I spent a couple weeks in a coma. During that time, I experienced what I can only describe as other lives. I have memories, and trauma from these memories, that are not compatible with reality.
I have memories of being manipulated by technology that does not exist. I have memories of living in a body that was not my own. I remember learning about a book that does not seem to exist. I also have memories that take place in my hospital room, but they do not make logical sense and are highly unlikely (or impossible) to have happened.
Posted a comment about this and it got a lot of interest, which is why I’m making this. Talking about it and hearing others experiences has been a bit healing. These memories may or may not be “real”, but the trauma feels very real to me. I ask that you do not comment ridiculing, and do not be offended if I decline to answer.
Edit: thanks for the overwhelming support so far. I should note that I don’t have any confident stance about “what” happened. Dreams, sedation, confusion, other lives or consciousness, psychosis, hypoxia have all been suggested and I believe all of them to be possible. It was like nothing I ever experienced though.
Edit 2: did not expect so much engagement. If you recognize my story and know me IRL, please block me
Thanks for the kindness and questions. I’m a little mentally exhausted and will be ending for now, but I will try to come back later and answer what I missed. Take care of yourselves.
Comments
Where those lives full lives? Like you’ve lived 80 years in some of them?
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What is your favourite movie? Mine is Batman Returns.
What were the most vivid memories in your coma?
Can you tell me about the book that seems to not exist?
Can you tell us more about the technology you were mentioning? What kind of software/devices are you referring to? What was their purpose?
Did coma you know conscious you
Do you know much about how they handled things like brushing your teeth, exercising your body, or any of that stuff while you were in a coma? What did it feel like to come out of it?
Also, what do you like on your toast?
Can you expand on the hospital room memories and why they would be impossible. Have you spoken to anyone about these?
Very interesting!
How long did it take for these memories/realities to come to light after your coma? Did they come as a flood, or were you aware of them over a long stretch of time?
What happened to put you in a coma? Was it medically induced?
Did any of it feel like deja vu?
Are you confident that you know which memories are real and which are from the coma period?
Did the lamp start looking weird?
Do you have any skills at all learned over these lives? Or did you live lives where you learned nothing?
What was the book you read about and did you look for it when you woke up
Was it similar to dreaming?
Why were you in a coma?
Were you confused when you woke up?
Did you remember the memories/dreams vividly?
Did you feel like you were living these lives/having these dreams the whole time you were in a coma?
Do you also have any memories of what happened around you in the hospital? Visitors, conversations, things like that? A very close relative of mine was in a coma for two weeks and did wake up, but with a catastrophic ABI, so they aren’t able to express those kinds of things.
did you learn anything in these lives that proved to still be useful/correct information once you woke up in your “original” life? not like general life advice stuff but like concrete science or learning that you don’t believe you would have been able to get if it was only in your head?
Did this experience change your views on the afterlife? What do you believe happens when we die?
Anything fun? That sounds more scary and disorienting than anything, but maybe some were cool?
If you want some people to talk about it so you feel heard ans understood, check out r/experiencers
Do you have loved ones and family members who were visiting you while you were in a coma, and did any of their visits penetrate your “other lives” such as hearing their voices or feeling their touch?
Do you have any good memories?
Did everything in your memories over the laws of physics? Was time messed up? Were you able to see numbers in these memories?
Did friends and/or relatives come visit you during the coma and talk to you or read you books or play music for you? If so, do you remember that? Or do you think that maybe your brain interpreted that as your other-life experiences while in the coma?
I’ve always wanted to write a novel about something like this.. where someone is in a coma and finally wakes up but feels like they lived a better life in their.. “coma dreams” or whatever..
I’ve heard of others in comas experiencing traumatic ‘events’ from nurses and staff. Like very realistic and traumatizing stuff, so you’re not alone. Sorry you experienced that and I hope reality gets better.
Do you feel traumatized or is just like a strange dream or a nightmare. Something more like a funny anecdote?
how different were the other lives compared to this one?
read a response from you that they weren’t full lives, as in from birth to death, but snapshots. was it like being dropped into another persons body and experiencing their life for a set time? or is it closer to only remembering a section of a full life?
Was it a medicaly induced coma? If it was, what was the medication? Seems a lot like anesthetic vivid dreams.
Are you aware of the story of Paul Amadeus Dienach, a Swiss-Austrian teacher who, in the early 20th century, claimed to have experienced a remarkable journey during a year-long coma. According to Dienach, his consciousness traveled to the year 3906, where it inhabited the body of a man named Andrew Northman. During this time, he purportedly learned about future human evolution, societal transformations, and the emergence of a new human species called Homo Occidantalis Novus. Upon awakening, Dienach documented his experiences in a diary, which was later compiled into the book “Chronicles from the Future”. I think it’d be really cool if that was real
He spent a year in 3906 | This is what Paul Amadeus Dienach saw
Is it possible that i am Kevin Finnerty?
