Recently, in Scientific American, science writer Rachel Nuwer covered the attempt to account for near-death experiences (NDEs) by making them a subset of hallucinogenic (drug-based) experiences. They are now seen as worthy of study:

A growing number of scholars now accept NDEs as a unique mental state that can offer novel insights into the nature of consciousness. “Now, clearly, we don’t question anymore the reality of near-death experiences,” says Charlotte Martial, a neuroscientist at the University of Liège in Belgium. “People who report an experience really did experience something.”

RACHEL NUWER, “LIFTING THE VEIL ON NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES,” SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, MAY 14, 2024

Thus there is an effort underway to fully naturalize them — that is, to make them something that just happens to the traumatized brain, akin to taking hallucinogens.

Updated Picture of Death

The study of near-death experiences over the last fifty years has given us, as Nuwer notes, an updated picture of death. At one time, medics assumed that consciousness ceases when the heart stops beating. In reality, different elements of the body die over minutes, hours, or even days. Better understanding could, of course, could lead to newer resuscitation techniques.

Grossman School of Medicine pulmonologist Sam Parnia, who researches NDEs, offers some thoughts as to what is happening physically that enables a near-death experience:

When someone starts dying, Parnia says, the brain becomes dysfunctional. Some actions are immediately lost, such as brain stem reflexes, but others that are normally suppressed to optimize performance for ordinary life suddenly become disinhibited because the brain’s natural braking systems are no longer working. As a result, “your entire consciousness comes to the fore,” Parnia says. The purpose of this change, he suggests, is to prepare the person “for a new reality” — the transition from life to death, a condition in which, Parnia believes, consciousness endures.

 NUWER, “LIFTING THE VEIL”

NDEs as Subset of Drug Trips?

Nuwer looks at comparisons between near-death experiences and hallucinogenic experiences:

An easier approach to studying NDEs is via safe proxies such as hypnosis, induced fainting and psychedelic drugs. None of these methods produce true NDEs, but the states they trigger may have some overlap with the dying brain. In 2018 Timmermann, Martial and their colleagues published a study comparing NDEs with the effects of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a mind-altering component of ayahuasca, a South American plant-derived psychedelic brew. Trace amounts of DMT also occur endogenously in humans. “There’s speculation that that’s somehow underlying NDEs, but the data are very elementary,” Timmermann says. 

NUWER, “LIFTING THE VEIL

She has a special interest in this area because she is the author of I Feel Love (Bloomsbury 2023), which the publisher describes as “The unlikely story of how the psychedelic drug MDMA emerged from the shadows to the forefront of a medical revolution — and the potential it may hold to help us thrive.”

MDMA, called “Ecstasy” or “Molly” on the street, is “a synthetic, psychoactive drug with a chemical structure similar to the stimulant methamphetamine and the hallucinogen mescaline.” (Drugs.com) It’s illegal to date but, as noted at Technology Review in June, “The FDA is poised to approve the notorious party drug as a therapy.” 

That’s a significant proposed change in policy when drug overdose deaths are on the rise in the United States. Data on the health risks of ecstasy specifically are hard to come by. In 2020, researchers noted that it was “not a safe substance” though not in the same danger league as heroin.

But Are NDEs Really Like Psychedelic Trips?

Leeds Beckett University psychologist Steve Taylor points to some key differences at The Conversation:

Participants described both types of experience as spiritual or mystical, featuring a sense of oneness, transcendence, sacredness and awe. These elements were stronger in psychedelic experiences. However, people who had NDEs were more likely to report the event as “the single most meaningful, spiritually significant, insightful and challenging experience of their lives.”

NDEs and psychedelic experiences have some very different characteristics. Common elements of NDEs include travelling through darkness towards a light (or a transcendent place), reaching a border or point of no return, encountering deceased relatives or a life review. But these don’t feature in psychedelic trips.

So it might seem strange that they have similar transformative effects.

STEVE TAYLOR, “PSYCHEDELIC DRUGS CAN BE ALMOST AS LIFE ALTERING AS NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES,” THE CONVERSATION, SEPTEMBER 7, 2022

But do NDEs and drug trips have “similar transformative effects”? Reading further, we learn,

NDEs involve a close encounter with death, which makes us aware of the preciousness of life. Many people who have NDEs feel that they actually have died for a short time. This is probably why the study found that NDEs were more transformational than psychedelic experiences.

TAYLOR, “ALMOST AS LIFE ALTERING”

Generally, people who have NDEs do not simply “feel” that they are dying; they are in states of clinical death. That aside, Taylor notes,

Although NDEs only last for a few minutes (at the most), they almost always have a transformational effect (psychedelic experiences usually last much longer, up to several hours). People undergo a major shift in perspective and values.

They become less materialistic and more altruistic. They feel more connected to nature, with more love and compassion for others. They have a heightened sense of beauty, and often relish solitude and inactivity in a way that they had never done before.

There have been many attempts to rationalise NDEs as a hallucination caused by unusual brain activity, but to date no satisfactory explanation has emerged. In my view, the fact that the experiences almost always bring a powerful and permanent transformation strongly suggests that they are not a hallucination. Surely they wouldn’t have such a powerful effect if they were illusions.

TAYLOR, “ALMOST AS LIFE ALTERING”

So Taylor, the author of Extraordinary Awakenings (New World Library 2021), doesn’t seem on board with the approach to NDEs that classes them with drug trips. But that’s probably the approach that a number of science publications will continue to take. Stay tuned.

Cross-posted at Mind Matters News.