A study · online survey, published in 2024

The Martial study: 31 people compare their NDE with a psychedelic trip

A near-death experience, or NDE, is a very intense experience that some people have when they are about to die. In 2024, the neuropsychologist Charlotte Martial and two researchers in London surveyed 31 people who had been through two things. They had had an NDE, and they had also had an experience with a psychedelic drug, almost always LSD or mushrooms. Each person compared their two experiences. The two were alike in the peace, the light, and the feeling that everything was connected. Almost the same number of people said that both were “more real than daily life.” What set the NDE apart was the feeling of dying. And after the NDE, the fear of death dropped more than after the drug.

The study’s question is: how alike are an NDE and a psychedelic trip, when the same person describes both? We tell it step by step: whom they asked, how, and what came out. If you only want to know what is known, skip straight to the results.

Step 1

Before 2024 · The question

Other studies had compared NDEs and drugs, but always in different people

Illustration from The Martial study: 31 people compare their NDE with a psychedelic trip: “Other studies had compared NDEs and drugs, but always in different people”

Psychedelic drugs, such as LSD, magic mushrooms, or DMT, change for a while what a person perceives and feels. During these trips, some people describe things that are reminiscent of an NDE. For example, an intense light, a very deep peace, or the feeling of leaving the body.

Before 2024, several teams had compared the two experiences. In 2018, a team gave DMT to healthy volunteers and measured their experience with the NDE scale. This is a questionnaire that scores how many features of an NDE an experience has. In 2019, another team compared thousands of written accounts of drug experiences with NDE accounts. We cover this in the DMT study.

In those studies, the people who took the drug and the people who had the NDE were different people. With different people, no one can tell whether the two experiences are truly alike or are only described in similar words.

What was missing was to ask people who had been through both.

Step 2

2023 and 2024 · Liège and London · As the study tells it

An NDE researcher and two psychedelics researchers join forces

Illustration from The Martial study: 31 people compare their NDE with a psychedelic trip: “An NDE researcher and two psychedelics researchers join forces”

Charlotte Martial is a neuropsychologist at the University of Liège, in Belgium. Her group has studied NDEs for years, and she led the 2019 study that compared the written accounts.

Robin Carhart-Harris and Christopher Timmermann worked at the psychedelic research center of Imperial College London. Timmermann had led the 2018 study in which volunteers were given DMT.

The three wanted to know two things. First, how the two experiences are alike and how they differ while they are happening. Second, what they leave behind.

To find out, they looked for people who had had both.

Step 3

2023 · The survey · As the study tells it

Of 45 people who start the survey, 31 meet the conditions

The team advertised the survey on social media, in the local press, and on the websites of the two centers. No one was paid to answer. Forty-five people started it, and 31 met all the conditions.

Each person had to have had at least one NDE and at least one experience with LSD, magic mushrooms, ayahuasca, DMT, or mescaline. The NDE had to reach a minimum score on a questionnaire of NDE features. It also had to have happened in a life-threatening situation. If someone had had several of each, they were asked about the most intense one.

Each person answered the same questions for both experiences. Some measured what is experienced, others how much is remembered, and others what changed afterward. The order of the two sets of questions was drawn at random for each person.

The drug in the experience being compared was LSD for 14 people and mushrooms for 13. The other four people took ayahuasca, DMT, or mescaline. And 24 of the 31 people had had their NDE before their experience with the drug.

The first thing that came out was that the two experiences had a lot in common.

Step 4

2024 · What is alike · As the study tells it

The peace, the light, and the sense of unity come out the same in both experiences

Illustration from The Martial study: 31 people compare their NDE with a psychedelic trip: “The peace, the light, and the sense of unity come out the same in both experiences”

27 of the 31 people said they felt peace in their NDE, and 27 in their drug trip. The bright light came out the same: 21 in each. The feeling that everything was connected, intense joy, and a sense of something spiritual also came out almost the same. A life review is seeing scenes from your own life pass before you. It appeared in 13 NDEs and in 15 drug trips.

