4 days ago
The surprising similarities between near-death experiences and psychedelic drug trips – and why both mean seeing a bright light
Across hundreds of reported near–death experiences, people see the same things with staggering consistency.
Now, scientists have discovered that these brushes with death share a surprising similarity with another type of mind–altering experience.
According to new research, psychedelic drug trips and near–death experiences often result in the same bizarre visions.
Strikingly, a bright light at the end of the tunnel is seen in 'nearly all' high–dosage experiences with certain drugs.
Both types of experience also produce feelings of detaching from the body, encountering supernatural beings, and travelling mysterious spaces.
Similarly, both potent drug trips and near–death experiences (NDEs) can be some of the most transformative moments in a person's life.
Researchers now say that the striking similarities between these different experiences might hint at a common underlying mechanism.
Dr Pascal Michael, of Greenwich University, told the Daily Mail: 'Both states share the same neurobiological 'scaffold,' but individual psychology builds different experiential 'stories' on that foundation.'
What are the similarities between near–death experiences and psychedelic drug trips?
In a recent trial, Dr Michael and his co–authors from Greenwich University compared people's subjective reports of drug–induced trips and NDEs.
In the study, 36 participants took a high dose of vaporised DMT – an extremely potent psychedelic and the main active component of the Ayahuasca brew.
Researchers then compared the details of the participants' trips to a database of near–death experiences triggered by heart attacks.
What they found is that both types of experience share a surprisingly large set of common attributes.
For example, people in both cases reported feeling 'disembodied' and travelling to a new location or through a strange space.
Most frequently, this involved a reference to a passage through a tunnel or a vision of bright lights.
Likewise, both groups frequently described encountering entities or supernatural beings during their travels.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given DMT's extremely potent effects, several participants taking the drug also reported believing that they were dying.
Beyond these superficial similarities, previous research has shown that both experiences may have similar effects.
A study of over 3,000 people, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, found that psychedelic trips can be almost as transformative as a brush with death.
Participants reported that both drug experiences and NDEs brought them a more positive attitude towards death, alongside increases in welfare and meaning in their lives.
Dr Stephen Taylor, a psychologist from Leeds Beckett University and author of The Leap: Psychology of Spiritual Awakening, told the Daily Mail: 'Both are what you could call spiritual or mystical experiences. Both experiences take us beyond the limitations of our normal awareness.
'The world seems like a completely different place, with a sense of meaning and harmony. This heightened awareness is a revelation that changes us and our view of reality permanently.'
The visions produced by DMT and by an NDE have totally different causes, so it might seem odd that they would be so similar.
The 'third state' beyond life and death
The third state is an emerging state of existence in biology, neither life nor death.
This third state consists of cells of dead organisms that can continue to function even after the organism's demise.
After an organism has died, cells are gaining new capabilities that they did not possess in life, the researchers say.
Different cell types have different capacities for survival, including white blood cells in humans.
However, researchers suggest that their similarities could be caused by the common physical structure of our brains.
Dr Michael says: 'The common structural experiences – such as disembodiment, entities, environments, ego dissolution, timelessness, and visual intensity – stem from bottom–up neurological effects.'
For example, the vision of a tunnel could be triggered because both experiences impact our brain's visual processing centres.
During a DMT trip, the activation of serotonin receptors in the brain 'disintegrates' the networks that inhibit activity, leading to an explosion of spontaneous stimulation.
During an NDE, meanwhile, the physical stress on the brain pushes the visual system into 'hyperexcitability', producing visions of bright lights and tunnels.
In some cases, a powerful DMT trip could be so overwhelming that it actually produces an NDE.
Scientists believe that just the threat or thought that you are dying can be enough to trigger a near–death–like experience known as a 'fear–death experience'.
Yet it is possible that the DMT experience and NDEs could have an even closer similarity.
Study co–author Dr David Luke, associate professor of psychology at Greenwich University, told the Daily Mail: 'There may be some similar biological mechanisms at play in both experiences.
'The main argument here considers that because DMT is naturally occurring in humans, it is possible that DMT may be produced or released in the human brain at the point of death, or during a near–death experience.'
Essentially, people may see things during a near–death experience because they are tripping on DMT that is naturally produced by the brain.
That could explain why NDEs appear to contain many of the canonical aspects of DMT use.
However, there still isn't evidence to show that DMT concentrations in the brain reach truly psychedelic levels during cardiac arrest or other extreme states.
'The neurobiology of both DMT and the NDE continues to be under–researched and the theory remains highly debatable,' says Dr Luke.
How do NDEs differ from psychedelic drug trips?
In addition to finding how these experiences were similar, Dr Luke and Dr Michael's research also found a number of important ways in which they differ.
Although the types of visions experienced can be similar, they are often wildly different in content.
For example, people undergoing an NDE sometimes report encountering dead loved ones or people they knew in their lives.
People taking DMT, on the other hand, report encountering bizarre insectoid or octopus–like entities.
'Another feature that superficially appears similar is that 'out–of–body experiences' are reported in about a third of NDE cases, and about half of people report feeling 'disembodied' in DMT experiences,' says Dr Luke.
'But in the latter, there is typically no sense that one even has a body, whereas in NDEs people often report seeing and recognising their body from outside it or separating from it.'
Likewise, despite both types of experience frequently involving a tunnel and lights, the types of tunnels are totally different.
Dr Luke explains: 'In NDEs, the tunnel is often a dark passage or corridor leading towards a glimmer of bright light at the end.
'In DMT experiences, the tunnels or portals are typically highly complex and very colourful geometric structures, sometimes culminating in higher–dimensional objects, such as a hypercube.
'Why both involve tunnels, although of very different types, is open to speculation but remains a mystery.'
In fact, the researchers say that explaining why these experiences are so different is the 'big question'.
The researchers believe that these may be caused by 'top–down cognitive factors' such as cultural expectations, memory, personal belief systems, and context.
But how exactly our personal psychology builds the unique character of a near–death experience, or overwhelming drug trip, remains mysterious.
WHAT DOES DYING FEEL LIKE?
Scientists reported in October 2017 that they had discovered a person's consciousness continues to work after the body has stopped showing signs of life.
That means they may be aware of their own death and there is evidence to suggest someone who has died may even hear their own death being announced by medics.
A team from New York University Langone School of Medicine investigated the topic through twin studies in Europe and the US of people who have suffered cardiac arrest and 'come back' to life, in the largest study of its kind.
Study author Dr Sam Parnia told Live Science: 'They'll describe watching doctors and nurses working and they'll describe having awareness of full conversations, of visual things that were going on, that would otherwise not be known to them.'
He said these recollections were then verified by medical and nursing staff who reported their patients, who were technically dead, could remember details of what they were saying.
Doctors define death based on when the heart no longer beats, which then immediately cuts off blood supply to the brain.
Once that happens, blood no longer circulates to the brain, which means brain function halts almost instantaneously.
You lose all your brain stem reflexes, including your gag reflex and your pupil reflex.
The brain's cerebral cortex, which is responsible for thinking and processing information from the five senses, also instantly flatlines.
This means that within two to 20 seconds, no brainwaves will be detected on an electric monitor.
This sparks a chain reaction of cellular processes that will result in the death of brain cells.
However this can take hours after the heart has stopped, researchers said.
