6 Days in a coma

[MaskedMan]

On January 29th 2016 i quit drinking after 10 years as an alcoholic and have remained sober ever since. Back on 8th of December 2015 i fell over drunk and fractured my skull which caused a blood clot on my cerebellum, i was found unconcious in the street and the people that found me called an ambulance, at the hospital they placed me into a medically induced coma and removed the bloodclot. After the operation they kept me in the coma for 6 days. For those 6 days i dreamt. I did not have any kind of religous dream, i have no mainstream religous beliefs though i do have some spiritual beliefs. I am convinced from my own experience of being in a coma that the religous experiences people have when in a coma comes from their subconcious mind as did the things i experienced in a coma. The dream world i inhabited was as real as this. It did not have the "feel" a dream often has even when recalling a dream. I scored 3 on the glasgow coma scale which is the lowest score, apart from dead maybe. It was the most bizzare experience i have ever had and probably will ever have. I even went to "sleep" regurlarly whilst in the coma dream but whenever i did that it was like i projected myself similar to the concept of astral projection, so in the coma dream i would go to sleep to instantly open my eyes and be somewhere else, then i could wake myself up if i focused really hard which then made me go back to wherever it was i went to sleep, this phenomena fascinates me as i was told while i was in the coma there were a few instances where i woke up when i should not have and they had to increase the medications that keep you in an induced coma. I saw many bizzarre things which i will get round to describing when i have more time to type. But for now, if anyone reads this please feel free to leave any questions you may have about what it is like being in a coma and i will answer if i had any experience similar as i elaborate more on the events of my 6 day long dream. Keep on dreaming. MaskeMan p.s. I have attached some pictures of my awesome scar from the surgery, if they do not show please tell me if there is another way in which i need to attach them.

[Goldenspark]

Hi MaskedMan, yes the pictures do show OK, and congrats on staying sober! I see that you joined here before your coma, so when under, did you think to do a reality check, and if so what happened? And do you still manage to LD now?

[MaskedMan]

Hi Goldenspark, thank you. No it did not occur to me to do a reality check but honestly that was because i had no idea i was asleep even though it was suggested to me by a few people in my dreams that i was asleep. The thing is it was so real that to me i was awake, that was the world in which i inhabited, i remember saying to a lady in my dream that i was tired and that i wanted to go to sleep, but her response to me was "You're already asleep, what you need to do is wake up." At the time in the dream i did not understand what she meant and thought she was just trying to wind me up. Since my coma i have had only 2 lucid dreams. The coma dream was so real that i now find myself questioning wether or not i actually woke up, or wether that was my life and now im in a coma, most of the time im quite happy that this is reality, but sometimes laid in the dark trying to sleep it plagues my mind.

[OneUp]

That's a crazy experience OP, and congratulations on going sober man! I was thinking, since you've had this experience, your brain could recreate the scenario, of the prolonged dream, if you so much as desired to do so. On another note, how long did it seem like you were dreaming for? Did it seem like days or even weeks passed? Also, what was the craziest experience you had while dreaming in that period?

[Patience108]

Thanks for sharing your experience MaskedMan it's very interesting! So glad your on the mend now ~ I found it intriguing how you went to sleep within the coma dream and astral projected ...I can see how it would make you question ur reality a lot now. Has it made you step up your reality checks and do more day work for recognising " the dream" ? This kind of thing makes me even more passionate about lucidity/awareness

[MaskedMan]

