Sebastian Junger’s Near-Death Experience After a Brain Aneurysm

When I got reached out to about you was that you had gotten through a near-death experience and I really didn't want to read into it at all, I just wanted to ask you about it. So something happened, you had an aneurysm that burst inside internally, is that what it is? Yeah, so I mean the short, you know, the medical description is I had an undiagnosed aneurysm, which is a ballooning of an artery at a weak spot, like so I mean arteries can dilate to get more blood flow, but an aneurysm is like one specific spot that for one reason or another is weak and it starts to sort of give way and it'll bubble outwards and as that bubble grows bigger, and this takes decades, it's a very slow process, right? I have a, basically I have a ligament in the wrong place and that set in motion a sort of vascular problem that resulted in an aneurysm and they don't hurt, there's no way to diagnose them, I mean unless you scan someone's abdomen, I've always been super healthy and so throughout my life I just never had any reason for an abdominal scan, right? I'm a fit healthy male, right? A fit healthy person and so I just never needed that look inside me, so no one saw the aneurysm growing, right? And so at some point the artery wall gets stretched so far that it will rupture, it'll just burst and now you have an arterial bleed, so you know what that, you know if someone shoots you in the femoral or stabs you in the abdomen and you have an arterial bleed, you know your life is measured in minutes or whatever or hours and if someone does you the favor of stabbing you in the abdomen and severing your pancreatic artery, which is the artery that ruptured on me, you know it's a little artery the thickness of a number two pencil, it's not a big deal but if you're, it's arterial blood, right? I mean you don't stop that shit, you're gonna die, right? And so if someone just like stabbed you in the abdomen, you rush to the hospital, the doc is no problem, the doc, if you're still alive they'll transfuse you, the doctors know exactly where to sort of put their finger to plug the leak, it's no problem. The problem with an internal hemorrhage, an abdominal hemorrhage, is the doctors have no idea where it is and your abdomen is basically a big bowl of spaghetti, right? I mean, right? And it's filling up with blood. And they have to find where it's leaking. Yeah, because the blood, you know if you're stabbed, the blood's going out of your body onto the kitchen floor. With an internal hemorrhage it all stays in your abdomen. So I, it happened, we were in a, it was during COVID and we were in a remote area, an old house that we own at the end of a dead-end dirt road in Massachusetts. And it's so remote there's no cell phone service, the phone lines are old and they short out when it rains. And we had, my wife and I had a little bit of babysitting at the time, a three-year-old and a six-month-old. We had a little baby, a little bit of babysitting from the teenage girls that lived down the road that we knew the family and so they came over to give us a few hours. And my wife and I went out to this cabin that's even deeper in the woods and, you know, paradise basically, right? And so we're out there and in mid-sentence I felt this sort of pain in my abdomen like, ooh, what was that? Right? Like not kidney stone pain, but worse than indigestion, right? And so I sort of twisted and turned to see if I could work it out, you know, and then nothing helped. And then I, and then I finally stood up. So I mean, I can walk it out. And as soon as I stood up, the floor just reeled away from me and I almost fell over. But what was happening is my blood pressure was just like tanking because I was losing all my blood into my abdomen and my body hadn't compensated yet. So I was just like, like, like my head was reeling, right? So I sat back down and I said, was something I never thought I'd ever have reason to say to my wife. I said, um, something's wrong. I'm going to need help. Right. And you don't want to ever have to say those words. Right. And you're fit. I'm fit. It never crossed my mind that I would ever have to say that unless someone shoots me or something. Right. Like, but not in my life. I stopped war reporting. I, you know, I gave all that gamble, you know, gambling with your life. I gave it all up. I had a family. We're in this beautiful spot. Like, are you kidding? It can come after you here too. Right. Who knew? Right. So, um, she dragged me through the woods, you know, I have my arm around her shoulder. I'm sort of like a stumbling drunk. Right. And she started dragging me through the woods and she gets me to the car and, um, puts me in the passenger seat of the car. And, um, and you know, we're a one hour transport to the