. you would have nothing and everything at the same time, and that's probably what gives you that state of bliss.
or - another take on this could be that when you die you won't even be there to feel that stuff because you won't have a sense of self, a consciousness. perhaps it would be like a dreamless sleep then.

i wanna die even more now lol. not in a sad way (although i am very sad at the moment) but i am wanting peace now more than ever.

 

[Forever Sleep]

It sounds blissful. I dreamt I had died once- well, more than once. But, one time, the feeling was blissful. To have no more worries. I hope it is that peaceful for all of us.

 

[woofwag]

oh my god. i read through all of this, my god it is beautiful. i kinda want to experience what you experienced too, through death or dxm or otherwise. i really like the idea that to die is to make you one with the 'void' I guess, for lack of better wording.

i mean in a way, we've already experienced it. it's what we were before we were born, and it's what we will be when we die. our sense of self will blend into the universe, until our sense of self becomes the universe. i don't think us having a sense of self is so healthy for us humans, as it separates ourselves from each other and divides us. we are always alone in our struggles even though people may insist that we aren't, but they can't ever truly relate.

i suppose letting go of your sense of self would be very cathartic, because it's that letting go that will allow you to finally assimilate with the world that made you. you would have nothing and everything at the same time, and that's probably what gives you that state of bliss.
or - another take on this could be that when you die you won't even be there to feel that stuff because you won't have a sense of self, a consciousness. perhaps it would be like a dreamless sleep then.

i wanna die even more now lol. not in a sad way (although i am very sad at the moment) but i am wanting peace now more than ever.

Yeah. I think about that a lot, how we all technically already have experienced death prior to living. That complete absence of everything. But all the muddle of life and other memories screws up how we actually perceive it. Even through drugs or near death experiences, we can't know how it's like to experience that all the time. End of the day, those are temporary experiences. And we don't know for sure how it will be when that's what we experience it at all times.

I'm just so tired of people insisting that there's always ways to fix the way we experience being chronically suicidal. There are neurons which are wrong, receptors which can't receive these chemicals we need, that it's irrational to base a decision about our life on all these things that are incorrect about our brain. That it can't be us. That somehow, it's not our experiences that have damaged us, but these synpases in our brains that won't fire right. And I really resent that idea, because I have felt like meds have helped sometimes. But all the therapy and meds I've pumped into myself hasn't changed that I still want exactly what the 6-year-old me who tried to slit my throat wrote, "I want to die and have a better life in heaven." And although I don't believe in heaven now, maybe death can be, on some level, a peace similar to what I imagine a heaven would be like and how I experienced it on DXM.

I think also I've realized there is sort of this "religion of life" present in our society. That our sacrifices are our misery, and our prayer is all the idioms and mantras and complete institences on staying alive we're told. Carpe diem, this too shall pass, the pain is worth the joy, just don't kill yourself, don't do it, you can't, you can't, you can't.

So now I guess the real question is how much comfort do you take in that? How much pain is a person willing to bare before they lose faith in their own existence? I haven't been able to answer it for myself. I feel like I've lived in perpetual limbo my whole life, barely sustained off what little respite I've had from my chronic mental (and physical, at times) pain. Always hovering under that bar, which will inevitably fall upon me someday, as it will for everyone. I just seem to have to duck so much lower than everyone else. It hurts. It hurts so bad.

Idk. I am enjoying certain aspects of life now. But that beast of trauma and depression still hangs over me as it always has. I hope that for you too you can enjoy some of the joy there is in life, and if you find the rest of the pain too all-consuming, that death can be for you how I experienced it for myself. This has been exceptionally long lol just all my thoughts are still so scrambled.

Kind of off-topic, but DXM is completely legal. You can find it in pretty much any drug or grocery store near you. Just make sure to do your research on it first! Also eat a lot of bread beforehand if you can, I've found that helps with the nausea.