hi hi, first off thank you for your responses, i will answer your questions after i have described a bit of my dream, as im sure you can imagine 6 days in a coma dreaming gave me a lot of experiences so it will take me a fair few posts to cover as much of what i saw and experienced. The first part of the dream i recall was lying paralyzed on a stone slab in smallish round room with only a door, no windows or anything else. Now someone came through this door and i imagine this was my subconcious minds interpration of the common image of Death as a physical being. He wore a black cloak and carried a scythe only he was not a skeletal figure but as fleshy as you or me and he wore an odd looking mask with only one eyehole it the centre like a cyclops, he never spoke a word to me, just stood near my head, then a tongue came out from under the mask and he sliced off his own tongue with his own scythe and i got drenched in his blood, again he made no noise and i still could not move and then he walked out of the door through which he came. A short time after i was able to move and got up and left the room which led directly out into a city kind of setting just it was night time and no one else was around, i remember feeling very confused and just started walking the streets aimlessly, at no point did any of this feel like a dream and at no point did the surroundings feel unfamiliar, i walked for sometime untill i came upon a police station. I shall continue on the following events tomorrow hopefully. So first up Oneup, thank you very much, it is still very difficult fighting my urges to drink but i have remained sober since i quit and now volunteer at an alcohol support service helping other people do the same. The dream seemed to feel like it was the only life i had ever lived, it was perpetual night which makes it hard to describe how long it felt it lasted, but looking back on it with my waking mind it seems to have felt like 2 weeks? My brain could easily recreate the scenario, even though it was back in december 2015 most of the memories of that place are still very fresh like it happened only yesterday but honestly im not sure i would want to revisit just yet, now i don't believe in heaven noe hell but to compare it to that concept for just a second it was neither but both at the same time, like the real world quite often i suppose. Many crazy things, i'd say the scariest was these 3 people i kept bumping into people who were normal people but at times they turned into these creatures who were humanoid in shape but made pretty much entirely out of fire with a small physical pressence in their hands and faces which seemed to be composed of smouldering ash. These people/creatures at no point threatened me and i was told by a lady in the dream that they would not hurt me as long as i remained friendly with them but i did see them kill a few other people in my dream in some pretty nasty ways, one of the fire people killed an old man by placing his fiery fist in front of the old mans stomach and then clenched his fist, i wondered what was happening as the old man screamed and then i saw a dark patch begin to appear in his abdomen then flames burst out of his stomach. I also at one point had like a glove puppet kind of thing stuck on my hand that was sentient and when i tried tearing it off all centipeded and teeth came out of a brown resing like substance that came from the part where my hand entered the glove puppet and they began to bite me. Hello Patience108 and thank you for your reply The astral projection part of the dream was very bizzare. While i was "awake" in the dream i had no concept of the fact i was in a coma, to me it was the real world, yet when i went to sleep there almost the second my eyes closed i was somewhere else in the city whilst my body was sleeping, yet when this happened in the dream i was aware i was asleep in the dream world but it was still my real world so i had no idea of the fact i was in a coma. There were a few occasions where i focused and "woke" myself up and then i was back wherever i had gone to sleep, sometimes however it seemed impossible to wake myself like this and i had to make my way back to where i was "sleeping" and wake myself up, that i can only describe as looking at your reflection then struggling to decide which one is the reflection, on other occasions i had to get someone else to wake me as i could not reach my body. An interesting note to this is the fact that when i awoke from my coma a few days later one of the nurses told me that at least 3 times i had awoken and sat up in bed when i should have still been out cold and they had to increse the dosages of whatever they had me on. To be honest i have not had many lucid dreams at all since my coma, if that is directly related to the coma or not i honestly have no idea. As i say i will hopefully expand on more of what i dreamt and please keep the questions up Keep dreaming the good dreams

[MaskedMan]

Also if i posted this thread in the wrong place please move it, it has been a while since i was here last lol

[Patience108]

Yes going over the dream will be feeling pretty strange I bet and the imigary sure is intense at times ~ it really could be good for you to work through though as you are and maybe gathering some sense of it at times and how/why those particular things were happening...you could then imagine the very weird scary bits again with your self realising you are dreaming and conversing with the DC's ...maybe ~ good luck with it anyway, you are very brave imo Why do you use that spooky avatar?

[dizzyuluru]

This is very interesting, and it makes you question whether there is another reality where we have no knowledge of this one. That's a real mindfuck, ain't it?

