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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast. George Nori with you.

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Speaker 2: Alan Pierce with us. A journalist, broadcaster, former BBC correspondent,

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Speaker 2: author of several books. He has contributed to numerous publications,

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Speaker 2: from Time Magazine to the Sunday Times of London. We're

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Speaker 2: going live to France right now where he is. Hello Ellen,

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Speaker 2: Good morning, George.

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Speaker 3: Thank you for inviting me.

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Speaker 2: Looking forward to this. How have you been and how

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Speaker 2: are things out there in Europe?

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Speaker 3: Well, it's been very, very wet. I think everyone is weather.

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Speaker 3: It's a bit disturbed. It hasn't stopped raining here and

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Speaker 3: I don't know how long, and it's cold.

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Speaker 2: Same here with the California and Los Angeles. It's bizarre.

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Speaker 2: Everything seems to be upside down, allen everywhere.

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Speaker 3: And we just seing all sorts of other strange things,

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Speaker 3: like way more pigeons flying around in the sky than

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Speaker 3: ever before, and all sorts of out things and flowers

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Speaker 3: blue too early and then dying as the frost. Not good.

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Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit more about yourself. This's your

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Speaker 2: first time on the program, isn't it Well?

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Speaker 3: Yes, it is, because we come back again. I dare say,

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Speaker 3: while I'm a journalist and my wife, who co wrote

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Speaker 3: the book with me, was n't all fairly recently a

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Speaker 3: private investigator, And what actually happened to us was OVID hit.

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Speaker 3: And we were in the early stages of lockdown, and

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Speaker 3: I was watching the evening news and yet more and

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Speaker 3: more people were being ased into medically induced comless because

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Speaker 3: of COVID, and I just thought, why, how does that work?

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Speaker 3: I just want to know how that works. So I

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Speaker 3: thought I'd look into it. And the doctors will tell you,

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Speaker 3: and Google will tell you that prolonged deep sedation in

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Speaker 3: intensive care is a vital tool in medicine and it's

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Speaker 3: been that way for the last fifty years, that it

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Speaker 3: provides the deepest, most restorative form of sleep. They also

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Speaker 3: say that if you've got COVID, for example, and you

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Speaker 3: need to be on a mechanical ventilator, that no one

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Speaker 3: can actually tolerate being conscious. But this a great tube.

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Speaker 2: Down't they you nuts? You are crazy?

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Speaker 3: Well, that's what they say. And they also say that

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Speaker 3: within your coma, even though you're sleeping, they say you

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Speaker 3: will have no recollection of anything, so that was the

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Speaker 3: official explanation. Well, it turns out to be not true.

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Speaker 3: Nothing about what I've just said is actually true. The

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Speaker 3: next thing I did was I don't take one answer

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Speaker 3: as the definitive answer. So I thought, by time and

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Speaker 3: find some COMA survivors. I was given access to the

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Speaker 3: Facebook COMA Survivors group. I was allowed to sit in

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Speaker 3: the shadows and watch what people were posting. They were

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Speaker 3: posting all manner of things that just defied the medical

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Speaker 3: and scientific explanation. So many were talking about events within COMA.

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Speaker 3: So often they were night merrish events, often involving the

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Speaker 3: hospital staff trying to kill or torture them. Sometimes they

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Speaker 3: were having clearly the near death experiences, beautiful beautiful experiences,

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Speaker 3: and others were talking about all turned lives that they'd

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Speaker 3: been experiencing, lives actually lived minute by minute. And the

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Speaker 3: other thing they were posting was a range of ailments,

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Speaker 3: for example, appalling memory loss, aches and pains, the lack

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Speaker 3: of balance, turning into a different person, entirely, becoming reclusive, agoraphobic,

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Speaker 3: and someone so just looking at that the medical explanation,

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Speaker 3: here's what the COMA survivors are saying, and there's a

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Speaker 3: vast void between the two and suddenly I really lies

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Speaker 3: horizonto something really alarming here because along dolls should have

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Speaker 3: been ringing years ago and didn't have to wait for

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Speaker 3: me to tell aunt, but suddenly be my wife and

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Speaker 3: I decided this needs investigated, and that's how we began this.

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Speaker 2: Were the subjects cooperative with you.