 

[butterbutter143]

Yeah. I think about that a lot, how we all technically already have experienced death prior to living. That complete absence of everything. But all the muddle of life and other memories screws up how we actually perceive it. Even through drugs or near death experiences, we can't know how it's like to experience that all the time. End of the day, those are temporary experiences. And we don't know for sure how it will be when that's what we experience it at all times.

I'm just so tired of people insisting that there's always ways to fix the way we experience being chronically suicidal. There are neurons which are wrong, receptors which can't receive these chemicals we need, that it's irrational to base a decision about our life on all these things that are incorrect about our brain. That it can't be us. That somehow, it's not our experiences that have damaged us, but these synpases in our brains that won't fire right. And I really resent that idea, because I have felt like meds have helped sometimes. But all the therapy and meds I've pumped into myself hasn't changed that I still want exactly what the 6-year-old me who tried to slit my throat wrote, "I want to die and have a better life in heaven." And although I don't believe in heaven now, maybe death can be, on some level, a peace similar to what I imagine a heaven would be like and how I experienced it on DXM.

I think also I've realized there is sort of this "religion of life" present in our society. That our sacrifices are our misery, and our prayer is all the idioms and mantras and complete institences on staying alive we're told. Carpe diem, this too shall pass, the pain is worth the joy, just don't kill yourself, don't do it, you can't, you can't, you can't.

So now I guess the real question is how much comfort do you take in that? How much pain is a person willing to bare before they lose faith in their own existence? I haven't been able to answer it for myself. I feel like I've lived in perpetual limbo my whole life, barely sustained off what little respite I've had from my chronic mental (and physical, at times) pain. Always hovering under that bar, which will inevitably fall upon me someday, as it will for everyone. I just seem to have to duck so much lower than everyone else. It hurts. It hurts so bad.

Idk. I am enjoying certain aspects of life now. But that beast of trauma and depression still hangs over me as it always has. I hope that for you too you can enjoy some of the joy there is in life, and if you find the rest of the pain too all-consuming, that death can be for you how I experienced it for myself. This has been exceptionally long lol just all my thoughts are still so scrambled.

Kind of off-topic, but DXM is completely legal. You can find it in pretty much any drug or grocery store near you. Just make sure to do your research on it first! Also eat a lot of bread beforehand if you can, I've found that helps with the nausea.

there's this one phrase that my ex used to tell me when i felt suicidal. something along the lines of "you don't need a permanent solution for a temporary problem."
i never understood it, again and again i would ask her what does that even mean? the etymology of that sentence doesn't make sense. wouldn't you rather have a permanent solution to something so that that problem never crops up again?

i guess you could compare it to how people's attitudes are toward suicide. when someone tells you that suicide is not the answer, they always bring up how it would traumatise your loved ones to see you dead and that you bring so much joy into their life, etc. they make you feel selfish for even having those thoughts in the first place. honestly, i feel like it's a little selfish to tell that to a suicidal person. if you truly loved them, you would want them to be happy right? would you rather they live with the cloud of heavy chronic suicidal ideation floating above their head or would you want them to finally find peace?

that phrase i mentioned before gets me thinking... if you don't want people to use a permanent solution for a temporary problem, would you rather they use a temporary solution instead? a little bandaid to make it feel better in the short term. i think this is the reason why people always recommend therapists or those helplines to go to whenever you're about to attempt or something. i've tried those helplines countless times, and i still attempted after talking to them because it doesn't help. it was never gonna help. the person who told you to go to that helpline just wanted you to be 'okay' so that they wouldn't have something to worry about.

i also think it's a little fucked that people think they get to decide how they want your life to play out. i don't know why they want to keep suicidal people around so badly! if you talk to someone who very clearly wants to ctb, don't be surprised if they don't respond to you as jovially as you want them to. and you know exactly why they are sad too, but you just want them in the picture because it gives you something less to worry about. they don't have to live, they just have to survive. i'm sure every depressed/suicidal person knows that that is the worst fate you can subject someone to.