Measured with the NDE scale, 27 of the 31 drug trips reached the minimum to count as an NDE. The NDE scored a little higher on average, but the difference was small.

Both were remembered in the same detail. People said that both had been equally intense. And that both had changed their life and the way they see the world almost equally.

But on some points the two experiences clearly parted ways.

Step 5

2024 · What is different · As the study tells it

In the NDE they more often feel dead, and on the drug they see more images

Illustration from The Martial study: 31 people compare their NDE with a psychedelic trip: “In the NDE they more often feel dead, and on the drug they see more images”

Feeling dead or dying was much more common in the NDE. Twenty-six of the 31 people felt it in the NDE, and 17 on the drug. The feeling of being outside the body was also stronger in the NDE.

On the drug, by contrast, they saw many more images with their eyes closed, such as shapes, colors, or scenes. They noticed more strange sensations in the body. And the things around them seemed to take on a different meaning.

The clearest difference came afterward. After the NDE, people were less afraid of death than after the drug trip.

Reaching a border that could not be crossed and coming back to life came up more in the NDE. But the authors calculated this in two ways and got different results, so it is unknown whether that difference is reliable.

The study also asked how real the two experiences had seemed to them.

Step 6

2024 · What felt real · As the study tells it

Both experiences seemed “more real than daily life” to them

Illustration from The Martial study: 31 people compare their NDE with a psychedelic trip: “Both experiences seemed “more real than daily life” to them”

Many people say their NDE was more real than ordinary life. The team asked how real each experience seemed at the time it happened, and how real it seems to them now. The scale went from “a complete hallucination” to “more real than daily life.”

At the time it happened, 25 of the 31 people said the NDE was more real than daily life. For the drug, 23 said so. With so few people, that difference could be chance.

Today, looking back, people rate the NDE as more real than the drug trip, and that difference was clear.

About half said that both experiences were supernatural: 17 of 31 for the NDE and 16 of 31 for the trip.

With all this, the authors drew their conclusions.

Step 7

August 2024 · The conclusion · As the study tells it

The authors think psychedelics can help study the spiritual side of the NDE

Illustration from The Martial study: 31 people compare their NDE with a psychedelic trip: “The authors think psychedelics can help study the spiritual side of the NDE”

The authors conclude that the two experiences agree in their spiritual side and in what they leave behind. And that they differ in what is seen and what is felt in the body. That is why they think psychedelics can help study the spiritual side of NDEs.

The brain makes some substances that act on the same sites as these drugs. The authors propose that these substances could be behind some features of the NDE. They did not test this in this study.

They also acknowledge limits. The people volunteered on their own and answered from memory, sometimes years later. The team made up some of the questions, and these had not been tested before. And since almost everyone had the NDE first, the drug trip may have been lived or remembered in the light of the NDE.

The question from the beginning remains: are an NDE and a psychedelic trip alike? Let’s see what is known and what isn’t.

What do we know?

What the Martial study found

What it found

The peace, the light, and the sense of unity come out the same in both experiences. The same 31 people answered about their NDE and about their drug trip, and the number of yeses was the same.
Both seemed “more real than daily life” at the time. Twenty-five of 31 people said so about the NDE, and 23 about the drug.
Feeling dead is much more typical of the NDE. Twenty-six of 31 people felt it in the NDE, and 17 on the drug.
After the NDE, less fear of death remains than after the drug. It was the clearest difference in the study.
Visions of shapes and colors are more typical of the drug. On the other hand, both experiences are remembered in the same detail.

What it couldn’t know

Whether the NDE colored the memory of the trip. Twenty-four of the 31 people had the NDE first, and only 7 the other way around.
Whether these people were close to death. Each one described it on their own, without medical records.
Whether the result holds for everyone who has had an NDE. There were 31 volunteers, and many had taken psychedelics many times.
What causes each experience. Two experiences being alike doesn’t mean they have the same cause.
How an NDE compares with DMT. Only one of the 31 drug experiences was with DMT.

