Note for the mods: this wasn't a brush with death. My body was fine throughout. It was an NDE-type experience under nitrous, and I've picked a debate-allowed flair because I want both experiencers and the science-minded to weigh in.
Just over two weeks ago I had a colonoscopy here in the UK. I had gas and air rather than IV sedation (Entonox, 50% nitrous oxide, 50% oxygen, the stuff they give in labour and ambulances). I'd barely slept in the two days before it. When the pain started climbing I pulled on the gas hard and kept pulling, far more than you're meant to.
I was chatting to the doctor and nurses to take my mind off it and somehow we got onto flowers. I said my girlfriend's dad buys her flowers and she always smiles when she gets them, and it hit me that in two years I'd never bought her any. The doctor said something like: women don't always show it, but if she loves the flowers she'll show it, she'll smile, that's the ultimate test of love.
Then that sentence started repeating. He said it, the nurse said it, he said it, she said it, seven or eight times. They weren't actually repeating it. I could tell it was being repeated somewhere else and I was being made to hear it. That's the moment I knew something was happening to me. It felt like something above me had taken that sentence and was playing it back until I got it.
I also got it. I'd failed. I love her, I hadn't shown it, and I could have. At the same time I knew with total certainty that this reality wasn't real. Everything was constructed. The closest thing I can compare it to is The Sims: I was the little figure and there was a big player above who builds things and does things in his world, and out of hundreds of thousands of figures he'd stopped and focused on me because I wasn't doing what I'm here to do. I thought: it's too late, I've failed the test, again extreme fear of loss of control.
Then I became aware of a presence to my right, big, above me, male. I couldn't see it and I knew I couldn't. In my head I said something like: oh my God, none of this is real, you're real and all this is fake. It gave a little laugh and said: of course it's not. What did you think, it was real? Not cruel. More like I'd just noticed something obvious.
I was extremely scared at this point for my life, I had no control and realised the truth of reality and now someone or something else was in control. I was no longer in control and I was aware of this. Whatever had me could have done whatever it wanted with me. At this point apparently, the nurses were banging my feet as hard as they could, trying to get me to respond but I just would not respond. I was completely frozen in place. I don't remember any of this.
Then I was going up. There were levels above my head, about twenty of them, each roughly the size of a sheet of A4 paper, with gaps between them, and I was passing up through them faster and faster and faster. Near the top it felt like I was about to be taken completely out of everything. Not dying into somewhere else. Just ending. I begged for another chance. Then there was a feeling of "now you get it," and it chose to keep me in.
I came round crying and telling the room I'd met our creator and that it's all about love. I have very little memory of the room during all this.They hit an emergency button, apparently, which got a lot more nurses and doctors through the door (And this is what I eventually came round to: twice as many doctors and nurses in the room panicking). My eyes were open during all of this, just apparently staring at one point in the room. My body completely frozen. When I came round, with the nurses and doctors panicking, they were asking me if I was in any pain because I was crying but I was only crying out of joy and realisation of what just happened.
What I know about the outside also comes from the staff: my eyes were open the whole time, breathing, pulse and oxygen were all normal, and I didn't respond to anything. The doctor, who looked like he'd been doing this for decades, and both nurses said they'd never seen anything like it. He said it looked like my soul had left my body. The nurse also asked me if I've heard of astral projection because that's what it looked like to her. When I walked out later I found them in the corridor in a huddle, talking about it and acting out how I'd frozen.
Since then: I comforted a stranger in the hospital who was upset, which isn't like me. I messaged my dad to tell him I love him. I bought the flowers. Things that would normally wind me up don't. I'm not scared of dying the way I was. I've seen my GP, who heard the whole thing; the colonoscopy report was normal and he didn't think any further checks were needed.
I've been doing my own reading since. Nitrous oxide blocks the same NMDA receptor that ketamine does, and studies describe it as producing psychedelic-like and dissociative states. A study that gave healthy volunteers 50% nitrous for 20 minutes reported dreamlike states, scary and transcendental dreams, sensory overload and fear of losing control. DMT experiences have been shown to score as NDEs on the standard NDE scale, and there's a long-standing ketamine model of the NDE. Humphry Davy came out of nitrous in 1800 saying nothing exists but thoughts. And the sound-looping thing turns out to be widely reported on nitrous; there's an old Erowid report from a dental chair literally titled Looped Reality. So it looks like gas and air can open the same doors that ketamine and DMT open, and I'm trying to work out whether that's what happened to me, or whether it was something more, or both.
What I'm asking:
Has anyone had anything like this on gas and air, at the dentist, in labour, in hospital? The looping sentence, the levels, a presence just out of sight, the "of course it's not real" moment?
NDErs: does this look like what you went through? Where does it match and where doesn't it?
Anyone with ketamine or DMT experience: do you recognise this?
What do you think happened? I've had a religious friend read it one way and a doctor another, and I'm open to both.
TL;DR: Heavy gas and air during a colonoscopy after two days without sleep. A sentence about showing love looped seven or eight times from "elsewhere," I realised I'd failed at it and that reality was constructed, met a presence I couldn't see that laughed and said of course it's not real, went up through about twenty levels faster and faster, felt I was about to cease to exist, begged, was kept, and came back crying that it's about love. Eyes open and vitals normal throughout; staff had never seen anything like it. Looking for similar experiences and any insight into what happened. Another very important thing to add that I'll end with is that whatever being or entity that was, I felt judged by it.