the point is, you can't fix something that was already foundationally broken. this is definitely the case for me, because although i do enjoy many aspects of life just like you, i don't think all the pain i go through doesn't make it worth it. i have experienced utter euphoria and true love but i wouldn't have minded if any of my past suicide attempts had worked. everything i go through in life just exacerbates the suicidal tendencies that started when i was 9 because my parents abused me (and mind you, they would beg me not to kill myself once they found my plans. they're not abusive anymore but it still annoys me that they did that). it starts and ends with some sort of pain, a kind of ourobouros. how and when i want to die should be my choice, and i wish people were as respectful about that to me as your alter was.


also i definitely could get dxm if i wanted to! my friend could definitely buy it for the both of us. unfortunately i'm not able to obtain it on my own because even though i am a legal adult my parents are very adamant on monitoring everything i spend my money on. sigh

 

[J&L383]

It sounds blissful. I dreamt I had died once- well, more than once. But, one time, the feeling was blissful. To have no more worries. I hope it is that peaceful for all of us.

Thank you, woofwag. beautifully written.
At 6:30 a.m. as I wake from restlessness, this is what I needed. I'm not as afraid of death as I was and looking forward to it for relief, but also now not quite done with living.

 

[woofwag]

there's this one phrase that my ex used to tell me when i felt suicidal. something along the lines of "you don't need a permanent solution for a temporary problem."
i never understood it, again and again i would ask her what does that even mean? the etymology of that sentence doesn't make sense. wouldn't you rather have a permanent solution to something so that that problem never crops up again?

i guess you could compare it to how people's attitudes are toward suicide. when someone tells you that suicide is not the answer, they always bring up how it would traumatise your loved ones to see you dead and that you bring so much joy into their life, etc. they make you feel selfish for even having those thoughts in the first place. honestly, i feel like it's a little selfish to tell that to a suicidal person. if you truly loved them, you would want them to be happy right? would you rather they live with the cloud of heavy chronic suicidal ideation floating above their head or would you want them to finally find peace?

that phrase i mentioned before gets me thinking... if you don't want people to use a permanent solution for a temporary problem, would you rather they use a temporary solution instead? a little bandaid to make it feel better in the short term. i think this is the reason why people always recommend therapists or those helplines to go to whenever you're about to attempt or something. i've tried those helplines countless times, and i still attempted after talking to them because it doesn't help. it was never gonna help. the person who told you to go to that helpline just wanted you to be 'okay' so that they wouldn't have something to worry about.

i also think it's a little fucked that people think they get to decide how they want your life to play out. i don't know why they want to keep suicidal people around so badly! if you talk to someone who very clearly wants to ctb, don't be surprised if they don't respond to you as jovially as you want them to. and you know exactly why they are sad too, but you just want them in the picture because it gives you something less to worry about. they don't have to live, they just have to survive. i'm sure every depressed/suicidal person knows that that is the worst fate you can subject someone to.

the point is, you can't fix something that was already foundationally broken. this is definitely the case for me, because although i do enjoy many aspects of life just like you, i don't think all the pain i go through doesn't make it worth it. i have experienced utter euphoria and true love but i wouldn't have minded if any of my past suicide attempts had worked. everything i go through in life just exacerbates the suicidal tendencies that started when i was 9 because my parents abused me (and mind you, they would beg me not to kill myself once they found my plans. they're not abusive anymore but it still annoys me that they did that). it starts and ends with some sort of pain, a kind of ourobouros. how and when i want to die should be my choice, and i wish people were as respectful about that to me as your alter was.


also i definitely could get dxm if i wanted to! my friend could definitely buy it for the both of us. unfortunately i'm not able to obtain it on my own because even though i am a legal adult my parents are very adamant on monitoring everything i spend my money on. sigh

Hey there, I know this thread is pretty old at this point, but I've been thinking about this comment a lot (I've been too strung out write much these days). I think you make a lot of really good points in this. I will say the whole "permanent solution to temporary problem" thing has always bugged me, and you finally gave me the words to explain why. I saw someone else say that it's an "irreversible" solution, which I think makes a bit more sense, considering a lot of these people have made the choice to live and not regretted that. Where as many of us unfortunately have, and continue to pursue the choice to die.