What made you get into said coma? Was it from head injury or intentionally medically necessary and if the latter, what medications were you on?
You might benefit from looking into the works of Jim Tucker, MD and Ian Stevenson, MD. Both were physicians and researchers at the University of Virginia’s Medical School Dept. Of Perceptual Studies. Some of what you describe could touch on their studies.
You mentioned trauma, so I wondered: Have you ever heard of “The Journey of Souls” by Dr. Michel Newton?
Not a question per se, just a suggestion for you to look into, because it might explain a few things for you (this is the first of 3 very interesting books, the exact explanation might not be until book 2 or 3 though).
Good luck, I’m sure you’ll receive all your answers in the end.
How did your experiences affect your view of your faith/religion, if any?
Ever watch The Odyssey ? sounds like a similar thing:
Following an accident, young Jay Ziegler falls into a coma. While his family and friends must continue their lives in the Real World, Jay finds himself in the magical Downworld on a quest to return home.
Do you feel as though you are the same person now as before you were in the coma? My father suffered from encephalitis and was in a briefer coma than you and my Uncle devoted a great deal of time researching behavioral issues that affected coma patients. He believed it made my father more aggressive and agitated. My father was already a professional boxer so many more variables involved I am sure.
Hope that you are well.
Did you lose your sense of “home”? Like when you left the hospital and went back to where you live, did it feel normal or strange ?
When you woke up, did it feel like you were in a coma for two weeks or did it feel like you were ‘out’ for a much longer time than that?
I saw a comment of yours saying you’ve been in two comas, how old are you may I ask?
Did any of these experiences change your perception of the world or the environments you are/were in? Eg you say you felt and experienced torture or abuse like dreams in the hospital, has this caused you to have a huge fear of hospitals now or do you get triggered or disassociate at the sound of a certain film you may have seen in your coma experience? Or are you apathetic about these environments?
You mentioned you had experienced the realities of numerous people, not fully but a snapshot of their “present time”, do you remember how many people you “possessed/dreamed up”?
If so could you lay it on to me with each snapshot? I find your experience a fun read! Hope you are doing better now!
How did time pass? Was it like spending years or maybe much shorter? Did you live in a place that you didn’t IRL? What was your local area like, and even the globe as a whole? Did you have any sort of “off” feeling, even minor within the coma? Sorry if a lot of questions, but this is super interesting!
I’ve been in your shoes. It’s traumatic as hell. I have no questions but I have a lot of sympathy for you. It really messes with the head.
You might find this book interesting. The individual from this book went through a similar experience and awoke a year later to tell of how humanity faired in the 40th century. The notion here is consciousness can traverse space + time and your consciousness heartbeat if you will may have gotten it’s signals temporarily crossed with another time/space/physical realm.
https://orl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S111C649799
I’ve never heard of this but it sounds preferable to a regular coma where you’re out then up with no idea of time passing.
You mention you were in a coma once before but the experience was peaceful, like no consciousness. Was the cause of each coma different?
If you think about the surroundings in your memories, what people were wearing, their hairstyles, etc., do they feel like they were in the past, the present, or the future? Or is it hard to say?
At any point did they give you Ketamine?
Are you able to ask contact the staff at the hospital if they actually played the movies and Taylor Swift and etc.?
Apologies if someone has already asked this: How do you feel about these … experiences that you had? Do you feel enlightened? Glad for the experience? Disturbed? Confused?
Are you getting the help you need now, to feel better and not want to harm yourself? I saw you mentioned above that you haven’t done it since getting home. But I hope you have more supports in place. Have you considered getting ketamine assisted therapy? That can be very helpful for SI, so potentially could be helpful for other forms of self harm.
What happened that led to you being in a coma?
What was your relationship to the hundreds of years passed loved one who you felt intimately bonded to, and were you aware of the reason the abandoned you and had returned at the time?
Do you have a support system you can lean on? I read no one visited you, but your parents were around for your first coma. All this said, I hope you have good people to lean on now!
This sounds like hospital delirium or ICU delirium. Terrifying!
What caused you to wake up?
Did you at any point become aware that you were asleep?
What clues can I look for to know if I’m in a coma or not?
This is so profound.
Why do you think the hospital mistreated you so much? Breaks my heart to hear they didn’t take care of you properly.
Since your coma, have you felt like reality has changed in any way? Do you experience anything like Mandela effects?
What are your views on the spiritual realm now? Do you think that we have souls, there is an afterlife, etc?
Do you know a new language? Xenoglossy?
This experience is the premise of a great novel, “The Bridge” by Iain Banks. Fwiw
I seriously thought I was the only one! I was in a coma for a month after a bacterial infection and experienced very similar things. After the fact I have tried to explain it to friends and family however there’s is a inability to comprehend the experience for those who have not experienced it. The closest I think most people can come to understanding is relating it to a ultra vivid dream however there is something more to it that is so difficult to explain. Thank you for making this post.
