There are certain aspects of this story that started way before my enlightening experience. When I was 14, I started to get chronic anxiety and panic attacks. Absolutely terrifying, feeling of impending doom hanging over me every day.

At this time my sympathetic nervous system decided to turn on for good. I started taking anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication. Not to mention my home life was completely chaotic in more ways than one. By the time I was 20 I had hurt my back severely when I fell after having an appendectomy. My crooked doctor at the time (who is no longer allowed to practice medicine) would give me any opiate or benzo I wanted and as many as I wanted. My addiction started to take hold with an astonishing ability to destroy any sense of self I had left.

  A year later I met my boyfriend, who I am back with now. We love each other very much and he got to witness all the beautiful disasters that come along with having an addict for a girlfriend who is constantly in fight or flight mode. On average my heart rate would be around 130bpm. From the time I woke up till I went to bed. My subconscious was anything but sound. In my dream realm I was completely out of control and I would wake up in a panic from my dreams. Throughout the next, or last, 7 years of my life I continued to collect fears and phobias. Tim, my boyfriend, got to witness my self-sabotage even though I was doing my absolute best to be level, which I clearly wasn't.

  Something of importance: My mother and I were the closest that any mother and daughter could get. Very much a parasitic symbiotic relationship with her feeding off of me. She had her own addiction problems my entire life and we became drug buddies when I was a teenager. I would have horrible panic and fear that would manifest if I said or even thought of her dying or not being around for me. We had a suicide pact since I was 13, but I'm sure we wanted to kill each other more than ourselves most of the time. I would try to stay drug-free and she would go out of her way to bring me what I was trying to stay away from. She knew I wanted to change but she didn't want to lose her possession. As bad as she was for me, I could not escape. Not so much physical but in the mental grip she had tightened around my throat over the years. My boyfriend would tell me in the nicest way possible to run and run as far away from her as I could. I tried and failed miserably multiple times.

  Struggling with a deep depression and an insanely high level of anxiety in February of 2014, I woke up one morning unable to breath and coughing up blood. I drove myself to the hospital and taking one look at me they rushed me into the ER. I was diagnosed with walking pneumonia in my left lung and two pulmonary embolisms. My d-dimer test showed that my blood was 6 times thicker than what it should be. Being on pain killers for so long, at this time I was taking 5 NORCO 10/325s a day and 3mgs of klonopin, the doctors were barely able to control my pain because of my tolerance. I was in the hospital for almost 2 weeks. They put me on blood thinners and told me I had to make some changes. Which, at the time, I took seriously. Even though they told me I had escaped death, the changes I would begin to make would hardly scratch the surface and not even come near to the origin of what really needed to happen.

  Once again death came knocking in the form of a heart attack and cardiomyopathy in January of 2016. Like with the embolisms I woke up one morning unable to breathe or even sit myself up. My lungs were filled with fluid, and my hands were swollen beyond belief. Driving myself to the hospital again with an eerie sense of deja vu. Arriving they took me straight back to the ER again, ran tests and told me I had a 50/50 chance that I would need a heart transplant if it didn't clear up on its own. In the hospital for a week. Doctors sent me home on 3 different heart medications. I had to do a repeat of the year before with the superficial changes to come. Only this time my intake for opiates increased even higher, as well as my anxiety.

  October of 2016, I began a hard-core program in AA and going back to church to hopefully contribute to the dissipation of my favorite pill. It was extremely difficult but I had complete faith. Fighter, always been one, but fighting with yourself constantly all day is harder than one might think. When it comes to addiction, that is a subject I am extremely familiar with considering both my parents were addicted to opiates and my mom turned to meth later. The obsession became so prevalent that I couldn't do really anything other than think about taking a pill. My anxiety soaring at this time. By December my relationship with my mom and Tim started to rapidly decline and another lugubrious Christmas came and went.