[MaskedMan]

Well a lot of things in the dream make sense in the sense of my body explaining what was happening to me whilst i was trapped in my dream for those 6 days, people stabbing me with syringes in the dream, the fact then when i went to "sleep" in the dream it was most often a hospital bed that i found to sleep in, at one point i was held down and a needle was shoved into my skull, which they inserted a probe into my skull at some point too in the real world. Also the strangest part for me is somethings were almost like omens or premonitions, maybe premonitions is the wrong word but certain parts of the dream have only made sense quite recently due to the stuff that has been happening in life and i think "wow, there was a metaphor for this in my dream!" Yes when i feel ready to face that place again i certainly am going to try going back there, as even though some of the people i met were monstrous in appearence they were actually really nice people. That picture is from a long time ago lol, i collect masks, i must have like 25 different ones now, i will update it with a more recent mask when i get the time

[MaskedMan]

YES! Because to me, it was like i had always been there and nothing about the crazy things seemed crazy, people walking up walls and along the cieling? never questioned it. I sometimes wonder wether i am in a coma now dreaming and if the place i "dreamt" of was actually real life. mindfucks all round for me but im working through it without going crazy lol.

[MaskedMan]

Continuing from where i left off. I came to this police station which was on a bridge across a huge river, it began to rain and i could see up ahead there was like a blockade/checkpoint. Instead of walking on up ahead to the checkpoint i went in to the police station, looked like an old fashioned kind of place, not modern and there was a lady sat at a desk writing, i asked her if i could pass the blockade at the end of the bridge and she told me to take a seat and someone would come and talk to me so i sat down on a wooden chair, i note that it was wooden because the detail was amazing lol, it creaked when i sat on it and there was smoke in the air like from a pipe. Im not sure how long i waited, it didnt seem long, in real terms maybe a few minutes and a police officer came through a door dressed in modern day UK police uniform. Old fashioned police station, modern day police. This officer took me upstairs, this is where the first injection happened, he stabbed me in the stomach with a syringe then told me i was under arrest for the dealing and use of drugs and any tests would show i had them in my system, also the upstairs of this police station was modern, downstairs old, upstairs modern, i was sat in a room with him, there was an electric fan cooling the room down though i had no feelings of cold or warmth as yet, there were also white shutter blinds on the windows. Basically the officer began to blackmail me, told me he could get me out and i had to do errands for him in the city or he would keep me in custody, so i agreed to do his errands whatever they were. So the way he got me out of the police station and past the checkpoint was he gave me a green card, the same size as a credit card, only it was green with nothing else on it but an image of a key, like a yale lock kind of key, not sure of the technical term for those. He then took me into a room where he then shoved me in to a coffin which had a dead body in it already, but the coffin was big, shape and size of a big fridge and it had a small window in the front on the lid, im not sure what he did to set the mechanism off but the "coffin" then began to freefall down some kind of shoot for quite a few stories, i only went up one flight of stairs but this coffin seemed to drop for about 7 floors untill it came out under the police station and dropped in to the river, i remember being incredibly scared at this point. The coffin floated to the bank of the river and i let myself out and left the dead body there with it. I did not need to pass through this particular checkpoint now but as i was to find out later the city was divided into many sections with a mechanical and automatic checkpoint at each entrance and exit and the key card thing would grant me movement through these. So i walked up the banking and it was still raining, quite heavily now and it was still night time. As i walked up the banking i realised i was barefoot but this seemed normal to me so i did not question it. As i got to the top i saw more empty city streets and again set off walking aimlessly but quite comfortably like i knew the area. At this point the only thought in my head was "I need to go home and feed my cats" and so i carried on walking untill eventually i did realise i was completely lost and had no idea where i was. Thank you for reading and bearing with me so far, i shall write more about how things progressed tomorrow hopefully.

[Gyalogos]

Thanx! Very interesting and exciting. I am waiting for the sequel. I am on weed. I know, coming down from weed is compared with coming down from coffe. Alcohol is different. In this club is the heroin too. All my respects! Littlebit jealous, and feeling pathetic with my weed problems. It is even more frustrating, that I know from multiple experiences, that the whole thing is just a switch in my head. When I am visiting to places where my chances to find a dealer is zero...I stop smoking, like nothing happend. I even dont get nervous or grumpy. And here comes the paradox sh*t: Because I know, how easy it is to come down from the green, it becomes harder to do it ?!?! In the last weeks I have a growing motivation to stop. Maybe you are here for me a sort of catalyzator. Lucid dreaming, and lucid living is the best. I can be really happy just when I am aware, self-aware...lucid. ps. I think this "reality" is a dream. But, thats beyond this post...

