Accounts of Suicide Near Death Experiences
Accounts of Suicide Near Death Experiences
From “After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond” - M.D. Greyson, Bruce
After sitting on the grave for a couple of hours, reliving and imagining conversations with them, he decided it was time to join them. He lay down on the grave, positioning his head over where he thought his mother’s breast would be. Henry lodged the .22-caliber hunting rifle between his legs, aimed it up at his chin, and gently squeezed the trigger with his thumb. The bullet tore through the right side of his face, leaving a trail of shell fragments embedded in his cheek and temple, but by a stroke of luck the bullet missed his brain.
“I found myself in a lush meadow of wildflowers. There, welcoming me with open arms, were my mama and papa. I heard Mama say to Papa, ‘Here comes Henry.’ She sounded so happy to see me. But then she looked right at me and her expression changed. She shook her head and said, ‘Oh, Henry, now look what you’ve done!’”
In my short time as a psychiatrist in training, I’d never seen someone who’d survived a suicide attempt and come out of it seeming as confident as Henry did. He said he was ashamed of his suicide attempt, but grateful for his vision. And he was eager to talk with other patients, to reassure them about the value and sanctity of life. Whatever had led him to see his parents, this vision was clearly helping him cope with his grief.
She had loved her classes and training at the police academy, but once she joined the force she was embedded in a macho culture where she felt ridiculed and harassed. Being a police officer was all she had wanted for years, and when her sergeant began aggressively teasing and touching her, she felt she was in an impossible situation. Feeling trapped and unable to see a way out, she took a serious overdose and found herself in the psychiatric ward.
“You asked what I remembered about it, and I didn’t tell you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t tell me…?”
She paused again, then went on. “While the paramedics were transporting me to the hospital, I left my body.”
Now I paused, wondering how to respond to this. Was she making something up to please me, because she thought I’d been disappointed in her response a month earlier? I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, at least for the time being. “You didn’t remember that last month, or you weren’t comfortable sharing it with me at that time?”
She nodded, her forehead still wrinkled in concern. “No, I wasn’t sure you were taking this seriously, so I didn’t say anything then.”
“Well, what can you tell me about it now?”
Now she launched into her story readily. “I was against the side of the ambulance, looking at my body and the paramedic sitting next to me. He was adjusting the flow of liquid into the IV in my arm. He seemed bored, and not very concerned about me. But then, I wasn’t concerned, either. As I watched him do that, and saw my body not moving at all, I thought, ‘Well, that’s interesting,’ and that was all. I didn’t feel any particular attachment to my body, any more than I did to his.”
“Yeah,” she said with an embarrassed smile, “but I didn’t tell you about seeing my cousin.
My eyebrow went up again. “Your cousin?”
“Yeah,” she continued, not looking at me, “my cousin Maria was there with me in the ambulance. She died four years ago in a car accident. We were the same age, and we did everything together. She told me that I still had lots I needed to do, and that I had other choices besides ending my life. She was a bit sarcastic, like she always was, but she was also sad that I’d overdosed.”
She paused, then went on. “She told me she was sending me back so I could confront my sergeant and not let him get away with that. And she said that if I tried to kill myself again, she would only kick my sorry butt back here again.”
“Peter,” I began, after introducing myself, “I understand that you jumped off the roof of your dorm. Can you tell me about that?”
He took a deep breath and launched into his story. “I’d stopped my meds because they were making me tired all the time. It was getting hard for me to concentrate on my studies. After a couple of weeks, I started hallucinating.” He paused and looked at me.
“Hallucinating?” I asked.
“Yeah, I was hearing the devil tell me that I was now his, because I’d messed up so much.” Peter was looking down at his legs in casts, and picking at the sheet. “He said that I was evil and that I had to die, and he was calling me to join him in hell. So I went up the stairs to the top floor of my dorm and climbed the ladder to the roof. I sat on the parapet at the edge, with my legs dangling over the side. It was early morning, and no one was walking down below. I started shivering with the cold, and Satan started yelling at me, ‘Do it now! Do it now!’
“I was confused and I was terrified,” he continued. “The hallucination wouldn’t stop, and I believed what it was saying. I thought I didn’t deserve to live, and so I eased myself forward and pushed off with both hands. I closed my eyes and felt sick to my stomach as I fell.”
Peter looked up at me. After a brief pause, as if considering how much to tell me, he picked up the story. “But then, as I was falling, God spoke to me. I couldn’t see him, but I heard his strong, clear voice. He said, ‘Peter, you are one of my children. You do not belong to Satan. You are loved more than you will ever know. I will not let your life end like this.’”
“I don’t know if I blacked out when I hit the ground. It seemed like I lay there a long time, and it’s all confused in my mind. I remember a crowd around me, and then being moved onto a stretcher and then into an ambulance. I was in a lot of pain, and I didn’t fully understand what was happening. But I was relieved that I was still alive.”