  January 2017 still trying to maintain a no-opiate lifestyle my boyfriend and I broke up. I was in a state of unbelievablility and was beginning to drug seek. Unbeknownst to me, my mother had met a charming young, clean cut guy at the bank and thought, "oh, what a good guy you would be for my daughter." Even though she has the worst ability to judge a person’s character, she gave him my number. I was appalled but not surprised at what she had done. By the end of January, we were talking and met for the first time. He was a decent enough guy I guessed. Then my pivotal moment, the question that would lead me on the path to my death and rebirth. "Do you know where I could get some NORCOs?" Without hesitation he pulled a huge prescription bottle from the center console full of NORCOs. My journey into hell, the big leagues, had surfaced.

  Between the months of February and June, I have very few solid memories. The Chernobyl run-away-train-affect had taken over. Everyone around me was waiting for the call that I had overdosed. I could not feel happiness. All there was was a constant fight going on in my head and suffering. Complete, all around, mental and spiritual agony. I continued to go to church and pray since that was the only way to get close to a glimmer of hope that things might change. June 1^st, I lost control of my car hitting a parked car and flipping mine onto its side in the middle of the street. The firefighters had to cut the roof off to get me out. I went to the hospital with a neck injury and went home the following day.

  This is where I start to lose the ability to explain what was happening to me and how I had absolutely no control over what was coming my way. Tim came over to my house on the 4th of June and he said you are going to die. I knew it. When it comes to getting clean an addict will do almost anything to not feel the sickness of the opiate detox crawling up your spine. I have done it many times and avoided it many times. Something was different though. As if my NDE started here, at this point in time. Even though I was on a fatally high number of opiates and benzos (15 NORCO 10/325, 10 percocet 10/325,4 8mg strips of suboxone, 6mgs of klonopin, 6mgs of Xanax a day), it didn't matter. When Tim came to take me to detox, I couldn't fight. Some kind of psychic intervention had taken place and whatever it was completely disarmed me. Which goes against my very character. When I look back to that day, I can remember not wanting to go to detox. I tried to think of the path my life would take if I was just to go back home and there wasn't one. I don't know if I would have died in a car crash on the way home, one thing I did know was that if I wanted any chance at any kind of life the path to the hospital was the only way to go.

  Arriving at detox on the 6th I wasn't scared of getting sick or of all the wonderfully horrible things to come. When you think about huge, life changing events in your life there are usually solid intentions behind your reasoning. I didn't have any intentions and still can't recall any. It was as though the life that I had lived for almost 28 years was going to end. I could not see a shred of future once I was admitted. In my subconscious I had reached a limit. There was just nothing. I decided I would trust the people working there, assuming they would take into consideration how much medication I was on. They didn't. They had completely cut me off of all the opiates and lowered me to 3mgs of klonopin a day along with the anti-depressant I had been taking for years.

  The second night in detox was when the terror and sickness set in. My heart rate was at a steady 157bpm, blood pressure normal range, temperature would fluctuate from 102 to 96.0 and back up again. I had gone through opiate detox in the past but nothing would prepare me for the level of intensity that was setting in steadily. On the 3rd day I awoke into a living nightmare. Never in my life had I imagined that I could be in so much overwhelming pain physically, mentally, emotional and spiritually. I was drenched in a layer of cold sweat and my muscles were convulsing. I lay in bed for 5 days. Three of which I have almost no recollection. I turned on my right side a stared at the wall. Completely convinced I was going to die. There was no doubt in my mind and the few times I made it to the phone to call Tim; I told him this fact over and over. Being trapped in the hospital I realized there was nothing I could do. I continued to stare at the wall, feeling colder and more helpless than I had ever before. I accepted death. Then time stopped.