How each side reads it

Those who see a deep likeness

Charlotte Martial, Robin Carhart-Harris, and Christopher Timmermann, in 2024. They think the two experiences agree in their spiritual side, and that psychedelics can help study that side of the NDE. They propose that substances made by the brain itself could be behind it.
Martial and other researchers, in the 2025 NEPTUNE model, an attempt to explain NDEs through the brain. They write that NDEs resemble what some psychedelic drugs produce. In their view, what is known about these drugs can help us understand NDEs.

Those who see different experiences

Jeffrey Long, a physician and the founder of the NDE account website NDERF, in a 2025 interview. He says the people on his website who have tried psychedelics usually say they were two completely different experiences. We cover this in Long’s article.
Pascal Michael and other researchers at the University of Greenwich, in 2025, without taking sides on the cause. They compared DMT sessions with NDE accounts. They found similar themes, but on DMT almost no one saw people who had died or reached a border.

What the data allow us to say

For these 31 people, an NDE and a psychedelic trip have a lot in common. They agree in the peace, the light, the unity, and the feeling that it was more real than daily life. That is why feeling that something was “more real than reality” is not enough, on its own, to tell where an experience comes from.

They also differ in important ways. In the NDE, the person feels they are dying, and afterward they lose more of their fear of death. That difference may come from the experience itself or from having truly been in danger.

The likeness doesn’t show that the NDE is a chemical effect of the brain. Two experiences can be alike and have different causes. Nor does it show that the NDE doesn’t come from the brain. And since almost everyone had the NDE first, it is unknown how much of the likeness comes from the NDE shaping the memory of the drug. The explanations from both sides are in What does science say about near-death experiences?

What would settle it

More people who took the drug before their NDE. If the two experiences are still alike for them, the likeness wouldn’t come from the NDE coloring the memory.
Asking soon after each experience, instead of years later.
Checking in the medical records that the NDE happened close to death.

The same person, two experiences

How many of the 31 people said each thing about their NDE and about their drug trip.

Features of each experience in the same 31 people
Feature	NDE	Drug
Peace or well-being	27	27
Bright light	21	21
Life review	13	15
More real than daily life, at the time	25	23
Supernatural	17	16
Feeling dead or dying	26	17

What these figures don’t tell

These are 31 volunteers. Many had taken psychedelics dozens of times.
Each person described the most intense experience of each kind. These are not their usual experiences.
These are memories. The average age was 25 at the time of the NDE, and 41 when answering the survey.

Frequently asked questions

Is a near-death experience the same as a psychedelic trip?

No. They have a lot in common, but they are not the same. In a 2024 study, 31 people who had been through both agreed on the peace, the light, and the sense of unity. But in the NDE they felt they were dying much more often, and afterward they lost more of their fear of death.

Are NDEs more real than a psychedelic trip?

It isn’t clear. In Charlotte Martial’s 2024 study, 31 people compared their NDE with a psychedelic trip. Almost as often, they said that both were “more real than daily life” at the time. Today, looking back, they rate the NDE as more real than the trip.

Which drug produces the experience most like an NDE?

According to a 2019 study that compared written accounts, ketamine is the drug whose accounts are most like NDEs. Several psychedelic drugs come next, among them DMT. We cover this in the DMT study.

Where this page comes from

The study

Charlotte Martial, Robin Carhart-Harris, and Christopher Timmermann, “Within-subject comparison of near-death and psychedelic experiences: acute and enduring effects,” Neuroscience of Consciousness 2024(1):niae033 (2024)Read for free

Assessments and critiques

Interview with Jeffrey Long on Mayim Bialik’s channel (2025), at around minute 49Watch on YouTube

To understand more

The study on DMT and NDEs, with the 2025 study by Michael and othersRead
The NEPTUNE model: a 2025 attempt to explain NDEs through the brainRead
How does life change after a near-death experience?Read
What does science say about near-death experiences?Read

Our archive

A full reading of the article by Martial, Carhart-Harris, and Timmermann, with its tables, as of October 30, 2026

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