Almost choked to death on potato. Fell to the ground, which loosened potato.

High stress job led to alcohol, smoking, high risk lifestyle almost ended me at 27 with a bleeding ulcer. In bed for a day or so before my then girlfriend found me and called the hospital. ER, blood transfusion, 2wk stay, 2wk recoup at home with daily iron injection, prescription meds for a month to keep the acid low.

Special diet for a month (no processed food, no caffeine, no nicotine, no pepper, no hard foods-spft, mushy, etc.

Got my shit together, woke up. No more smoking, alcohol (eventually) in moderation, healthier coping mechanisms- at one point when the stress ramped up in the job (still in the same career field) I was training/running triathlons. Married that then girlfriend, 25+ years on, 2 grown ass kids.

27 club is no joke…just happy I wasn’t a celebrity.

According to my brain, every time I have to interact with a stranger.

I put a gun to my head, ready to end it all.

Woke up in a hospital. No drugs involved.

I drove myself there. The gun was in the glove compartment. Apparently, I self admitted through ED.

I remember NOTHING from gun to my head to waking up in the hospital.

Not sure if that qualifies as near death, but I think I was.

I am better now. That was years ago, I came close again recently, but this time I have answers about myself and a place to start.

A bunch.

Two while snowboarding. First time I hit some rocks that were hidden in fresh snow. When I checked my helmet, a rock had pierced it in the back of my head. It was easily a fatal hit had I not had my helmet on. The second time I accidentally rode off a cliff (took the wrong line). I landed on my back in powder but a snapped branch was sticking up two inches below my left arm pit. Had I fallen four inches to the left, it would have impaled me through the heart.

I lost count how many while surfing. Lost a surfer I was trying to rescue and almost drowned myself.

Oddly, never while downhill skateboard racing.

Twice while riding a motorcycle.

Once in a car. A pickup hydroplaned on the interstate right ahead of me. It went in the ditch, overcorrected and came right at my door at speed. I turned my wheel into it so it wouldn’t t-bone me but instead I missed it entirely and all I got was mud on my car and in my underware.

Blockage in three of my four main heart arteries. Two were 99% blocked. It required four emergency stents in my heart. I should be dead for sure from that one but a little voice in my head told me to skip the boat trip and go to the ER because I felt “funny”.

Stage 3 cancer. Beat it but lost my singing voice. Fuck cancer.

Thrice, all a long time ago:

• Driving back alone from a group camping trip. Got stuck in a freak snowstorm in the mountains, without chains. Stalled and started sliding back towards a really deep ravine. Hit the brakes, but it kept skidding through the sleet. Had the car door open, ready to bail. The car came to a stop, barely inches from the edge.

• Walked out of the shower in a towel. Faced a tweaker with a gun standing in my apartment. Demanded my wallet. Took out the cash. Wasn’t much. He paused, trying to decide what to do next. I really wasn’t sure which way it would go. He left.

• Flight instructor had checked off on doing a solo, then left town. Was nervous, but he had told me to put in the flight hours in his absence. Practicing short take-off/landings and go-arounds. Little single-engine trainer. On the first touch-and-go, I forgot to take off full flaps, which meant maximum drag on the wings. Got barely 1000 ft above ground, then the engine began to sputter. The plane stalled, and started a slow-mo, nose-down spin toward the ground. I remember stopping breathing. Then the brain kicked in. Figured it out. Recovered from the spin way too close to the ground. The most sphincter-clenching, stupidest moment of my life.

I’ve had the whole life flashing before your eyes thing.

The night I lost my virginity. Got high with this girl and watched a movie that was terrible and then we ended up hooking up and I’d put so much expectation into what sex was going to be like that when it actually came to it it just wasn’t what I thought it would be.

Couldn’t cum. So after doing everything I could possibly think of to do for about an hour I gave up and really shittily faked my orgasm and then I took the girl home.

Got back home and I blue balled myself so I took care of it and right after I came I had an epiphany. Being a kid and hyper sexualized I had messed around with my brother and sister, never going so far is actually having penetrative sex or anything but yeah. All of that shit flashed before my eyes and it hit me like a bolt of lightning out of the blue.