  I'm not sure if I was physically looking with my body or if I had begun to slip away but someone was approaching my bed. He was my messenger, my guide and he came to me with the physical resemblance of Jesus. He had beautiful light brown hair and stood at maybe 5ft 7in. He wore a white suit that when you looked directly at the fabric it had its own depth, life within it. That color had never meant so much to me until that moment. It signified purity and safety. He had sandals on and glided over to the foot of my bed. Then the rest of the memories are like still frame photos. I had left my body and was suddenly half a foot away from him at eye level. With every look that he gave me I could interpret and understand what he was telling me without words. Like telepathy. At this point I was just air and had a 360-degree view of everything. With his face he told me to turn and look at myself in bed. Without turning I could suddenly see myself. I was so incredibly pale and motionless. I couldn't tell if I was still breathing.

When I looked back at him, he expressed a look that said to me, "your pain does not go unnoticed, there is this other place that exists without pain." He looked at the wall in front of me so I looked as well. There was what looked like one of those fake tunnel paintings they use in cartoons placed on the wall. I continued to look and the longer I did, the deeper and more distinctive this tunnel became. It wasn't a smooth surface inside the tunnel. It was grey in color and had rings all around the inside with a glossy almost wet-rock look to it. The farther I looked into it the deeper into eternity it went with a faint light.

When my eyes or vision, because I did not possess my body any longer, reached a certain point in the tunnel everything went blank. Dark a vast nothingness. No sounds, no emotions or fears. I had arrived to a place of light, not blindingly bright but warm and comforting. It was a realm where the units of space and time used on earth did not apply. In front of me in the distance was a straight line like a horizon line. It was both white and black like a constant flickering. In the center of this horizontal line was an orb. A white ticking ball of light. It held all the knowledge that ever was or will be. It was so alive and moving so fast that it made it absolutely still like an optical illusion. Outside the gleaming ball of white it faded into a light yellow then magnificent orange. I could look below and above and it was endless.

I was in a place where I had become everything and nothing at the same time. Just hovering in my one spot like a gas. There was no need for me to try and travel through this realm. I just was. Without my body or eyes, on earth what people think you need to be able to "see." This place was not euphoric, nor painful. I was not frightened. I had come to accept everything that was taking place. This place had no use for fear, anger, resentment or self-punishment. Completely silent, but loud with signals that had no phonetic structure. A language incomprehensible on earth or with the limitations of our physical bodies. I had reached a state of undeniable acceptance and understanding.

I know I wasn't asked if I wanted to return to my flesh but something pulled me back to it. The next thing I remember was the nurse coming in to check my vitals, which they did every 4 hours. I'm not sure how long I was gone for. Could have been 4 minutes or 4 hours. The next couple of days I was still incredibly sick and unable to process what had happened. All I know was that I whole-heartedly believed I was going to die. That is a very defining moment, knowing you are going to die.

  Upon leaving the hospital on the 16th of June, a new version of myself had emerged. Mentally the anxiety and fear that ruled my life for so long was completely erased. As if I had never had it. The addiction that followed me for so long was MIA too. For me dying was a purification process. I went to this other place where all the things that had controlled me before did not hold water and when I returned to my body all those debilitating ailments had vanished. Like I was filtered and only my purest self was allowed to return.

This does not mean I was not in a state of shock. Almost everything was the same but it had all been altered slightly. My body was picking up on all sorts of signals. I had a physical panic attack, where my body was in fight or flight mode but my higher brain was in a complete state of calm. It took my body a few months to start listening to my brain. When I got home, I had to unplug everything electrical, especially the wi-fi. I could feel a buzzing within my somatosensory nervous system. Within a week of leaving detox, I had stopped my anti-depressant and my anti-anxiety medications. This was the first time since I was 14 that I was not taking any pharmaceuticals.

  It's hard to explain my life and state of mind, how it is now. It's only been 5 months in this new life. I'm sure without a doubt that if I hadn't had this experience, I would be dead dead. My boyfriend Tim looks at me in amazement with all the things I am capable of and just the things that I beseech. The things that have had the biggest impact on me in this alternate reality happen without notice. Like the fact that I had parted my hair on the left side my entire life. I realized one day that I was parting my hair on the right side! I astral project in my sleep.

