What if you spent 15 hours on the edge of sanity? [Rebroadcast #89]
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. Hi everyone, this is Andrew Waits, a co-producer for This Is Actually Happening. I just wanted to give everyone a quick update. Witt is still in the process of recovering, but is doing well. We will return next week with new episodes, and Witt will share the story of his recent experience.

In the meantime, we bring you the rebroadcast of episode 89 from season 7. What if you spent 15 hours on the edge of sanity? The shape of the land that was leading to me or to us not being able to see the top also meant that I couldn't see the bottom. You know, a wave of panic and terror came over me. Basically, it was nothing I could do. We were stuck. We can't move.

From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 89, What If You Spent 15 Hours on the Edge of Sanity?

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love, work, parent, and educate through the power of vulnerability. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash happening or text happening to 500-500. That's audible.com slash happening or text happening to 500-500.

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We had a funny kind of dance throughout college. Whenever she was single, I was seeing someone, and whenever I was single, she was seeing someone. So we never got our chance to explore our interest in each other. This wonderful woman invited me out west. I said, "Woohoo! Let's go!" And I said, "You can pick me up in Ithaca on your way from New York City." So she did, and she was with two of her friends from college, and a hellish road trip began.

Four days in a small car with three women who had gone through two breakups and were in a serious man-hating mood. And we got into a car, and I became the representative of all things male and bad. That was a small car. I'm interested in Erica, and I want to be cool. After like two days and...

close to 2,000 miles, going through the desert with no air conditioning, and these two women just on my case. Two women I've never met before. So at one point, I had it out with them. I was like, what is your problem? And I had hesitated to do that for days because I didn't want to mess up my chances with Erica. I'm talking about that with her after the blowup,

And she says, yeah, I was so disappointed in you that you just took it from them. By the time we landed in California, I wasn't exactly enjoying my road trip. Then we got to San Francisco. San Francisco is where we were headed on this trip. Finally, I had a reference because my friend from Ithaca told me, hey, if you get to San Francisco, call up this guy Q.

First thing I did was I called up Q. I said, hey, man, I'm on this road trip with these three folks, and it's not really going all that well. And he said, well, why don't you come over? So he and I met up, and we proceeded to have a fantastic time laughing, joking, challenging each other intellectually. And he was like, why don't you just stay with me?

He was staying with this super awesome hippie lady who had this beautiful house a block off of Haight Street. And she and he were like, stay as long as you want, seriously. We would go out to clubs and go dancing super late at night. We went hitchhiking. We went camping.

One of those adventures was just Q and I. We went to a place called Muir Beach, named after John Muir. It's a very beautiful place. You drive through this cove to get to the ocean. It's an ever-changing trail that goes up and over this rocky detritus at the base of these cliffs. We were young men testing our edges, our fear,

and our confidence in our own ability to interpret a situation or in our own bodies. It was a pretty powerful experience. So we hung out, we had a great time. I didn't know anybody in San Francisco, and Q was very extroverted, very social.

In those few weeks, I was nagging him about going out to meet some people. So at one point, he said, hey, why don't we go to Berkeley and meet up with my friend John? John's fascinating. He's just finishing up at UC Berkeley. He's a poet. So we met up with John, and we took a hike and had a great time. And John was super interesting and also just really kind. He was very just gentle. I wanted to hang out with him more.

So I said, let's meet up with John. We decided that Q and his girlfriend and John and myself, we decided to go back to Muir Beach because Q and I were familiar with it and we loved it and thought it was a super fun place. And we would just be there for the afternoon, the evening, we'd camp on the beach, head back to San Francisco in the morning. We got there,

Didn't set up camp. We just left our stuff in the truck and we all went down to the beach Q and his girlfriend expressed that they needed to they needed to have some time alone They needed to do some processing they needed to have a talk So John I were like, hey, no problem. No pressure where we will leave you two alone. I said John Hey, man, there's this awesome trail right there that I was just on last fall and

and it's amazing and it's a great adventure. Let's go for a hike." He was like, "Great, sure." So we took off on that same trail that Q and I had hiked. Probably by this time it was maybe 5:30, 6 p.m. It was a classic Northern California day. It was hot during the day and it was just beginning to cool off by about that time. So we were going along this trail and the temperature was getting a little chilly and I said, "You know,

We could walk back along the trail or we could do what Q and I did last time we were here. We scampered up the side and there's actually a trail at the top of the cliff and we could just go back along that trail. And because it's farther from the water, it's a little warmer. John was cool with that. He said, all right, sure, great. Let's do that. So I didn't remember exactly where Q and I had gone up when we were there before. We found a spot and said, well, this looks all right. So we headed up.

We got like five or ten minutes up this thing and realized this is actually, it's farther at this spot. We couldn't see the top from where we were but my sense of it from my memory was that the top shouldn't be too much farther. We walked another 10 minutes or so and we still weren't at the top. We were past the point at which I thought we would have gotten to the top but as we got higher up I could see actually the top was a little farther.

So we hiked a little farther, we hiked another 10-15 minutes. We'd gotten to some parts that were actually a little bit more difficult. Steeper parts where we actually had to climb more vertical surfaces just for, you know, five or six feet. And then it would be, you know, maybe back to parts where we could walk, maybe parts where we had to be on all fours. A lot of hard solid rock and then also a lot of loose rock.