hospital. Right. And I'm bleeding. I'm losing a pint of blood every 10 or 15 minutes. You know, my wife didn't know this and thank God I didn't either, but I was literally a human hourglass and she ran, she put me in the passenger seat of the car and I'm lying there. Now I'm starting to go blind. Right. Which is one of the things that happens when you lose too much blood is you go, you go blind. She ran into the house, the sort of electric white just took over the world. And that's all I could see. Electric white. That's the light. If you bleed out, that's the last thing you'll see. And, um, and then darkness, which is what I finally got to was the darkness. But, um, so she ran into the house, told the girls, the teenage girls, one of them ran out, the phone line didn't work, but the girl, one of them was able to go one bar of signal, like in one spot on the driveway, like one bar, and she called the ambulance and the ambulance guys came and, um, you go into something called compensatory shock if you're bleeding out and the body senses in its, in its miraculous way, it senses that, um, you know, there's a five alarm fire going on here and we got to tighten our, tighten our game. Right. So it's shut, literally shuts down vascular, like blood flow to parts of the body. You don't need like your legs and your arms, your skin. And it sort of hoards the blood in your chest, your abdomen, your chest and your brain around your heart. Right. You know, those things go, you're dead. So it collects the blood around there and keeps it there through muscular tension. Right. And you don't know you're doing this, but what happens is your blood pressure goes back up and suddenly you're sort of back in the world. And I was no longer going in and out of consciousness. I was suddenly, I could see again, the ambulance guys get there and they're like, how are you doing? I'm like, well, you know, belly pain, but I don't want to be a complainer here. I'm feeling a little better, you know, maybe blah, blah, blah. My wife, and this is why there's a famous statistic, married men live longer. My wife is like, you know what? Because they were going to leave me. They were like, oh, it's a hot day. Drink some water. You probably just dehydrated. Oh shit. Yeah. My wife is like, no, he's going to the hospital. I watched him. He was, he was in and out of consciousness. He, he couldn't stand up. He was going blind. Like what's it take guys, what's it take to get a guy to the emergency room? So anyway, they took me and my body stayed in compensatory shock for that hour that it took. And, um, but I was losing blood, losing blood, losing blood. And then I got to the hospital and my body couldn't hold compensatory shock anymore. And I went straight into end stage hemorrhagic shock, which is you're dead in 10 or 15 minutes. Right. And I went off a fucking cliff right as we got to the hospital. And I, they estimate my blood pressure was 60 over 40, which is like rock bottom. I, they estimate I lost like two thirds of my blood. If you lose more than two thirds, even if they transfuse you and fill top you off with, you know, full compliment of blood, they pump it into you. If you lose that much blood, there's complications that happen with coagulants and all kinds of things like that, that will kill you. So you can, people can die of blood loss with all, with a full compliment of blood that they've gotten from transfusions just because this chemical process gets initiated and they can't reverse it. Right. And that starts to happen when you've lost two thirds of your blood, which is right where I was at. Right. 10 minutes later, I'd have been dead. And, um, so, they rushed me into the trauma bay and, um, the doctors knew immediately what was going on. And, uh, they, one doctor had this sort of large gauge needle and he, and he started and she asked my permission. I had no idea I was dying. Right. And he asked my permission to stick it through my neck into my jugular, which didn't look like a lot of fun. And I was like, really, is this, is this totally necessary? Like, do we really need to do this? It was like, why? In case there's an emergency. And he was like, no, this is the emergency. Like, I had no idea. Right. I'm, I'm 10 minutes from dead. I have no idea I'm dying. Zero. Thank God. Cause I would have been terrified. And I would have been thinking of my, my, my family. And I would, you know, I mean, please, you know, like, yeah, you don't want that. Right. And, um, so he said, this is the emergency. But I was like, well, if you say so, go ahead, have at it. Right. So while he's working on prepping my neck, um, uh, and it did actually didn't hurt at all. Right. So if you ever have to have this done, don't worry about it. But, um, they, uh, while I'm lying there and he's sort of working on