I took a gummy and almost died… then I was transported to a heavenly feast with divine beings
Dallas native Madison Baker, 30, has struggled with insomnia since 2017. Despite trying prescriptions, over-the-counter remedies, and sleep specialists, nothing worked long-term.
In late 2022, Baker’s mother introduced her to gummies made with Delta-8 THC, a cannabis compound that produces a mild high.
Since Delta-8 occurs naturally in tiny amounts, most products are synthetic — yet they aren’t regulated, so contents and doses are unreliable.
‘I was super stoked to find something that worked,’ she said.
After running out of her usual gummies just before New Year’s 2023, Baker visited a local dispensary. She bought both her mother’s recommended brand and a sleep-focused variety.
Eager to start the new year well-rested, she ate one of the sleep-aid gummies at 9pm and got into bed.
Less than an hour later, though, she was back on her feet, pacing while her heart raced and panic set in. She was convinced she was about to die.
Dallas native Madison Baker, 30, suffered a terrifying near-death experience after she took a gummy that was laced with a psychoactive drug
Baker was born with an abnormal heart rhythm marked by sudden racing beyond 180 beats per minute due to unusual electrical activity in the two upper chambers of the heart.
Doctors often treat this sudden rapid heart rate with a fast-acting IV medicine that briefly stops electrical impulses in the heart, pausing the heartbeat.
Baker underwent heart surgery years ago to fix it, but said the rapid heart rate and ensuing panic brought back terrible childhood memories of the terrifying episodes.
THC, the chemical in marijuana that causes the high, can raise heart rate and blood pressure, increasing strain on the heart.
It’s difficult to pin down the number of emergency room visits linked to cannabis, but the FDA has received 104 reports of adverse events in people who consumed Delta-8 THC products between December 1, 2020, and February 28, 2022. Fifty-five percent required medical treatment.
Research hints cannabis may raise heart attack risk, particularly in vulnerable individuals — but more studies on its cardiac effects are urgently needed.
‘I was like, gasping in breath, I felt dizzy, and I was pacing around my room because I couldn’t breathe and I felt like I was dying,’ she said in a TikTok.
Baker saw visions of a heavenly banquet—angelic figures celebrating amid flashes of bright light. Doctors ruled out a heart attack and gave her IV fluids. She recovered fully, later calling it an extreme panic attack brought on by her heart episode
She crawled to her mother’s bedroom, knowing she needed to go to the hospital, and the two raced there.
‘It’s freezing cold in Texas, I’m wearing a t-shirt, I couldn’t even put pants on… And while we’re driving over there, my vision is getting really blurry.
‘I roll down the window, I cannot breathe. I wanted to get outside of my body.’
At the hospital, Baker lost her vision, started convulsing, and doctors urgently performed an EKG to check for deadly heart issues.
In this period of foggy memory and slipping out of consciousness, Baker said she saw ‘visions of heaven.’
‘I see these visions of this huge feast in what looks like the sky, and it’s this long table with all of this food,’ she said.
‘People are cheers-ing and celebrating; people I don’t recognize. They looked like humans, but in angel form.’
‘Between those visions, I was seeing the typical bright light that you hear of,’ she continued. ‘I had never seen or experienced something like that.’
Meanwhile, doctors had ruled out a heart attack, and Baker was connected to an IV. She could not say what was in the bag, but she began to feel better, and her vision returned to normal.
Baker was born with a heart condition causing dangerous spikes in her pulse (180+ BPM) due to faulty electrical signals in her atria. The standard treatment — an IV drug that temporarily halts cardiac activity — stops these episodes
‘I ended up being completely fine,’ Baker said, adding later that she believed the experience was a particularly severe panic attack that began shortly after she felt her heart begin to race.
Baker conceded later that she wasn’t really dying, but maintains she saw visions of heaven.
Near-death experiences (NDEs) are intense psychological events that often happen during life-threatening situations like cardiac arrest, severe trauma, or medical emergencies.
These experiences often include vivid imagery, feeling detached from one’s body, and a sense of peace and love.
Many survivors describe a bright tunnel of light, which researchers suggest may be the brain’s comforting response to dying.
This phenomenon could also stem from oxygen deprivation triggering erratic visual cortex signals.
These neural ‘misfires’ create phosphenes — false light flashes — that mimic the pattern of light at the end of a long hallway.
Baker is not alone in her experience.
Brianna Lafferty stopped breathing for eight minuets, during which she said she visited the afterlife
She said in the afterlife she was weightless, detached from her physical form and aware that what we experience on Earth is fleeting and fragile
Earlier this month, Brianna Lafferty told the Daily Mail she stopped breathing for eight minutes in 2017 due to complications related to a genetic brain disorder.
As she lost consciousness, a voice asked Lafferty, 25, if she was ‘ready’ for death. When she said yes, she slipped into what she describes as ‘complete darkness.’
Instead of panic, there was clarity: ‘I felt fully alive, aware and more myself than ever before. There was no pain, just a deep sense of peace and clarity.’
She was weightless and detached from her physical form.
‘Everything happens at once there, as if time doesn’t exist, yet there was perfect order,’ Lafferty said.
Lafferty found herself traveling through a bright blue tunnel before she entered a series of vivid landscapes.
Her final stop was a room where a scroll was presented to her, but before she could unravel it, her consciousness returned.
She said the experience ‘changed the course of my life.’
While experiences like Baker’s and Lafferty’s may sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, near-death experiences have been a subject of interest to doctors and researchers for years.
Dr Jeffrey Long, a Kentucky oncologist, has studied over 5,000 near-death accounts across more than 30 languages and cultures. The striking similarities in these experiences have reshaped his understanding of death.