[MaskedMan]

Hello Gyalogos and thank you for your words. I feel your pain with addiction. Youve made the first most important step though, if you believe your substance use is an issue you have recognised it. I am all for indulgence but when indulgence comes at the cost of your physical, mental and emotional health then it is no longer indulgence, it is self destruction. I had a weed problem as well as various other drug addictions also and even a gambling problem, personally i think the most difficult part is breaking the habit cycle, i always used to feel like i was missing something, but in actual fact without it i have gained something, i gained myself back. There are many support groups out there and mutual aid groups consisting of people like us that experience addiction, the key is finding the one that works for you, i was dead against Alcoholics Anonymous because of their rhetoric, i do not believe we are powerless and i dislike when people give away the credit for their own blood sweat and tears and hard work to something i dont believe is there but i wont criticise them too much as they help some people and thats the important thing. There will be support groups out there that will work for you and are very useful, what helped me was being part of an alcohol recovery community and attending SMART meetings (Self managment and Recovery Training) But you are not alone brother and there are people out there like us with that same lived experience who make all the difference, if you ever want any advice on helpful groups and other things to try do not hesistate to message me my friend, i am active in the addiction recovery community now as a volunteer helping others get their life back. I think this reality is a very strange thing and i do not believe it is beyond this post I would love to hear more

[MaskedMan]

So carrying on. The main though in my mind was not "where am i? or "where is this place?" but it was "I need to get home to feed my cats!" I walked for what felt like hours upon hours between dark empty buildings and empty streets wet with rain before i came upon another of these mechanical checkpoints. I placed the green card with the key emblazoned on it up to a sensor and a door slid open and i stepped in before the door closed behind me. Then another door opened and i stepped out and saw people walking dark streets and again all the buildings looked dark and empty. I eventually came to a pub and entered and it was full of people, strange looking people, people whose faces opened up where faces shouldnt open up, almost something like the alien predator in the films but human looking in skin and features. I recognised the lady behind the bar as the landlady of a pub i used to frequent in reality before i was in a coma. I was making small talk and bought a drink though i dont remember money changing hands. There was a man with legs as thick and wide as tree trunks with a mishaped trapezoid shaped head gaurding a door, for reasons unknown i tried to get past him and through the door but i could not move him. I then remember a girl whose face lacked eyes and where her eyes should have been there was only flesh and bone, not even sunken sockets where eyes should have been, just flesh and bone and her mouth was perfectly round but full of sharp pointy teeth, she was quite a friendly girl, i do not remember our conversation but i remember she rubbed vaseline onto my lips before kissing me. Then 3 people entered the pub, 2 men and a woman, they were very quiet, they sat in a corner drinking and somehow they became very angry, very very angry. Before i knew it all three have them had become made of fire, still human in shape but made 90% out of fire except for hands and face which were smouldering ash. I panicked but the lady from behind the bar who was someone i knew in reality assured me they would not harm me, i was still scared though as they began to set the place on fire, i remember one of them slowly walked up to an old man and placed his hand in front of his belly before clenching his fist, as he clenched his fist i saw a dark damp patch appear on the old mans back before a huge flaming hole took place there and the old man dropped dead. Even though the lady behind the bar assured me i had nothing to fear i still wanted to leave, a police officer entered the building, saw what was happening then tried to escape himself but somehow he got trapped in a glass cube, and the fire people heated up the air inside the glass cube like an oven and cooked him alive. Despite the ladies assurances i wanted to leave and run so leave and run is what i did. I ran through the streets barefoot in the rain untill i felt safe then stopped, like it was a normal thing to do without any questioning i found some dry place in a doorway and went to sleep, the second my eyes closed i opened them but i was not where i had laid down, i was back outside the pub but this time i felt safe even though it was all burning as i knew i was asleep and my body was elsewhere and i was like a ghost, invulnerable to any harm. I entered the pub again and as i did so i saw the fire people create a door/portal in the wall, the door/portal looked like it had no depth, just like a shadow on the wall but solid black, they entered it and left. I began talking to the lady behind the bar and told her i was really asleep somewhere else and she said "i know" she then introduced me to someone without a name. It was just a head, no body, just a head and i began talking to him, it would turn out later that he was a decent friend throughout this dream but also at times a very scary person who sometimes felt like a threat. For some reason he convinced me to put him on my hand like a glove puppet which i did, but then shortly after i realised i could not remove him and i did not want him on my hand, as i began to pull at him and try to remove him his neck which was around my wrist began to tear and a brown resin like powder began to pour out but also out of the powder came centipedes and teeth that began to bight at me and i was screaming and shouting and trying to rip the head off of my hand but i could not remove him, i began banging my hand and his head on the walls and the bar and the tables and began smashing windows with him trying to gett him off me then the lady behind the bar said to me "Wake up Ash, just wake up!" so i closed my eyes and focused hard and i began to see a series of red dots and numbers and gibberish words, and i focused and the numbers became like binary flashing red in the darkness and then i opened my eyes and i was back in the shop doorway where i had laid down to sleep. Almost immediately after the police officer from earlier who i had met at the police station walked by and came to me and said "got work for you to do" Thank you for all who are reading this, its helping me analyse and come to terms with the experience through writing as much of it out as i can remember. I shall continue on what happened next as soon as i next get the time.