Peter shook his head slowly. “I don’t know how to explain it to you. But God’s voice was stronger and clearer and more real to me than your voice is right now, just like your voice is stronger and clearer and more real to me than the devil’s. I know that leading up to my suicide attempt, I thought Satan’s voice was real, but now that I’m no longer crazy, I know that it was just a hallucination. But not God’s voice. That was real.” He waved his hand in the air. “It was realer than all of this.”
Was hearing the voice of God as he was in midair part of Peter’s illness, or was it an NDE? Although restarting his medications convinced him that Satan’s voice had been a hallucination, it did not shake his belief that God had really spoken to him.
Some experiencers describe a realm that sounds like the traditional descriptions of hell. Brenda had one such experience at age twenty-six when she attempted suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills:
“The doctor at the hospital leaned over close to me and told me I was dying. The muscles in my body began to jerk upward, out of control. I could no longer speak, but I knew what was happening. Although my body slowed down, things around me and things happening to me went rather fast.
“I then felt my body slipping down—not straight down, but on an angle, as if on a slide. It was cold, dark, and watery. When I reached the bottom, it resembled the entrance to a cave, with what looked like webs hanging. The inside of the cave was gray and brown in color.
“I heard cries, wails, moans, and the gnashing of teeth. I saw these beings that resembled humans, with the shape of a head and body, but they were ugly and grotesque. I remember colors like red, green, and purple, but can’t positively remember if these were the colors of these beings. They were frightening and sounded like they were tormented, in agony. No one spoke to me.
“I never went inside the cave, but stood at the entrance only. I remember saying to myself, ‘I don’t want to stay here.’ I tried to lift myself up, as though trying to pull myself—my spirit—up out of this pit. That’s the last thing I remember.”
Brenda recovered from this overdose and began treatment for the depression that had led to her trying to take her life, and started attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Despite the hellish character of her NDE, her new belief that death is not the end gave her hope and motivation to turn her life around, and she eventually became a counselor to people dealing with depression and substance abuse.
As a psychiatrist, this comfort with the idea of death after an NDE made me wonder about people who try to kill themselves and have an NDE. It seemed to me that losing a fear of death might make suicidal people even more likely to kill themselves. But that didn’t happen with Joel, whom I met in his hospital room the day after he had attempted suicide. Joel was in a lot of physical pain and desperately wanted out of his pain-racked life, but he’d been afraid he would be condemned to hell if he killed himself. Eventually, though, his pain had become so intolerable that he overdosed anyway, and then, to his surprise, had a peaceful NDE. When he told me about it the following day, I asked him how that experience made him feel.
“My ideas about death are totally different,” he said, shaking his head as he lay in his hospital bed. “Death was utter bliss. I can’t begin to describe it. But I can tell you this, it’s definitely something I look forward to.”
“Tell me about that,” I said.
“I used to fear death,” he went on, “and particularly what my fate would be for all eternity if I killed myself.” He paused, then continued, “But I did try to kill myself, and it wasn’t at all what I was expecting. I was told that I’d made a mistake, but that I was loved anyway. I didn’t go to hell. I went someplace … well, I don’t know. I guess you’d have to call it heavenly.”
“So now you see death as something to look forward to, rather than as something to fear,” I summarized.
“You bet,” he said, nodding. “I can’t tell you everything that happened, but I can tell you this: I can’t wait to go back.”
“So, what, are you thinking now about suicide?” I asked.
“Oh, God, no!” he said emphatically. “I didn’t mean that. I would never try that again. My overdose was a mistake, but I was sent back … for a do-over.”
“It’s true that I’m no longer afraid of death,” he said, “but I’m also no longer afraid of life. Yes, I’m still in a lot of pain, and I don’t see a way out of that for now. But I also see that my pain and suffering are given to me for a reason. I see now that there’s a meaning to everything that happens, and a purpose for all our problems.”
He stopped and took a drink of water from the cup by his bed. “I was sent back for a reason. I have a job to do here. The pain is something I need to learn to deal with, not something I need to escape from.” He paused, as if weighing my reaction and whether he should say more. Then he continued, “I understand now that I’m more than just a collection of molecules. I have a profound connection to everything else in the universe. The problems of this bag of skin are not that important. There’s meaning and purpose to my being back here in this body.”
I am sure about one thing: when I woke up I knew what a stupid thing I had done, and I never tried it again. NEVER COMMIT SUICIDE. YOU MUST WAIT UNTIL IT'S THE RIGHT TIME FOR YOU TO DIE. WE ARE ONLY HERE FOR A SHORT WHILE. I'm no longer afraid of dying, although I am a little afraid of suffering. But my concern, above all, is that when I die, my loved ones down here will not be able to see me (just my body) and may think I have left them forever. If only those that I love would believe me when I tell them that we will see each other again over there.