Recently, I came across this Reddit thread asking, “People who have been in a coma, what was it like from your perspective? Did you know you were in a coma?” and I found the stories fascinating. Here’s what people said:Some stories deal with topics like suicide."I was in a coma for about two weeks following a cardiac arrest as a teen. I was technically dead for over an hour, in fact. People often ask me if I could hear my family talking to me or if I was dreaming. The answer is no. There is a huge hole in my memory beginning about two weeks before the coma through a week after 'waking up.' And waking up is in quotes because I would wake up, ask a bunch of semi-incoherent questions, fall back under, then wake up again and ask the *exact* same questions, in the exact same order. Repeat six or seven times. The coma was not even blackness. It just does not exist. I remember having the hardest time believing it was actually mid-October when the last day I remembered was late-September.""I had a seizure and was in a medically induced coma for three days when I was 17. To be honest, I don’t remember anything. I remember fading in and out of the anesthesia, trying to pull my breathing tube out, and that my hands were restrained to the bed so I couldn’t. When I woke up and was coherent, I couldn’t recall anything from actually being in the coma. They had even moved me to a hospital over 100 miles away. It was just black. No dreams, no lights, no voices, just nothing.""I was in a coma for a short period after I had a big accident where I fell 16 meters and smashed my head hard and broke almost every bone in my head. People, especially close friends and family, say my personality changed, too. Got way more scared, angry, introverted (was very extroverted before), emotional, and dramatic. I didn’t lose my memories, though, so remember how I was before, and it was weird when I realized people were right about me changing.""I was in a medically induced coma after a bad car accident. I don't remember the accident, but I do remember all of the wild dreams/hallucinations. I was vaguely aware that I was in a hospital, and in my 'dreams' [I was] convinced that the doctors and nurses were trying to kill me. I thought that my sister rescued me from them, and took me out to eat and brought me home. All the while I was still in the hospital. I also believed that I was going to work every day, and at the end of one of my shifts, my coworkers tied me to a chair and left me in the building, lights out, overnight. These dreams were so vivid, much more so than my usual dreams, so I believed they really happened.""My girlfriend of six years and sort-of fiancée was in a severe car crash when she was 16. Both of her best friends died instantly. She was the only survivor, but they didn't think she would make it. She was in a coma for nine months. She was in what is called a waking coma. She retained normal periods of sleep and open-eyed wakefulness, but no higher brain functions.""Here are some things about her experience:She doesn't have any memories of the year prior or the year and a half-ish after her coma, and obviously no memories of the car crash.She suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI), and when she first got out of the coma, she would get naked and have sex with people and get angry very easily. These are common problems of people who suffer from a TBI.She went back to school after the coma, but her brain was still healing a lot. She was held back another year because her brain was still not retaining anything.Today, she is a wonderful, bright 30-year-old with a college degree. She has a slight speech impediment, gets frustrated more easily than most, and it took her a while to get driving down. Honestly, she still scares the hell out of me when she drives, but there are worse drivers out there." — u/mortalcoil1"After being in a really bad accident that left one of my good friends (the driver) brain dead, doctors put me into a chemically induced coma for under a week to prevent brain damage due to swelling. When I first woke up, my memory was much better than it would be as it gradually faded over the days to come. I have a journal my mother kept, and I recalled many things I shouldn’t have been able to remember immediately after waking up. Today, I have very little memory of it all, but I can definitely say that having positive people around you definitely helps when you’re in a situation like that.""I was in a medically induced coma for two weeks, about three months ago. I had open heart surgery, it didn't go well, I had trouble coming off the ventilator, so they just put me in a coma to try to give me time to heal. I had nightmares the entire time from the medicine they were using to knock me out. I thought I had been kidnapped by a nurse and was a victim of sex trafficking. I thought my aunt had her friends rob my sister and her husband, killing my brother-in-law and one of their children. I thought I was constantly being grabbed