Many will never live to tell the experience of what happens when you’re dying, but one man reckons he knows exactly what happens when we die after a moment in 2020 changed his life forever.
Those who have been declared medically dead or nearly die often come back with a story about what they saw on the other side.
Usually it’s heaven, angels or a bright light. But that’s not what Sebastian Junger experienced when he was dying.
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The renowned journalist, who covered wars in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Liberia, has twenty years of experiencing death, but his own near miss caused him to slump into a great depression, wondering what the point of living was.
In his book, In My Time of Dying, the journalist recalled the moment in 2020 that gave him a new perspective of dying.
At the time, he was 58 and on his driveway in Cape Cod when he suddenly began to experience an excruciating pain in his abdomen.
He wrote that everything ‘began to turn electric white’ as he was experiencing a haemorrhage in his pancreatic artery, which is where the artery bursts or a hole appears, causing the person to bleed out into their abdomen.
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At the time, Junger wasn’t aware that he was dying, but felt as though he was slipping towards a dark pit.
Speaking to LADbible, he added that 'as soon I stood up, I almost fell over', before having to 'say the words I never thought I'd have to say - I said to my wife "I think I'm going to need help".'
He explained that after his near-death experience he became obsessed with time, and how even one second could change outcomes forever.
So, he fixated on what would have happened if the ambulance, which was racing towards his home, had taken an extra 15 minutes?; What if one of his doctors had been in traffic when he arrived?; What if he lived ten miles farther away?
He knew he would have been dead.
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Take a look at what Junger had to say about his near-death experience:
He told Men’s Health: “If you have an abdominal hemorrhage, time is of the essence.
"And I burned through an hour and a half before I even got to the doctor because of how long it took for the ambulance to get to me, and then to the hospital.
"That’s an eternity. That’s pints of blood. I probably lost two thirds of my blood, which is right at the point where you go off a cliff and that’s it.”
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But when he felt as though it was all over and he couldn’t resist the darkness, his father appeared.
He wrote that it was grotesque to see him: “He’d been dead eight years, but there he was, not so much floating as simply existing above me and slightly to my left.”
He added: “I was enormously confused by his presence…Because I didn’t know I was dying, his invitation to join him seemed grotesque. He was dead, I was alive, and I wanted nothing to do with him.”
Thankfully, Junger lived and went on to sit on his near-death experience for three years before writing his book within a matter of months.
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Having experienced what death felt like, he still considers himself an atheist, as he didn’t see God, only his father.
But it’s safe to say it was a moment that changed his perception on life and death forever.
Britt Jones