my neck, getting, it took long. It felt like it took longer than it probably actually did. But, um, while I'm there all of a sudden, and I have to stop and say, I'm an atheist. I'm a lifelong atheist. I'm a rationalist. I'm not spiritual. I'm not a mystic. I'm not woo woo. I like, I'm nothing. Right. And my dad was an atheist and a physicist. I have to say all this because of what's coming and I'm still an atheist by the way. But so all of a sudden I sensed below me and to my left, this black pit opened up this black abyss, like this infinite black void. And I was getting pulled into it. And it's not like darkness had taken over the world. The world was here. I could see the doctors. I could see, I was talking to them, right? I'm, here I am. The darkness was contained in this hole that was underneath, underneath me. And I was getting pulled into it. Right. I didn't know I was dying, but I had this like this instincts of like a wounded animal. Like if I go into the pit, the infinitely dark pit, I'm not coming out. Right. Like I just sensed like, don't go in there because you're not coming back. And I started to panic because I felt myself getting drawn in. Right. And then my father, my dead father appeared above me and to my left. Now there's a whole body of inquiry of NDEs, near death experiences. And I didn't know anything about this stuff. Right. I didn't know anything about it. It didn't interest me. I'm not culturally prepped for anything like that. I'm not Christian. I didn't see angels. Like I'm just, I'm a zero in that regard. Right. There's my dead father above me. Right. He'd been dead eight years. I love him. But I was not happy to see him. Right. I was like, I was shocked. I mean, dad, what are you doing here? Like, and there he was. And he was, and he communicated to me. And so what I saw, see, isn't quite the right verb, but I don't know if there doesn't exist the right verb. I sensed slash saw him and it was his essence, his energy, his presence. Right. It's not like I see you. Right. It's like, oh, there he is. Right. It wasn't with that clarity. In some ways it was with a deeper clarity because it was his essence. Right. And there he was, his presence was right there. And above me and to my left, it was like quite specific. And he communicated to me again, not with words, but with some manner that I understood that I can't quite explain what it was, but basically the idea was, you don't have to fight it. You can come with me. I'll take care of you. It's okay. It's okay. Don't be scared. Right. I'll take care of you. I was horrified. I was appalled. I was offended. I was like, you're dead. Why would I want to go with you? You're dead. You're the opposite of what I am. Why would, why would I possibly want to go with you and be dead with you? Because I'm alive with my family right now. Like, I'm not going anywhere with you. Like, get out of here. And I said to the doctor, you have to hurry. I'm going right now. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew I was sort of outbound. And once that happened, I was, there's no inbounds. But I sensed that. I said, you got to hurry. You're losing me right now. So what'd they do? Well, they transfused me. They stabilized me with three units of blood. And eventually I needed 10 units, which is a full compliment of blood. Like, and so let me just pause for a moment and say, please donate blood. Like everybody who's listening, I'm alive. My daughters have a father because 10 people who I'll never know donated their blood. And when you donate blood, you are literally allowing another person to live. And one day you might live because someone else donated blood and it's, you know, doctors can't manufacture that shit. Like if you donate blood, it takes an hour, it doesn't hurt. And your body will replace it in a couple of weeks. It's the ultimate free lunch. I think it's quicker than a couple of weeks. I think it's pretty quick. It's pretty quick. Yeah. It, um, yeah. I mean, to get up to a hundred percent, it's, I think it's a little long, but whatever it doesn't, it doesn't matter. Right. It's like, we're talking about human life here. And if you want to be part of something greater than yourself, it's blah, blah, blah, all these things that we all kind of want. Like, how do I participate? You know, like nobody needs me. I'm not part of anything. I feel lonely. Give blood, man. Then you'll be part of something amazing. Right. And you might, so I give blood regularly. So at any rate, there's my pitch. But, um, so they, they, they, they stuffed some blood in me through my jugular. I stabilized and they brought me to the interventional, the cath lab, the interventional radiology suite. And what interventional radiology is, it's a freaking miracle, right? Like 20 years ago, I'd have been dead.