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Speaker 3: Yes, I know a lot of people were really really

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Speaker 3: dubious about my motives. Actually, I was in some way

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Speaker 3: trying to exploit COMA survivors. It took a long time

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Speaker 3: to find COMA survivors willing to talk. But the way

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Speaker 3: we did it, I didn't just jop straight in and

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Speaker 3: start interviewing them. We talk about the research that I

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Speaker 3: was discovering. Things I was finding out is sharing with

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Speaker 3: the bouncing ideas of them. And then over time I've

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Speaker 3: about twenty plus COMA survivors helping with them book, and

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Speaker 3: over time they would just open up and they would

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Speaker 3: start to tell me about their experiences and they just

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Speaker 3: defied the imagined. In some cases like the near death experience, Yeah,

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Speaker 3: that are our lots in life for the events that happen.

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Speaker 3: But others such as people living and alternate life within

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Speaker 3: a COMA and then coming back to this life and

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Speaker 3: picking up where you're left off. I can't find a

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Speaker 3: single parallel for that anywhere.

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Speaker 1: Alan.

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Speaker 2: We've got a listener who will probably call in with

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Speaker 2: you next hour who was in a coma for two

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Speaker 2: months before he snapped out of it, and I'm sure

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Speaker 2: you're in.

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Speaker 3: It would be very nice to hear from some coma survivors,

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Speaker 3: and also for some doctors or nurses, because we've been

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Speaker 3: told when we started writing this but that a lot

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Speaker 3: of doctors and nurses are just going to think we're crazy,

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Speaker 3: because we are actually advocating that prolonged dexidation coma is

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Speaker 3: massively overused. It is horrendously dangerous, It kills people. Those

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Speaker 3: that survive go on to suffer them. Is the appalling

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Speaker 3: after it. That, and most doctors and nurses honestly believe

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Speaker 3: that they are doing the very best for the patients.

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Speaker 3: But what we've done, We've spoken to some of the

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Speaker 3: finest people in critical care. We've read an unbelievable amount

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Speaker 3: of medical and scientific limperature. We are completely up to

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Speaker 3: speed on the modern way of dealing with people intensive

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Speaker 3: care COVID. Because so many people were sick, so many

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Speaker 3: people found themselves in intensive care were placed into medici

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Speaker 3: induced comas because the sheer numbers, the sheer dangers now

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Speaker 3: are coming to the fore. Whereas they were largely hidden.

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Speaker 3: Now we can see these dangers. And one of the

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Speaker 3: aims of the book is to encourage the doctors and

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Speaker 3: nurses to bring themselves up to speed.

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Speaker 2: What are the odds? What are those percent of people

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Speaker 2: in a induced coma who cannot be taken out of it?

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Speaker 2: They can't get it after.

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Speaker 3: That, generally you can control it to a degree. It's

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Speaker 3: a remarkaby this thing. Sometimes when they decide to bring

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Speaker 3: somebody out of a coma, they begin gradually reducing the sedatives.

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Speaker 3: Sometimes when they do that, immediately the patient what came

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Speaker 3: out screaming, kicking and fighting, putting the tubes and their

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Speaker 3: body or the rest of it. And then the nurses

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Speaker 3: and the doctors think, work, what do we do. We

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Speaker 3: want the best of the patient, We don't want them

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Speaker 3: agitated like this, So they put them back down, and

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Speaker 3: often unknown to them, they're putting them down here into

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Speaker 3: the depths of coma. Other people that have the medications

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Speaker 3: switched off, and days and weeks later they're just not

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Speaker 3: coming to and it's scared the living. They out out

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Speaker 3: of their family. Eventually they will come to, but they

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Speaker 3: will not be the same person they work before they

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Speaker 3: entered the coma, so much about them is changed. One

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Speaker 3: of the worst things that happens is that a long

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Speaker 3: period it is brain damage. And this is bizarrely what's

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Speaker 3: abound by sleep deprivation, given the most doctors refer to

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Speaker 3: coma as sleep. You think what they are sleeping, but

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Speaker 3: in fact the medication switches off the brains circadian ribbens,

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Speaker 3: which means you can't go through ren's sleep, you can't dream,

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Speaker 3: and as a result, various other problems happen with your body.

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Speaker 3: For example, your kidness can't go through their twenty four

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Speaker 3: hour cycle. They can't expel the medication from the body

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Speaker 3: and it stays in the system, just making it so

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Speaker 3: much worse for the patient. So people come out of

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Speaker 3: it in different ways. And when they do come out

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Speaker 3: with it, if they've been on a mechanical ventilator, often

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Speaker 3: they can't speak for weeks of the time because of

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Speaker 3: the damage to vocal cords. By that period, they're long

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Speaker 3: gone from the intensive caring in it, and the people

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Speaker 3: who've been treating them do not get to see the

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Speaker 3: damage that they have caused their.

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Speaker 2: Patient, alan whether it's medically induced or if it just happens.

