I don’t understand why Mike at Technology as Nature says that undergoing general anesthesia is like dying. I had anesthesia once, and it was simply like going to sleep. I had one of my very typical vivid dreams. In the dream, I was driving around with N looking for flowers to buy. We kept loading more and more flowers into our car, and soon we were both surrounded on all sides with reams of beautiful, aromatic flowers. This was a very realistic dream, too, because I was thinking about buying potted plants at that time.
If after I die I spend all eternity buying flowers with N, that would not be an unpleasant resolution to my existence.
Clarissa's Blog 
perhaps the anesthetic used makes the difference.
What i remember of being put down sure makes me think it is what death will be: lights out, no dreams, nothing.
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I underwent general anesthesia when I had my tonsils removed and I dreamed of the Flinstones (I was seven at time).
The “it feels like death” part came the moment I woke up. Judging from the screams and cries, it was the same for all the other kids that were there with me.
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I had my tonsils removed with no anesthetic, not even a local. Hooray to Soviet medicine.
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When I had to have some dental work done a few years ago they always asked if I wanted anesthesia (not covered and paid for by the patient) and I always say “Yes! As much as possible!” And they thought I was joking. But they did administer painkillers (and the price was very cheap).
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I had anesthesia when I got my wisdom teeth removed. Waking up was unpleasant just because I was totally out of it and confused and startled to wake up to cotton in my mouth. Basically, the doctor told me to count backwards from ten, and my thought process was “10, 9, 8… what the hell is in my mouth?! I just want to go home…” So no dreams that I can remember or anything.
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Here’s an anesthesia tale from back when I was a medical student rotating through general surgery classes, and I have no doubt that it actually occurred.
One of my classmates was absolutely deathly white after he’d assisted with an operation that morning where the patient had been under deep general anesthesia. As we lunched in the hospital cafeteria, he told me that after the surgery was over, the patient sat up, turned around and pointed his finger at the anesthesiologist, and said, “I wasn’t unconscious during the operation. I was only paralyzed — I heard everything and I felt everything! I’m going to sue you for all you’re worth.”
The anesthesiologist was no fool. He immediately gave the patient a rapid I.V. injection of 10 mg of Valium. That dose of Valium rapidly injected does two things: it knocks the patient out, and it wipes out short-term memory.
The patient woke up again ten minutes later, and didn’t remember anything about the incident.
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I went under a general anesthesia the first time about a year ago. I remember looking at some machine wondering what going under would be like…. and then being woken up about a half hour later after the procedure was done . I’m pretty sure there were no dreams.
The general question reminds me of the old Scifi series Invasion (unfortunately cancelled after a single season). It was a little like Invasion of the Body Snatchers except that aliens grew new bodies for the people taken over and discarded the old ones.
It was not entirely clear if the consciousness of the people was transferred to the new body (they remembered their previous life but not the transformation itself) or whether the memories were extracted somehow as a basis for a new consciousness.
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Maybe people say that because it is an outside force putting them out and so feels different from going to sleep under your own volition? It’s something that is done to to you and I guess that is how most people think of death, as something done to them rather than something they choose and control (at least on this culture, I don’t know about others).
I have had both so-called twilight sleep anesthesia and general anesthesia. My recollection is that under both, it is very sudden, but waking up is very slow and confusing. I don’t remember any dreams or dream-like thoughts but it seems possible in that in-between state that you could have visions and dreams.
But it was not all at unpleasant to be totally “absent” and if that is what it is like after death, there is nothing I find scary about that prospect.
After all, I didn’t exist for eternity before I was born. I have no reason to think that was unpleasant.
P.S. I have heard of tonsillectomies without painkillers and all I can say is YIKES!! That is sadistic.
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After that tonsillectomy, the doctor hit me in the face with his fist, so it was fully sadistic, you are right.
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