[Gyalogos]

Thank you! I am convinced, that what I am now experiencing is a "end game". The end and agony of being 25 years pothead (not totally constantly, because life sometimes placed me in weedfree situations). I think the great problem is when peoples put their happiness and success in the future. I will be sober, I will be happy...I AM. I am clean, and I am happy, without straining and without being theatrical and trying to trick myself. The only reality is the momentum. If I mean it seriously, that I am clean, than my addiction looks crazy, because that is not me. Back to the momentum. After long-long years interested in mystic things. No direct occultism, no direct religion, no todays spiritual-esoteric dung. Think more something like methaphysical phylosophie, and syncretism. All that thousands of pages of bla-bla-bla condenses to one essence: I am, here and now. The momentum. And it is a wall. From here you are leaving the objective world, and enter a world, from where you cant take your experiences to the laboratory, and you can not share that with the other people (just with indirect paraphrase). If I say, that the aware momentum is the door to the path that is leading to God (oneness, happiness, Nirvana, waking, reality...choose one), it is not a metaphore. Where I am is not a question of my body. If I am sitting in the bus station, and in my head I am in my enemies house to do a juicy fantasy revenge, than I am not in the bus station. If you look at a crowd, you see zombies. Bio suits, sitting, walking, working, on automat, without the "driver". I am doing the same. If somebody really wants to grow in quality, in power, in self-knowledge, self-mastery, and so on...needs to practice self-awareness. Practice, I mean, to put in in the absolute priority (it is logical, because all other things will improve with self-awareness), and practice it like the people who practice karate, violin playing, dancing, foreign language...ecetera. When you wake at morning (born) your aim is to be more here and now and aware, and when you go to sleep at night (dead), you ask yourself how aware you was at daytime. Every person has a different story, and different task. If you want to know your task, it is there in the momentum. You have it, just there is needed more awareness and silence in the head, to see it, hear it. There are so many gurus and spiritual teachers. I think "believing" is something dangerous. If peoples ask me for a good, modern, simple to understand book, I always say, that most of the books in the theme mindfulness are more or less good. The problem is that most of the peoples using this books, like drugs. Drinking the words from the book, and feeling some narcotic-happiness until they read it. When it is over, they reach for the next book. All the important information you can put in one-two sentences. 99,99% of the humans are never reach to the real action. Here is a good book: Eckhart Tolle: The Power of Now. Millions sold, and millions speaking about it, but the real effect is minimal, because most of us wants to "break the magic" painless, and in comfort. I make now a end. I think it will be enough suffering for you to read my fantastic english for so long. Summary: What I am doing: Noticing, when I am not here, when my awareness is supressed and drowned in tons of stupid uncontrolled thoughts (especially the dark ones). When I want something, I know that I have it, and the realization is slowed down with te will-need-must. Mark 11:24 "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Patience, attention, mindfulness. Some good goal's in life, but not because if I reach them I will be happier. No, no, no. I need the aim, to have a road where I can practice my creating skills, and become every time a littlebit more awaken. Wish you the best. Have a nice day!