GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #967: WHAT IS DEATH?

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 I've often talked about my beliefs regarding the afterlife here, but I have a theory as to what happens during the process of your death. NDE people talk about the tunnel, floating outside your body and even having your life flash before your eyes. Something certainly happens. Your body floods with endorphins to possibly ease your passage, but what do you experience?

I think it would be a lot like the world I lived in for two weeks while suffering alcohol withdrawals for the first time.

I did not know that was what had happened. Instead I found myself living these odd scenarios, which I believe I've discussed here before. They were dreamlike, but I didn't doubt it was reality at any time, much like in dreams. It felt weird but very real.

So I think that's what we go through when we die. Unless you get shot in the head. It's hard to produce endorphins when the brain that gives that order is sprayed out on a wall or on the sidewalk.

Obviously you won't live in that fantasy forever. The endorphins only last so long, so I think it will fade slowly until you rejoin the darkness you left when you were born.

It sounds kind of pleasant. Just don't live the kind of life where death might destroy your brain, that's all.

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There's another option. I once mentioned my argument against the afterlife, which was, you now have eternity to do all the things you wanted to do. OK, fine. I've read all the books, seen all the movies, heard all the music, and I still have eternity left? There's only so much of that I go over again before I go crazy and want the afterlife to be over. It didn't make sense to me.

But I thought a little more about this, and what if that's what you need to get you ready to rejoin the primordial ooze and continue the cycle of life? What if the afterlife breaks you down so much it destroys you, drives you crazy, removes the very idea of you. And then it's, as Metallica once said, "Back to the front!"

I can see that, too. It's hard to fit an individual back into the building blocks of life without destroying what makes one individual. If that's true, the universe is even more heartless than I thought.

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I didn't intend to tackle The Biggest Subject tonight, so I'm sure I'll return to the usual madness tomorrow night. Sleep tight.