Have you ever been under general anesthesia? What was it like? Did anything strange happen?
As a compliment to the thread about near death experiences I’d really like hearing people’s experiences of losing consciousness under general anesthesia and what’s it like coming back.
Also interested of things anesthetists may have noticed about this during their career.
Life just stops. It’s like there was a portion deleted from your living record. No thoughts. No dreams. No fuzzy memories at the edge of thought that you can’t quite recall. None of that stuff you get even when blackout drunk. One moment you’re alive, counting or talking to the nurse, then suddenly you’re back and someone’s removed a piece of your body and apparently a piece of your timeline.
This is the correct answer. It's a complete lack of experiencing anything. Not black, not darkness, but simply nothing. Before the general anesthesia you'll feel high, and when you're coming out of the general anesthesia you'll be groggier than you've ever been in your life, but the time during general anesthesia simply won't exist for you.
I just talked about this on other thread but I find the non-experience of general anesthesia to be quite comforting in two ways.
Assuming that from the first person perspective it’s indistinguishable from death then it confirms that death is not just some kind of positive non-existence. You’re not left floating in a black void. It’s not that there’s a gap in the movie that’s just a blank screen. That entire section is removed. You go from one moment to another entirely skipping what happened inbetween. From first person perspective that gap doesn’t exist. You never really went unconsciouss. You went from experiencing the drugs starting to take effect to waking up. Death is probably just like this except that there’s no jump from experience to another but experience just stops.
The another thing about this is that maybe death doesn’t stop experience. Since you cannot experience not existing then maybe death is no different from general anesthesia; you die here and then in an instant you’re (what ever that is) transported having some other experience somewhere else in a different body or into whatever that can have experiences. Perhaps this is what people mean by rebirth.
A slightly related thought. I personally find experience/perspective/consciousness itself to be of utmost absurdity. I don’t find indefinite consciousness via some method I don’t understand to be any more absurd.
“What is consciousness?” That is the one question I want to know the answer to the most. I’m sorry cancer patients but if I get to meet an oracle and get to ask one thing that’s what I’m going to ask.
I don’t even so much care about how it emerges or what are the requirements needed for it to emerge. That is the “easy” problem. What I’m truly curious about is what it is. How can it be that materia gives rise to subjective experience. It’s weird! It’s something so fundamental yet if you weren’t experiencing it yourself you’d have no idea it’s even a thing. There’s zero evidence for it outside of the mind itself.
Also as Sam Harris says it’s the only thing in the entire universe that cannot be an illusion. Even if everything else is fake and the entire universe is just a hallucination/simulation the fact that it feels like something to be in that simulation is still true.
It’s weird! It’s something so fundamental yet if you weren’t experiencing it yourself you’d have no idea it’s even a thing. There’s zero evidence for it outside of the mind itself.
Just a random thought, this reminds me of light. Kinda weird to think about but light is invisible unless it goes directly into your eyes.
Also as Sam Harris says it’s the only thing in the entire universe that cannot be an illusion. Even if everything else is fake and the entire universe is just a hallucination/simulation the fact that it feels like something to be in that simulation is still true.
Very very strange.
This and time too. You ask the oracle about consciousness, I’ll ask about time lol.
“I think therefore I am” … does that also mean “I thought therefore I was”? or something like that?
Time is the passage of the story that you are/exist in.
In some more general sense, the universe doesn’t so much exist as a physical, real world, but as a story, dream or thought. In that story, you move forward like water flows in a river. That way you experience the passage of time. The landscape already exists, only you get to see it bit by bit. You’re welcome.
I believe that the universe is not all “materia”, but that an important part of it is pure movement, that can also take the shape of moving material. If we perceive something through our eyes, then movement (train passing by) acts on itself (the eyes), and that gives rise to the structure of the story, which is consciousness.
This seems to fit well with one of the explanations for what the brain actually is doing or atleast one of the processes running which is trying to guess what happens next.
IMO it's not a big deal as long as you know to expect it. If you know about it then you won't be fighting crazy hard against it and thinking that something is wrong with you that you can't make yourself fully awake. If you know about it before it happens then you know to not fight it, just relax and wait for the drugs to wear out of your system. They really should tell patients to expect the grogginess right before they're put under.
Exactly. I wanted to sing a song and finish it when waking up. I wasted my time for asking if that’s the gas putting me down. Brain fuzzing and boom. Darkness and singing the song. Can barely remember. A nurse one day later asked me what song I sang.
It’s really like a piece is missing, you are aware but the feeling is like nothing happened.
You don’t even get the awareness of your life up until that point. It makes me think of René Descartes’ validation of it existence. “I think, therefore I am”. The problem is that, when you’re under, you cease to think, therefore you cease to be. Also, if the meaning or value of life is the collection of memories we gather along the way, and the moment you cease you not only lose further thought but also all memories and experiences you collected up until that point, then what the fuck are we doing here?