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Speaker 2: What has been one of the longest coma cases that

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Speaker 2: you have come across.

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Speaker 3: Well, I haven't concentrated too much on the spontaneous coma,

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Speaker 3: such as somebody gets very unwell or they're in an accident.

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Speaker 3: There are cases where people have been down for years,

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Speaker 3: which is just truly remarkable on what condition they would be.

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Speaker 3: And I dread to think in terms of induced coma,

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Speaker 3: they say, with covid or a pneumonia or what have you.

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Speaker 3: I think the maximum is three months. And here's an

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Speaker 3: interesting thing, because they're talking of rest all the time,

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Speaker 3: and we've always thought that dead rest is one of

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Speaker 3: the best things. It's been that way for thousands of years.

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Speaker 3: But now they discover that just one week of bed

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Speaker 3: rest one week results in the loss of forty or

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Speaker 3: zero percent of lean muscle. And you can't see the

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Speaker 3: muscle wastage because the patient is so pumped full of

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Speaker 3: fluids and medication that they become puffy and you just

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Speaker 3: don't see the damage. And when that patient's released, they

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Speaker 3: sort of look okay, but inside that there's so much

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Speaker 3: damage nerves of disconnected, joints of calcified, the skeletal damage,

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Speaker 3: and as I've mentioned, the terrible impact on the brain

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Speaker 3: in that tens of points could be wiped off someone

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Speaker 3: rendering a very intelligent person effectively educationally start normal. And

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Speaker 3: this is just not noticed. It's not being picked up

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Speaker 3: by the doctors because they don't get to see the

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Speaker 3: damage that they aren't causing.

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Speaker 2: Where does the near death experience Allen come into play.

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Speaker 3: So we looked to the events that people were recounting

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Speaker 3: within coma. And when you look at the conventional near

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Speaker 3: death experience, if there is such a thing that there

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Speaker 3: are certain key elements such as finding yourself in the

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Speaker 3: most explicitly beautiful countryside, maybe climbing a stairway to heaven,

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Speaker 3: maybe meeting your dead relatives and so on and so forth.

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Speaker 3: Every one of those classic ND elements have been reported

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Speaker 3: to me by people within coma. So for sure, let's

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Speaker 3: putting this way, if you're in intensive care and if

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Speaker 3: they can put you into a coma, you are close

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Speaker 3: to death. The medication is just pushing you that much further.

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Speaker 2: Pretty dramatic. Allan pears with us with his wife, Beverly.

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Speaker 2: They wrote the book called Coma and Near Death Experience.

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Speaker 2: How has the book been received? It just came out right.

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Speaker 3: It's just just having we're talking days that you know

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Speaker 3: what I have done. I've been sharing the book from

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Speaker 3: the very beginning even to just in the early copy stage,

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Speaker 3: sharing it with coma survivors and sharing what I'm learning

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Speaker 3: with the doctors and nurses are making sure they do

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Speaker 3: not make a mistake anywhere. And the feedback I've been getting,

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Speaker 3: especially from comb survivors, is just one of thanks, thank

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Speaker 3: you for raising this issue, because we're not being listened to.

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Speaker 3: No one pays any attention to us. And when they

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Speaker 3: come back from a coma and they have had a

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Speaker 3: near death experience, for example, and they manage to actually

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Speaker 3: talk to someone about this, invariably they're dismissed that they're

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Speaker 3: told that these are hallucinations, these are false memories, this

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Speaker 3: is delirium, and that whatever you've experienced, with the right medication,

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Speaker 3: you'll get over it. That you can't treat a person

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Speaker 3: for experiencing a near death experience. So this is where

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Speaker 3: the medical world the non spiritual world just totally divide.

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Speaker 3: The doctors will not look for any explanations other than

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Speaker 3: physical ones, and if they say hallucination, it's effectively saying

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Speaker 3: that person's mentally ill, which they not. Within comer, however,

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Speaker 3: people are also experiencing the flip side of the coin

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Speaker 3: of the near death experience, in that it's not beautiful,

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Speaker 3: it's not lovely, it just beyond file. It is the

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Speaker 3: most might merrish event that anybody could ever imagine. When

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Speaker 3: I say imagine, I actually don't think anybody outside of

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Speaker 3: COMBA could ever come up with the events that people

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Speaker 3: who are experiencing within coma. And we can talk about

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Speaker 3: solomons if.

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Speaker 2: You like, absolutely tell us some of the stories that

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Speaker 2: you encountered.

