Hey Reddit. Any of you with near death experiences: Did you forsee it happening? How did you get out of it? How did it change your life moving forward?

I'm not sure this is as near death as you might want it to be, but it seemed near death to me so here we go...

It was a weekend and I was meeting friends for breakfast -- perfectly sober mind you. I drove my car on a route I was very familiar with, the sort that's part of your daily routine and you can drive pretty much on autopilot.

Problem was that it'd been raining the whole morning, and I was coming up on the part of the road that pretty much takes a 90 degree right turn at a downhill angle. Typically I head into this turn at around 40 mph, tap the break to take her down to 30ish and sail through. Which is exactly what I was doing. Autopilot.

But the roads were wet -- I tapped the break and nothing happened. Slammed the break, and nothing happened. Spun the wheel. Nada. The turn loomed ahead but my car wasn't slowing down or changing direction. Ahead of me was a concrete barrier guaranteeing a point B in my near future.

Those few powerless seconds frankly seemed like an eternity. I didn't have an "it all happened so fast" kind of rush. It was the opposite of quick, and I could see how things were going to go down in what felt like slow motion.

But here's where my experience differs from a lot of people. You know what flashed through my mind as I saw my car careen directly into the concrete barrier? Not a damned thing. Not my family. Not my friends. Not my first love, or even the first time I'd made love. Nothing. No questions about God, my place in the universe, or what I'd be missing out on by dying or have to survive by living.

Obviously things worked out okay -- I'm here typing this message. The car was completely totaled but the airbags did their job and the concrete, metal and rubber barrier ended up being somewhat more forgiving than I could have guessed.

I'm fine. But I have to admit I drank myself a bit silly the next few nights thinking about how calmly I had been ready to accept death and how little it would have bothered me at that time just to go.

/r/AskReddit Thread