The stress was so much that every single bone in my rib cage right down my sternum cracked. It sounded like a gunshot had gone off. And it set my heart on fire with pain and misery and shame and guilt and an absolute detestation of my very existence that I that that I just I can’t express it it’s the only thing I understand in this universe to be “ineffable” is what I felt at that moment.

And I don’t know if it was a blessing or a curse.

I spoke to my siblings after I had recuperated some and apologized for my wrongdoing in our childhood and for the most part we worked all of that out but God damn. Like, I was not mentally prepared to get drop kicked in the soul on the same night that I lost my virginity.

There were other things going on at that time too. I had been writing poetry and sometimes when I would write poetry I would feel like this flash of fiery warmth and it’s like I would automatically know what the poem is going to be and it would flow out of me in this beautiful golden Rush.

I had books and books and books of poems I had written like this.

And I was attempting to write a poem when all of this happened and instead almost like I was possessed like it was automatic writing I wrote out all of my sins on several sheets of paper. My heart burned like someone had dropped an ember of burning hot coal on it as all of my sins were ripped out of me against my will.

It left me so shook that in all of the years since then I have only been able to kind of sort of cry a single time.

It felt like being abandoned by God, or rather it felt like suddenly getting caught by him and immediately thrown into hell for 5 minutes, only to be dragged back out with the fires still licking my skin from the inside and then being left to think about what I had done.

I’m talking about the bad side of it but there was a good side too because it opened my eyes to how I was living and what I was doing and even though I’m still horribly imperfect and terrified of being imperfect but helpless to not be imperfect, I am not as bad as I was I think.

And there were other times too where that same golden warmth would come up to me in the middle of a conversation and I would be talking to someone and all of a sudden I would know exactly what to say and in those moments where this would happen it’s like pleasure and joy and fire would rise up out of my heart and reach out to the other person and touch them and in those moments I know the words that I have said have made a positive impact on someone else’s life, but they weren’t my words, they were the words of this fire and spirit inside of me.

All these years later that fire still burns. It never stops. It cannot be forgotten for me. And no matter how many times I explain it, people just generally do not believe that this actually happened to me. They think that it is a mental break or a bit of psychosis or some self delusion that I have put myself under to deal with the trauma of the incest and unfettered sexual promiscuity of my childhood.

And sometimes I’m afraid that that event was my soul leaving my body. And sometimes I’m afraid that it was the sudden inrush of the inhabitation of God that I had been searching for.

And as far as I know no one else has ever felt the way I feel. I can’t find any literature on it. The closest I can relate to are those Christian iconographies of a heart with a crown on it and barbed wire and fire.

But you would think that if that was the inhabitation of God that the inclination to sin would have been driven away from me and yet I still sin just like everybody else.

So I don’t know. I don’t think I would recommend it to anyone else. Just wish I could meet someone who had been through that and knew what it was and could guide me.

I’ve been on a motorcycle for over 25 years now and I’ve had some near misses but nothing serious.

That’s an amazing story and lucky you for making it through. I’ve known of two people in my circle who died from motorcycle accidents and a few more in my community and region who died … it’s also amazing to realize that you don’t need to be riding fast in order to get killed on a motorcycle. One woman in my town was at an intersection, moved across in an awkward way, got hit by a truck and neither were moving fast, she just got hit in a particular way, knocked down, pinned down by the truck, crushed and then died on the way to the hospital.

My near death experience was not as dramatic as yours. I was a dumb teen on a four wheeler on gravel. I did a major jump without knowing it out expecting it, launched about 20 feet in the air, landed front wheels first, launched forward and smashed my face in the gravel. Thankfully the atv went flying in a different direction and didn’t land on me. I also didn’t have a helmet on. I didn’t get knocked out and I was aware the whole time. I was just lucky I was fit strong and landed in a lucky way that didn’t hurt me too much.

I have a cousin who fell off an atv as a passenger, landed the wrong way, hit her head (again no helmet) severely injured, treated in hospital for a day before she died from injuries.

Motorcycles and ATV are dangerous machines

Everyone I have met who rode motorcycles has a story like this. Then they lift up their pant leg or shirt to show you ghastly huge scars.

Not really, just some high-speed near-misses on my motorcycle.

Lived in Florida for almost a decade

You can accidentally double dose on Trazadone like I did and have it feel like life is slipping away as yoy fight with every ounce to keep your eyes open while everything goes dark.

But really you just sleep extra hard.