I have DID (multiple personalities) and I actually have a single theory that unifies what you’ve experienced. I hate to be a lazy lunatic… the idea is… those memories are real. They are real because YOU are real.
I am two humans trapped inside of my body, You seemed to have been needed elsewhere even if it was monetary.
Does the colohr Blue.. like Cobalt Blue come in to play at all?
There is a series of YouTube videos/podcast called “Walking Home From The ICU”. They talk to ICU patients who underwent sedation and had experiences like yours. The underlying theme is that they are all traumatized from their time under sedation/in comas and this is why they are trying to make the awake and walking ICU a reality. It reduces trauma. Anyways, you might find comfort in hearing that podcast.
There was another Reddit post about something like this many years ago. The guy was in a coma and lived a whole other life. He got married, had children, etc. Then one day a lamp and his living room started looking odd. No one else saw it, I think. He kept staring at it and then that is what triggered him waking from his coma
Did anything happen like this to you right before you came out of your coma? Like did “reality” distort, and you started to realize that maybe it wasn’t reality and was maybe a dream or hallucination or whatever?
These were someone else’s experiences, a different version of you in an alternate universe.
The glitch in memory mix up occurred cos you were in a coma. These occurrences usually happen when humans are in state when they can’t control anything.
It sounds like you had an encounter with Source and possibly experienced some timeline smear (where parts of alternate timelines blend together). Did you at any point experience a sensation overwhelming love and interconnectedness like even the blades of grass loved you?
I’ve died several times and all I can tell you is that you got a glimpse of the past but don’t start fearing the next step forward in existence, you can’t avoid it
This kinda reminds me of when I got stuck in an acid trip. I wasn’t asleep, but I have very vivid memories of events, actions and lives that definitely weren’t happening, but felt and still feel very real.
I don’t have a question but I wanted to say I had a similar experience. I wasn’t in a coma but I flatlined very unexpectedly due to a severe reaction to an IV medication.
I was down for less than 3 minutes probably, but I was having a dream in that short amount of time despite trying to escape my mortal coil. I dreamed that I was in my local mall, and people were dressed like it was the late 80s. I was born in the mid 90s so idk why my brain picked late 80s for people’s hair and clothes lol.
But I dreamed I was being surrounded and yelled at by random people in the mall. And I was so confused, like what did I do? Why is everyone looking at me and yelling at me?
I woke up thanks to the Prednisone they injected, and I was indeed surrounded by a ton of people looking very serious. I was immediately embarrassed like omg I just fell asleep in front of these people. But then I remembered I even heard the code blue call over the loudspeaker before my dream and I realized what happened:
I had been hearing people trying to wake me up and talking to me, yelling instructions to each other, and it influenced my dream heavily. Thankfully I woke up before they cut my clothes off, the guy had the scissors in his hand lol, your chest needs to be bare for CPR that would have been embarrassing lol.
I looked at the report later and they indeed called a code blue so I definitely heard it just didn’t process it in my dream. I have watched some videos on hospice care and palliative care, and I’ve heard from many sources that people don’t lose their sense of hearing until the very last moments of brain death. When you stop breathing or your heart stops (flatline) your brain is still alive and going. When your body detects oxygen isn’t flowing as well, it knows almost immediately, and forces you unconscious to save oxygen and try to get blood to the brain. Your brain is still hearing everything and processing things while unconscious. When people “die” they can still hear you until the brain finally dies about 5 minutes later.
So it made sense to me that even though I was flatlined I still had awareness thanks to my hearing, which is very interesting to me. The same probably happened to you, being in a coma your brain was trying to stay aware and process things you were hearing. Nurses and visitors are encouraged to talk normally to comatose patients as if they’re awake and aware, and to be respectful and narrate everything they’re doing despite being in a coma. They’re encouraged to play music and just talk conversationally. So if people did that for you, you probably had a lot to base your coma dreams on.
Damn, when I was in a coma, I remember vividly being in the coma. It was like a dream but the people who were talking like nurses and stuff would also be there. I remember my parents visiting me, but I could only hear them and their voices intertwined with my dreams, it was a really odd experience. Like I was having weird, weird dreams, almost like tripping, and then when nurses and family/friends were there I could feel and hear them, and maybe see a dream version of them. It was like a really strange trip, lucid dream combination. Granted my coma was caused from a suicide attempt OD where I went into cardiac arrest, got resuscitated and then was in a coma for a couple of weeks, so maybe that trippiness was related to the drugs too, I really don’t know.
Anyway as I can sort of relate having been in a much different type of coma, may I ask was your coma medically induced or not? Which lives did you live? Did it feel like lucid dreaming? What was your favorite life you lived?