I was in rehab in California for my mental health issues. I had issues regulating my emotions and a hospital in Wyoming recommended me to a treatment center in California. I got really depressed there and I went into the staff room, and the black tool cabinet they had in the garage where they kept all the meds happened to be unlocked that day. I went in and grabbed a knife to try to kill myself. That didn't work so I took a whole bottle of my own Tegretol. I called the police because I regretted it and it really was just a cry for help. I didn't really want to die.

I got to the hospital and was feeling fine and then I started feeling loopy and weird. I started laughing uncontrollably and acting strange. The staff told me to calm down. I also grabbed a pair of scissors to try and kill myself again and they kept trying to get me to admit I was trying to kill the staff. Also one of the staff members was very creepy towards me there and they were just mean and rude and awful while I was there so it was a really bad experience and maybe I had this experience to know I really was safe after I leave here. It was a bad place, and I was far from home. I had never left Wyoming and I was just really scared and wanted to go home. 

The staff ended up leaving after I calmed down, but I wasn't really calming down. I was passing out because I was no longer breathing. At this time everything went black and I could feel the air leave my body. I have no memory of this time, no out-of-body experience, nothing, and I kept thinking to myself, because I was atheist, “See there really is nothing after you die.” I also kept smelling like some sort of iron or sulfur. I wasn’t sure what it was, and I told the staff I smelled it, and they just wrote it off as me being loopy from the overdose.

I kept passing out and feeling the air leave my body and finally the staff woke me up and said I wasn't breathing and that I had to walk to another room. But I couldn’t, so while they were telling me this, I passed out, then woke up. My next memory was they woke me up again, rolling their eyes, telling me now I was at the room and I would have to get up and walk because I was "able to and just being fussy." I got up to walk and immediately fell down and passed out. This time I died.

This is when I had my NDE.

I appeared at this park. It was dark and gloomy. It wasn't a bad place, just kind of a place frozen in time, an in-between place. The in-between was a playground, which I later described to my parents, and they said it looked like the one we visited in Maryland. It looked like the upside-down from Stranger Things and this was way before the show came out, so when I saw it, it was kind of strange to me. The whole experience was more dreamlike than anything. So at first, since I was atheist, I thought I had dreamt it, but it seemed strange to dream something other people dream as well when they die. Also, years later I saw an NDE story, maybe in like 2017, and someone said playgrounds and parks were pretty common in NDEs, especially with younger people who die, and even though I was 21, I still felt like a child. 

I was sitting on a bench on one side of the park when a man in all black with a black hoodie on came up to me. I couldn’t see his face since it was covered by the hood, but I knew somehow that he was death. I didn't recognize him from this earth but maybe we knew each other in the afterlife because his presence seemed familiar. He sat down by me and said, “Well here we are again." I said, "Yup, I guess so. How do I get out of this mess?" Then he jumped onto a hamster wheel, like a giant one (I know it seems weird, but it is what I saw), and he ran on it and he said, "If you keep making the same mistakes you will end up in a much worse place.” Then he hopped off the hamster wheel and we walked together on the other side of the playground. The sidewalk was broken off and there was a giant pit to our left and some sort of black and red muck was down there. I could feel the place and it wasn't like the eternal hell. I thought it was a place where our lingering bad emotions go, like a place of despair. I asked, "What's that?" and he said, "Oh, you don't have to worry about that right now."  (Side note: when he jumped onto the hamster wheel, I felt like I could control him doing that. I felt like I could control whatever was going on in my thoughts in the in-between and in the hell-like place, but not in heaven; that’s a whole different thing.) 

Death led me over to the same cabinet at my rehab that I had taken the meds from, like identical, and I asked, “Where does that lead to?” He said, “Home.” Then the cabinet opened, and a bright light shone through. The bright light hugged me and enveloped me. It was familiar and fatherly. It was an emotion I had never felt on earth, no pain, no suffering, no tears, just unending, undying love. Since I had spent most of my life suicidal and in pain, it felt strange, but I knew I wanted to be there, no matter what. 

I was about to go up into the light, but in my head, I said, "No, no, I have to go back for my family. My mom and dad need me.” Then the light turned into the nurse’s light flashing in my eyes and she said, "Okay, she's responsive." I woke up attached to a heart monitor on my chest. I had died for 3 or 5 minutes, and they had to perform CPR on me. 

I woke up and couldn’t talk or walk. I kept screaming, “I need to see my mom and dad. They need me!” but I guess later a nurse said it just sounded like gibberish when I talked. All the nurses left the room and before the last one left, she looked at me and said, “You know your heart stopped for 5 minutes and you died. That was a stupid thing to do,” and I immediately in my heart knew I definitely regretted coming back here but at least if I had my family, I would be okay. 

What I learned after:

I didn’t really change that much after my NDE, I talked to a really nice counselor at the psych ward and said my NDE didn’t change me and he said, “Some people who have them instantly change, some stay the same, and sometimes it takes a while for it to kick in.” I guess mine took a while because it was a year later that I found hope again, which I will talk about below. I do want to add that my suicide attempts got MUCH WORSE after my NDE. I went to the state hospital afterwards and I tried to kill myself every day I was there and had many more attempts afterwards. I was not happy that I decided to come back. 

It was strange because the NDE didn’t hit me until six years later, in 2020. I remembered it all: that light where I knew God loved me, and I remembered I was here for a reason and that there was life after death. I became Christian that week. During quarantine I started looking for my bible and found an old Bible from a church I got in 2006 and started reading from it. I have all this spiritual faith now and even go to church but I went from being fully atheist to fully Christian and now I’m debating what I actually know.

Right now, I want to die. I am not going to try and commit suicide but hope that something happens where I can talk to God because I never got to talk to him in my NDE. I really have so many questions that can’t be answered here on earth so my main goal in life right now is to die, which seems strange but things just aren’t clear to me and I’m very confused and need more answers so maybe try meditation or praying. I’m not certain at this point but I am hoping I can get a bit more answers or at least hoping the world will change or Jesus will return so I can get some answers that way.

I feel like I have a different knowledge than other people do because I am not afraid of death and even see death as a way to get answers for this life, which would seem strange for people who haven’t had an NDE, but for people like me, not so much. I just feel like I should have stayed a bit longer and maybe asked questions and asked why I was here, so I’m hoping I can have another one and I have a feeling I’m going to have an NDE or have my questions answered somehow, but I just don’t have knowledge of how, why, or when that may happen. My whole life I’ve gotten frustrated when I didn’t know all the facts and I know that’s the soul part of me being frustrated with the boundaries of my flesh, but I know something important is coming in the next couple of years, maybe a decade. I’m just not sure when that is, but I just wish I knew a bit more.

I hope this information helps people who may have had one like mine where they didn’t go to heaven or maybe some other people talked to death as well. I’m hoping this will help. I do have a lot of hope now, so it did help me. It just is weird to adjust to what is going on, especially when you don’t have any answers to at least some of your questions. Thank you.