The Near-Death Encounter That Saved Me From Myself

My mind told me I was hallucinating, but my instincts told me I’d glimpsed the other side

Michele Koh Morollo
Human Parts

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Photo: Agnieszka Adamowska/EyeEm/Getty Images

Is there life after death?

It’s a question that’s been on our minds for thousands of years. My husband comes down on the side of skepticism — he believes that our consciousness ends as soon as our hearts stop beating. He says that when you die, it’s “lights out.”

There was a time that I would have agreed. As a teen, I rejected the heaven-and-hell paradigm of my Catholic parents, and the ideas of reincarnation imparted by my Taoist grandparents. I turned away from all things religious or spiritual, deciding that the faiths of the world were narratives invented to prevent the reality of death from driving us all insane.

When I was 18, though, something happened that created within me a belief in the spiritual realm, and the afterlife. I was in a particularly destructive phase, following two suicide attempts, a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and clinical depression, and eight treatments of electroconvulsive therapy. Realizing that I didn’t really have the “guts” to take my own life, I started abusing solvents — inhaling glue and butane to alter my sour state of mind.

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