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Speaker 3: They very enormous theme. Okay, the start off with one

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Speaker 3: of the very very strangest things that we cannot find

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Speaker 3: a parallel for. The book starts with a wonderful guy

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Speaker 3: called Nick McDonald. He's from Clumbus, Ohio, and he was

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Speaker 3: taken to hospital with pneumonia developed into sepsis, which can

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Speaker 3: lead to organ failure, and they decided to place him

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Speaker 3: into a medically induced coma. He was in that coma

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Speaker 3: for two weeks fourteen days. Within that time, he experienced

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Speaker 3: an entire life, in this case spanning around twenty years

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Speaker 3: or so. Where he was living in the American Midwest,

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Speaker 3: it would appear to have been around about the nineteen seventies.

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Speaker 3: He was having in every sense of normal life, holding

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Speaker 3: down jobs, getting married, going on vacation, having kids, wondering

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Speaker 3: what they happen to dinner tonight, at that level of existence,

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Speaker 3: and when he came out of his coma, he thought

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Speaker 3: that that was his real life, and that the wife

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Speaker 3: he suddenly finds himself in is in some sense of

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Speaker 3: dream world. The clarity of vision, that the sheers sharpness

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Speaker 3: of one's consciousness within coma, also the fire his metabal explanation,

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Speaker 3: because the brain is offline, and yet he is the

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Speaker 3: mind wonderfully active. So Nick wakes up. He's at a hospital,

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Speaker 3: and those people sitting around the bed, in one of

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Speaker 3: which is his fiance. He hasn't a clue who she

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Speaker 3: is as far as he's concerned. He's just left his

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Speaker 3: partner somewhere. He's just she has just given birth to

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Speaker 3: a young beck, to a baby girl. He's left this

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Speaker 3: life and suddenly here he is, and people are trying

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Speaker 3: to tell him he's not this guy. He thought he was,

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Speaker 3: and how does one ever adjust to that, because if

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Speaker 3: you do talk to a tire twist or anyone like that,

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Speaker 3: they're just going to think you're mentally ill. He has

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Speaker 3: not been feel yet. He I think experienced a past

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Speaker 3: of life. And they've come across many people who've had

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Speaker 3: this with income. Nick is one of the very few

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Speaker 3: who've been able to talk about it. I can think

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Speaker 3: of two others who's had alternate lives that we try

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Speaker 3: to help with the book, and I'm actually wanted by

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Speaker 3: this that every time they tried to tell me of

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Speaker 3: the life that they had just been ripped out of,

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Speaker 3: they just burst into tears. They just could not could

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Speaker 3: not make a complete sentence, and we just couldn't get

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Speaker 3: anywhere with that. So the coma survivors, the twenty plus

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Speaker 3: people who've helped us with the book, are exceptionally brave people,

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Speaker 3: and they've been telling us things that they've never taught

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Speaker 3: their loved ones. It's really such an unknown subject. And

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Speaker 3: the thing that really blows my wife and I mind

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Speaker 3: is that we are the first people to actually investigate

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Speaker 3: this subject.

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Speaker 2: For thee that's true. How do we know that comma

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Speaker 2: patients aren't hallucinating.

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Speaker 3: Okay, lucination is a conscious state. Invariably with the eyes open.

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Speaker 3: You can't be unconscious and hallucinate. They also say it's

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Speaker 3: a false memory. In a coma, by rights, shouldn't have

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Speaker 3: access to your memories and you shouldn't be able to

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Speaker 3: process new ones. So it makes no sense that people

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Speaker 3: have got utterly rich memories when they come out. So

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Speaker 3: the doctors will say, ah, this is the brain's way

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Speaker 3: of making up for the lost time. So let's put

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Speaker 3: it this way. You're in the intensive care, you finally

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Speaker 3: get your eyes open instead of your brain trying to

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Speaker 3: figure out what happened in this missing period. You look

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Speaker 3: around you, you'll see a hospital. The chances are you're

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Speaker 3: going to think, well, I've had some kind of mishab

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Speaker 3: this is what's happened. I am impospitable. Your brain is

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Speaker 3: not naturally going to recreate the entire life with a

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Speaker 3: different partner, with different children, different jobs, different home, different

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Speaker 3: everything in the flash of a second, just to stop

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Speaker 3: you feeling you've missed something. And it makes no sense,

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Speaker 3: none at all. But doctors are so quick just to

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Speaker 3: dismiss all these things as a form of mental illness.

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Speaker 3: What They call it ICU delirium, the implication being that

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Speaker 3: it's a minor blip, something that will pass away, but

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Speaker 3: it never passes, the way they are left with for

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Speaker 3: the rest of their lives.

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