5 years ago, I overdosed on oxycodone. I was revived by narcan and stabilized in an ICU. I hated the experience. I was in awful pain. I hated the nurses because I felt like they were giving me more narcan than I needed and causing me pain on purpose.
I am currently working in an emergency room. Tonight I was involved in the care of two people who had overdosed on opioids.
Being on the other side of this experience was extremely profound.
For most of my life I regretted the mistakes I made, but it turns out that my experiences as a patient make me a better nurse. I do not have to pretend to be empathetic and non judgmental. After tonight I know I made the right career decision.
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We might say, then, that the psychedelic experience is simply a rapid shift in perspective. This shift in perspective can be caused by ordinary but unique real-life circumstances, like the experience you have when you're nearing death and you have children and you remember what it was like when your own parents were dying, or the one in the OP. It can also be caused, of course, by drugs that alter the brain in ways that cause the sort of mundane sensory inputs that your default mode network generally filters out of your conscious experience to reappear, which allows you to have radically different perspectives on routine/already-experienced circumstances.
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