Spreading and sharing those thoughts and memories, fragments of our selves, so that they can live on in everyone we ever interact with. People who will, in turn, spread those fragments on even further.
A therapist recommended the book A Mans Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl when i mentioned something similar and it may help answer that question for you if you can snag a copy or pdf
Yes, a few times. Each time I went from feeling awake and alert to suddenly being somewhere else and feeling groggy and hungry. Nothing strange otherwise.
I remember being a cheeky kid at the time and asking “what if I hit zero?”, the anesthesiologist told me “okay, count from 100”… Yeah I didn’t make it past 97…
Yeah, I’ve had general liquid anaesthetic for two different surgeries, almost made it to six once. You’re probably a mutant if you get all the way to four lol
I didn’t even began to count! I was asking what kind of drug they were using, I remember the nurse saying it was not opioid and then black! The strangest thing for me is that you fall asleep suddenly and abruptly so is different from a normal sleep
The profound nothingness is almost hard to believe. I’m not talking an empty sleep—I mean it feels like someone cut a segment out of the film strip of your life.
The first time I was fully knocked out like that was for tooth surgery, and I thought the doctor was messing with me when he said they were done already—from my perspective I had barely closed my eyes for a moment. Sure enough, there was gauze in my mouth and the sun was setting outside. It had been over 90 minutes, and I didn’t even feel like I’d slept.
Same for me. I remember starting to count down from 10 and feeling intensely sleepy, and then waking up on the bed asking when they were going to start the surgery and the nurse was like, lol, that happened a while ago mate. So weird.
Wisdoms? Same experience for me. My partner was in the room with a nurse asking me about my pain level. At first I was confused, what pain? Then as consciousness properly barrelled in I managed to sob an ‘8’ through the gauze. I preferred oblivion at that point - they had to take a big chunk of bone and boy did I know it at that moment
I’m kind of sad that I never got to experience that, to be honest. I only had two wisdom teeth- 1 on the top left and 1 on the bottom right. The right was set to be impacted, but apparently it hadn’t grown any roots, yet (I was 17 or 18) so they decided it just get it out with a local. It was… unpleasant. The top left one has never come through, either, so I may well not have bothered 😓
It can depend on how complicated your impaction is. Sometimes they look at you and go, “Yeah I can work that out no issues,” other times they’ll be like, “Nah fuck that, this is going to be a major surgery.” The last thing you want is for them to realise it’s the latter and not the former when they’re halfway through the procedure 😅
I’ve heard of that happening, actually; the dentist ended up driving the patient around themselves trying to find an available surgeon to finish the job, and eventually gave up and just dropped them off at the emergency department.
Usually it’s not that wild, but I feel safe in assuming that many dentists choose to book a general out of an abundance of caution, 'cause I’m sure that scenario features in their nightmares as much as it does the patient’s.
It probably has something to do with licensing and costs for anaesthetists, too, come to think. Most dentists are qualified to give locals but not generals; verrryyy different ballgame, you can imagine.
Oh yeah, and finally, people’s jaws are getting smaller. Seriously, though. The smaller the jaws, the more complicated dental surgeries are becoming, so there you go.
Was a dental nurse once upon a time. Assisted with many an extraction. Yes if conditions are good (the jaw is large, the tooth is straight, there’s no tangling or bone issues) then not a problem. But I did not enjoy putting some people with poor neck strength in headlocks. Or the post extraction vomiting. Or the way the patient cringed as they heard the tooth snap in their skull. Or the complete look of trauma on their face after.
Just because they couldn’t feel pain didn’t mean the experience wasn’t harrowing. I needed to go under because all 4 were badly impacted. But having insider knowledge on the process, I would’ve chosen to be knocked out regardless.
Haha don’t have FOMO for surgery, mate. A life lived without it is a good one.
They can still wreak havoc on your teeth even if they don’t come down. They tend to migrate and move and that can mess up your bite. So not likely now presuming you’re older but it’s a chance when you’re younger and still growing etc.
It isn’t like anything. One moment you are counting down, the very next moment you are waking up. Time does not pass for you. It’s one instant (counting down) to the next (waking up.) It’s very strange. Like you skipped through time. Like you magically moved forward in time instantaneously. You will never have memories from when you are under.
Honestly, I’ve wished that experience was possible for other times. I know it’s dangerous and that’s why it’s not. But general anesthesia is just such a better experience than local. Eg, I had a dental filling the other day. That uses local anesthesia and it’s quite stressful (especially as my first time undergoing that). I found myself wishing it was as convenient as how general anesthesia is just blink and it’s done.
I also wish it were so easy to fall asleep. It sucks tossing and turning at night (especially when there’s something big going on the next day, which only makes it harder to fall asleep), knowing how anesthesia can knock you out in seconds. My understanding is that anesthesia isn’t sleep and won’t give you the benefits of sleep, but the experience of drifting off so fast is still what I want from sleep.