The dreams that I have and just how my subconscious views myself in my dream world have shifted all-together. I used to have no control over what happened in my dreams and I would end up doing something I know I shouldn't, end up regretting it and wake up in a panic. When I dream now things are so vivid and I am lucid most of the time. Fear is not a part of my life in any aspect. The toxic bond I never thought I would escape from with my mother has been cut. She doesn't even seem like MY mom. She WAS Alex's mom. The name Alex doesn't feel right to call myself. Alex is like a twin that I had my whole life and she died.

  I feel everything and nothing at the same time. My empathy for people runs deeper than ever before but so does my ability to protect myself. Places with bright lights, loud noises or lots of people turn into a sensory overload inside me. I stay home most of the time. I stopped using all social media and DO NOT have a cell phone. I love people’s reactions when you tell them that. Like I'm completely whacked not being able to connect with anyone, anytime, anywhere. The ironic part is that I can.

My psychic abilities are supercharged and I can feel the people around me even if they are not around. I see flashing lights and the outline of people really quickly and when I look back the outline is still there but it is made by a tree and a shadow. As if these beings know which spots to show up in to almost trick the mind. They pick places that have the same outlines as them so you see them for a split second, they know it but when you turn to check it's something else.

My whole life I've never been able to draw, always wanted to but didn't have the gift. Surprisingly I can draw now. Faces, details, shadowing. My coordination is more accurate than ever before. The poems I write now have a totally different taste than all my previous work. I have absolutely no drug cravings and am actually opposed to taking even an ibuprofen. I usually don't use a clock because earth time does not seem correct. I live based off nature now. I don't drive a car and really don't want to. My thoughts are obscure and abstract with my hunger for information rising every day. I have these spells where I'll cry. Not out of sadness or any common emotion. I just feel so much I have to cry, like a language of its own. I try to explain to my boyfriend what it is like to be who I am now, but I can't find the proper words. There are so many limitations on this physical plane of existence, between our soft, vulnerable, fleshy bodies and the laws that apply to this place.

  I went to a church for a wedding a few weeks ago. The first time I've been in a church since before detox. As I entered the church, I felt like I was being suffocated. The priest continued the ritual of marriage and with each word my heart began to beat faster and faster. Not a panic but over whelming uncormfortablity. It's not that I don't believe in God anymore. It's that I know the truth and the power of the spirit and to me now the church represents all the lies, and I can see everything it isn't. I feel religion mocks what is really out there and sells people a false hope.

I have trouble following society’s beliefs and rules. The direction humans are headed in is destined for failure. We are not a threat to the earth, we are a threat to ourselves. I refuse to live in any kind of denial and have no use for lies anymore. Something that has not left me since my experience, well a lot of things, but mostly is my genuine over-all acceptance of everything to come. Through pain comes greatness, I honestly believe that. Having reached a level of pain I didn't even know could exist; nothing compares to that. Once you accept your own death, you are capable of accepting anything.

  Even sitting here on my couch, seemingly quiet, everything has its own life within it. I can feel every angel of the room and different materials or textures dance to their own frequency. I feel like I'm on a psychedelic trip every day as I try to process all these new occurrences. Is it possible for a person to feel so utterly different from their own selves that they mourn the loss of that identity? Alex is like a past life. Only 5 months old now, I still have a lot to learn. Sometimes I miss her essence but I'm such a more refined, pure version of whoever I might be. I can't associate with Alex unless I think back to when I was a kid, under 7years old. I feel like my kid self but with an adult supervisor keeping things in order. I am eager to get to know myself now. It's actually a pleasure to be alive for once in my life. This life.

Just a thought: I'm not saying abortion is wrong by any means, but why is it considered acceptable to bring someone back from the grips of death? Ending life before it really begins is the same thing as ending death before it really begins. Abortion.