“A lot’s been said about death, so I don’t have anything profound really to add to that particular record: I just want to get my head straight about my experience of demise. See, I suppose it’s not too broad a claim that everyone fears the end, even if this only becomes apparent when faced with it before you’re ready, but certainly I was always very fearful of dying when I was alive. I didn’t know if I believed in an afterlife of any kind, and I just didn’t want there to ever be a time when life just stopped.
I used to experiment with DMT: a naturally occurring psychedelic produced in the brain’s pineal gland. It is released in potent quantities when you’re born and when you die. I took a lot over a period of two years and two months to give me some perspective you can’t necessarily get normally, but when I decided I’d had enough of that particular experimentation I became immensely paranoid that repeated use of the drug had interfered with my pineal gland. I questioned why we have the thing at all and started to dread that there might be metaphysical implications: if there actually was an afterlife, was this chemical (for which the ingredients and enzymes exist in very high concentrations in the brain) needed to propel you to it…? I had a crisis. I started to suppose that maybe everyone believed in life after death because they knew something I didn’t. Had I scuppered myself for all eternity? But, you know, I admit that a little bit of drug-induced paranoia could have been responsible for this train of thought because I was smoking a lot of pot at the time and one night I had a vision I was twisting along a tunnel which forked in two: one fork carrying on upwards with a blinding white light at the end (so bright it obscured the rim of the end of the tunnel) and another that spiralled off down into darkness. My immediate instinct was to go towards the light, but my curiosity made me look at the dark one, and before I knew it I was being sucked towards it, only saving myself by opening my eyes, and then I was extremely worried about what this vision meant and whether or not this was an indication that I’d been living my life all wrong and that I’d pay for it in the next world. But after I knocked the pot on the head, I was able to laugh at this paranoia and remember that there was no need to take any stock in seemingly religious visions, all of which are most likely to be subjective interpretations of peculiarities of the psyche anyway. I felt OK again. I was still terrified of death, but when I did finally die, I took it a lot better than I expected. As I realised my heart had stopped and the sallow headrush I felt myself falling into meant there was no more oxygen getting to my brain, I panicked for a second as I realised: ‘This is it, this is actually it,’ but when I got a grip on what was happening and that it was not only irreversible but actually in the final stages of the process, I accepted it for what it was and got a very real sense of myself because it’s true what they say: it does all flash before you, and this is what gave me total self-understanding. I got perspective on everything: the choices I’d made, what they meant about me as a person: an overview almost from the viewpoint of another. I grasped that the most prominent attitude I’d always had about myself was that I loved experimentation and discovering new things, and that I’d been able to turn any bad experience in my life into a good one by seeing it all from a little distance and appreciating that although I might not necessarily want to repeat the incident in question, new understanding could be gleaned from it nonetheless, and in a way, it’s good that it happened. I was happy, therefore, to clutch onto the experience of death and realise: ‘I’m finding out what it’s like to die. Billions of people have been through the same process, and now I know what they know too.’ After all, I had to think like this: it might have been the last bit of learning I ever discovered.”

[Over the last few sentences we’ve heard someone climbing the stairs, and now a door creaks open at the last moment]

Diane: “John, are you going on about dying again?”

John: “… No.”

Diane: “Well, yes you are: I could hear you from the kitchen. And turn that recorder off, I don’t want you to tape me.”

John: “I’ll do what I want, woman, and I won’t be told by you.”

Diane: “You little bastard. You little lying bastard. Going on about drugs. We’ve been married since we were eighteen and I’ve never seen you touch any. Honestly, I don’t know where you pick it all up from half the time.”

John: “How do you know what I’ve done and what I haven’t, woman?”

Diane: “Well, I know one thing? You’re not dead yet, that’s for sure.”

John: “I died when I married you, ya witch!”

Diane: “Oh, that’s very grown up, isn’t it? I’m going out. There’s mutton in the fridge if you want to do yourself some dinner.”

John: “If I eat anymore sheep I swear I’ll have a fucking aneurysm!”

Diane: “Well, I’ll keep serving it up then, won’t I? Then we’ll all get some peace.”

[The door slams]

John: “Yes, well… [Suddenly melodramatic] I died a lonely death and no one came to my funeral, and after twenty-eight years I discovered my marriage had been little more than matri-phoney, because still to this day there have never been any flowers left at my grave.” [Sniff…]