I’ll give you a piece of advice that’s been very valuable to me, especially in the case of getting injections, which is always difficult for me. In the lead up to a local anaesthetic, and during, take a short-to-normal inhale through your nose (depending on your lung tolerance) and do a loooong, extended exhale, as long as you can extend it without needing to take too big a gulp afterwards. When you exhale, this pushes your diaphragm up into your heart, slowing your heart rate down and significantly decreasing the physical effects of anxiety.
It works very, very quickly, and if you do it for up to 5 minutes, the heartrate lowering effect can last several hours. Doing it regularly (5-10 minutes a day) has long term positive effects for your overall cardiovascular health, too.
I’ve never been one for meditation, but practices like that have probably been helpful to so many people because it naturally takes advantage of the relationship between breathing patterns and heart rate variability.
There are even more ‘tricks’ like this, such as the double inhale. Taking two very quick breaths in succession before that long exhale is even better at reducing your heart rate and generally calming you down. You’ve even done it before, but you wouldn’t know it.
Children in particular will do this, and it can happen naturally when you’re sobbing. Sometimes you’ll take two short inhales like “huh, huh!” before going in for another cry rather than one big gasp- and this is why!
I hope this really helps you out, because it’s very quick and straightforward, but boy does it work fast. Sometimes I’ve only remembered to-do it halfway through an unpleasant experience and it still banishes burgeoning pre-syncope and nausea. Good luck!
Twice, for my wisdom teeth and my colonoscopy. The first time I didn’t feel anything and I was out as soon as he put the drug in the IV. I blinked and woke up in the waiting room afterwards. I was groggy and my cheeks were packed with gauze, but I was fine after that
For the colonoscopy I felt the slight chill in my veins, and it felt like I was giving into a very deep sleep that I really wanted. However I was exhausted from shitting my brains out the night before so I definitely did want to sleep lmao.
When I woke up I felt a little high and super well rested, it was great, like I had just smoked a small bowl. One thing they don’t tell you about colonoscopies until the day of is that they put air up there as the camera goes up so they can see inside more clearly, and you “expel” all that air when you wake up.
The nurse told me the procedure was finished as I came to and as I lay there high and half asleep, I RIP HUGE ASS. I’m holding in laughter like a little kid because fart jokes are still funny especially when I’m high lmao.
I get into the car and my gf has a sandwich waiting for me. I hadn’t eaten solid food in about 24 hours and I was still kind of high. Best fucking sandwich of my life.
They told me they were starting to put me to sleep (can’t remember the exact words), and I must have gone under before they finished the sentence. Next thing I remember is waking up in the recovery ward, feeling completely at peace. The most peaceful I have ever felt in my life. I fell asleep again and woke up later in the same ward.
I don’t recall any lasting sleep benefits, but you’re absolutely right that there ain’t NOTHIN like a Propofol nap. Amazing. And when I woke up, completely, instantly awake, no grogginess or hangover effect.
I don’t know what they gave me. I don’t recall them ever telling me. I do know that my sleep for the next three weeks sucked due to pain, and an abscess that got a little bit out of control.
I was a kid when I last had it. Really uneventful. “Count backwards from 10” and you’re out by 6.
My wife had it a few months ago to fix a deviated septum. Her native language is Turkish. When she came to she was only speaking English. The doctors couldn’t understand her “but she seems fine.” I told her she was speaking Chinese just to fuck with her a bit. “Oh no! We need to get a dictionary!” It was really strange… She understood Turkish perfectly fine but was completely unable to speak it.
Other than some funny after effects, it was mostly a non-issue for her as well. She was fine after a couple hours.
Oh wait, my wife told me I was also leaning towards English a lot too when I woke up. I’m not a English native. However, I was switching to it after pauses or sentences.
I’ve had one surgery in my teens. I was immediately knocked out, unconscious, no dreams that I can recall. When I woke up I was so groggy I couldn’t even really move for a while, everything just felt heavy. I would just kind of look around with my eyes and then close them to try to get more sleep.
Nothing. You breathe twice, then blackout. You wake up in a bedroom, feels like an unpleasant and quite huge hangover. Then, as the anesthesia fades away, you might feel the pain coming progressively (depending on what you have).
When I got my wisdom teeth pulled I was put in general anesthesia. Funnily enough, like everyone probably, I tried staying awake. Doc told me to count down from 10, I was very determined to get it done, just closed my eyes for a bit but I managed to pull it off. Only thing is, that I was out between 6 and 5, and counted half the numbers in the wake up room. It’s literally like a time warp. Super interesting imo.
I’ve been under general once, and it was like losing time. The surgeon started counting backwards from 100, my eyes crossed, then a nurse was offering me a sandwich in the recovery ward.
I was once in an operating room repairing a printer while there was a surgery going on. A nurse hustled me out when the patient started moving and groaning like he was in pain. An anaesthetist told me later that despite the movement and noise, he never woke up.
Yep. Soap, then some kind of chemical steriliser, then paper gown, mask, hat and booties. It was also made clear to me that stepping inside the marked square with the patient at the centre was a big no-no.
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