Although I'm not sure how many of your questions are rhetorical, I'll try to answer some from the perspective of anti-suicide folk. Philosophers in ancient Greece coined terms for seven types of love. I won't be talking about all of them, but the one that's always caught my eye is the concept of "agape": universal love, love for the self and all others, even the dead; love which transcends all. It was often used in a Christian context back then in reference to the universal love of god (which personally isn't my thing), but I've always resonated with that feeling of overwhelming love for everything around me. Even when I'm full of disdain for the world, there's still those parts of me present who feel compelled to love the universe and to try my best to impart that on other people. All this is to say that I think most people feel this sense of compassion for the life around them. Humans are also social animals, and it's natural for people to want to help us. Death is the final barrier to being able to do that. There's nothing anyone can do to help once we're dead. Most people really do want us to be satisfied and to be happy. Not all. But I think you'll find that the average person does.

And in terms of being fundamentally broken, I think there are many people who have felt that way and been able to overcome it. I have that same feeling. But I know there's plenty of people who say "it gets better" because that happened for them. And for us, even though many of us feel fundamentally broken, I don't think that's always the case. Doesn't you feeling broken from the abuse mean that it isn't fundamental? That there was a cause? Maybe it did break you, but I don't think that means that at your core you're broken and are destined to always be that way. Believe me, I get it, and I'm not going to fight you on if you think you truly are broken fundamentally or not. Just food for thought. My abuse broke me too. Even if it's not fundamental, idk how I'll ever be able to move on from it. I just don't believe it's a brokenness to my core now. I'm broken at the fault of other people. But idk. I'm not sure how much better that makes it feel. For me it's helped me re-direct my loathing a bit, so at least there's that.

I still want to die. But I don't want other people to. Maybe it's hypocritical. But I really do want people to feel ok and feel happy. And honestly? I do wish I could have that too. The difference being that I will respect whatever decision someone has to make with their life. And if death is the only way someone can have true peace, I won't stand in the way of that. Including for myself.

 

[58Alice85]

I'm sorry bro, this reads like a typical experience after taking hallucinogens, no idea why you would think actually physically dying would be similar.

 

[woofwag]

I'm sorry bro, this reads like a typical experience after taking hallucinogens, no idea why you would think actually physically dying would be similar.

Idk I never said it was accurate to how physically dying is. This was just my experience of a type of death, and I thought it might be interesting to the people here. I've read a lot about people's experiences with ego deaths and NDE's, and while experiences vary widely, I have noticed a common theme of some sort of peace/indifference to the world. And that's what I experienced. No one knows what really happens in the long-run, but that doesn't discount my experience as being some estimation of what the brain *could* go through in the process of dying. I've experienced it with other non-drug induced dissociative "deaths" too, so idk :p brains are weird and we're all just looking for some kind of answers

 

[Jisatsu]

I've experienced ego death 6 times in my life. I've experienced it with lsd , dxm,shrooms and ketamine. Each time felt different but I always lost all knowledge of who I was , where I was or what I was. Dxm and Ketamine both heavy dissociatives lasted the longest , going through learning basically everything again in the span on 4 hours .... from basically having the intelligence of a rock to being my self again. Feeling no sense of self or identity is scary but at the same time it's freeing because no emotions are holding you back... Stripped away of everything and seeing who you truly are bare to yourself and to the world.

 

[TheCallOfTheStars]

Dang. That's honestly very poetic. I've never had any experience with hallucinogens before but I'd imagine that what you saw was absolutely beautiful.
With the accounts I've been hearing, it feels like drug trips are a form of art no one really talks about.