by people under my bed. It was not fun. I can't say that I knew I was in a coma or anything. I am usually one of those people that when I have a bad dream, can tell myself it is just a dream and wake myself up in order to end it. This was not like that. I was convinced it was all really happening.""I was in a coma for four days or so from a traumatic brain injury. I knew time was passing, but I was not sure how fast. I can remember people being in the room with me, but my eyes were taped shut. I could hear people taking.""I was in a coma for three days. Unlike most people, I definitely knew time was passing, but I didn't know I was in a coma. I kept having weird hallucinations about running a restaurant with my brother, and I kept getting confused and wondering where I was and why I wasn’t managing the restaurant. I’ve never worked at a restaurant, and I’m not sure why my brother was involved. Life didn’t feel real for a few months following waking up.""I was out for 45 days, no white light, no tunnel, nothing. I woke up and couldn't remember who I was. For six months, I never really fully recovered, so I just started life again. Turns out I'm a completely different person than I was, and that is a really good thing. I get memories now and then; they aren't pleasant. A woman came and sat by my bed for six weeks, turns out she was my ex-lover. I couldn't remember her. I didn't even recognize my mother.""My mom was in a coma, and she recently told me it was horrible. She was in a wreck that technically killed her (her heart stopped five times), and she said she could feel all the pain and hear the doctors yelling that she was coding. She thought to herself, Wow, whoever that is must be dying, and then realized it was her. She was trying to scream and tell them she was alive, but nothing ever came out.""My friend was in a coma about 10 years ago for roughly three weeks. He was in a car accident. When he woke up, we visited him, and when I was alone with him, he told me it was like a lucid dream. The real world was gone, and he felt like he was in a world he could create for himself for years. He was dead serious, too. He talked on and on about how he had a vague sense that he was no longer in the real world and that he might be in heaven. He spent a little while in the hospital, then went home, did physical therapy for about two weeks before killing himself. People thought the pain was too much, that it was an accidental overdose, or that the therapy and the accident made him feel helpless and depressed. Honestly, I think he wanted back into his lucid dream world. The way he talked about it was like the best thing he had ever experienced.""My sister was in a coma for about eight weeks. She has no memory of it. She has no memory of coming out of it. She had to relearn how to walk, how to talk, etc. She has some recollection of her relearning to walk, but only at the end when she was making real progress."Lastly, "I remember feeling confused, and I somewhat found myself in a dream-like state, although I was pretty lucid in it as well. There were quite a few psychedelic-like experiences, and it felt like such a long dream. It just kept on going and going. I didn't have a body anymore, and I actually asked myself, Am I dead? Since this couldn’t be a dream, I usually wake up when I become aware of a dream, and I wasn't waking up. It felt like it went on forever.""What was going on, this part I had no recollection of, I guess somewhere or sometime in my sleep, I had stopped breathing. I was pretty lucky because my family had stopped by the house to check on me. They noticed my car was still in the driveway, which meant I wasn't at work, and I wasn't getting the door. Looking through the window, they could see me lying there in bed, not moving. I wasn’t responding either, so they went through a window, and I was unresponsive, so 911 was called.I believe it took them a couple of hours trying to get me back and keep me stable, but my lungs weren’t working, so they had to intubate, and I was in a coma with life support, all that fun stuff, for about two days. I was still pretty much in the other place for a long time. It felt like I was traveling through space or something. I saw and experienced a lot of amazing things I can’t explain or remember well anymore.I wasn't scared. It felt like a really long journey. I didn’t necessarily see anyone for a while, but I didn’t feel alone. I felt the presence of others. There was this black infinite darkness, and it was the most wonderful thing. It was like I could create an experience with my imagination; there was no sadness, only bliss without worry. And it was very hypnotizing. I really considered letting myself go into it. Just letting go.I didn’t want to let go, though. I have a daughter who is my world. She was just about a year old at the time, and I kept thinking of her and her mother; it kept me from just letting go into that peaceful bliss. I couldn’t leave them." — u/Ivn0RelatedHealthcoma