This situation of continually thinking we're almost at the top, so let's hike a little bit farther. We kept thinking, or I kept thinking, we're almost there. It's getting colder, darker, but now the sun is completely gone and it's twilight. I think we both had maybe windbreakers.

We had little day backpacks with our, you know, bottle of water. John was starting to get a little bit more nervous. I felt relatively comfortable. I was also concerned about him being nervous. But part of my life strategy at that point was to be extremely confident. So we just kept going. We would periodically check in and he'd say like, I don't know, maybe we should head back down.

My first reaction was like, oh, groan. Like, it's really a pain in the butt to go down this kind of terrain. It's very difficult. I recognized and acknowledged that we were in this repeating dynamic of thinking that we were almost at the top when we weren't. I said, look, you know, if you feel strongly about it, let's climb back down. I don't mind doing that. I would prefer to continue going up, but I'm open either way.

And he agreed and we kept going, cold, hungry, and recognizing that we've got minutes, not hours, but minutes of light left in the day. The going had gotten harder. There was more vertical places where we actually had to climb.

We'd gotten to this one spot that was an outcropping of rock, almost as if there was a horse, like a stone horse, jumping out of the cliff. He and I could both sit on that, like straddle it. A safe place to just sit and talk and look at each other and not be worrying about sliding. He had expressed that he wanted to go first, and I was like, whatever you want.

he had passed that that rock outcropping and i had just gotten up to it and and he was he's kind of nervous about the next step he's like i don't i don't know where to go next i'm i'm not i'm not sure where to go i don't know why don't you come back down when you come back down let's let's talk it over so we came back down and we talked it over one more time surely we have to be at the top we've climbed like a mile or something this thing is just not that high

We decided to continue on and he would again go first. At this point, I would say we had 10, 15 minutes before even eyes that are adjusted to the dark wouldn't be able to see anything.

So he started up and he went about six feet and he got to that same spot and he said, "Oh, I'm, uh, uh," and he started speaking really fast. He said, "I'm really, really nervous about this next step. I'm not sure where to, I'm not sure where I should put my foot." I think it was speaking more rapidly and it became immediately clear to me in that moment that he should come back, we should sit on that rock and wait till morning.

We had fucked up and the only safe thing to do in that moment was to sit still on that rock and wait till it was light. I didn't want to blurt that out and scare him even more. So I was waiting for a moment, like a moment where he paused between words and I was going to say, "Hey, John, come on back. Come on back to the rock." And that's when he fell.

And he slid right past me and I leaned over and tried to grab him with my hands. He was sliding so I could hear. There was a moment. And I just felt like just the slightest wisp of the fabric of his jacket. So he slid down past me and out of sight. There was the sound of rocks sliding for a second or two and then nothing.

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The shape of the land that was leading to me or to us not being able to see the top also meant that I couldn't see the bottom. You know, a wave of panic and terror came over me. It basically was nothing I could do. I had already just realized we were stuck. We can't move. A ripple of... I'm not even sure what to call it, but a very horrible feeling

rippled throughout my entire body when I thought the word death, when I thought that John might be dead. And I lost my grip on the rock. I started slipping and I realized I would die if I thought that he was dead because I would fall off of this rock. So it was not possible for me to entertain the idea that he was dead. So I decided he's not dead.

You can't name something and then not be thinking about it. But that's exactly what I did. In that moment, I just made this very clear decision that I was going to repress any thought of him being dead. Basically, I spent the night on that rock while the ocean beat down below. The night was very repetitive, repetitive.

I cycled through several experiences and I'll describe what that cycle was like a bit. I was cold, so I searched through my backpack to find whatever I could get for warmth in there. And I found another t-shirt. I found two plastic bags. So I took off my shoes, put the bags over my socks, and I put my shoes back on. And I had a journal, a lighter,

a tiny flashlight, a cliff bar, and about six ounces of water. I had decided that John was injured only. He might be unconscious or semi-conscious, but that it might help if I yelled to him. If there's a one in a thousand chance that this would be useful to him right now, I got to do that. I was yelling down, you know, hey John,

I know you're probably hurting, but we're gonna get through this. We're gonna get help. Q is gonna come looking for us. Hang in there, buddy. We can do this. I'm here for you. I think after a while, I think I was just telling him like, I love you. You're safe. It's gonna be okay. I wasn't convinced that I would be able to do anything once it was morning. There was no guarantee that I would be in any better shape when the sun came up.

There was also no guarantee that I was going to be able to stay for 12 hours on this rock without falling off. And I would drift into these waking dreams or just nod off. The dream would be usually something totally bland and normal, but safe. Like I would dream that I was walking on a sidewalk and I would have this immediate deep sense of relief.

because I wasn't perched on the edge of a cliff anymore. And when my body in the dream went off of a vertical axis, I would immediately wake up because I was slipping off the rock and I would have a jolt of adrenaline and grab onto the rock with both of my feet and my knees and my elbows and my hands, smashing my knees, my chin, my elbows against this rock

I don't know, dozens of times that night. There were boats in the ocean. I could see these boats in the ocean. And I thought, well, maybe these folks can see my flashlight. And so I would signal SOS with the pen light, this little tiny flashlight, to these boats off in the ocean. SOS in Morse code is, I still don't know. Three dashes, three dots, three dashes, or the opposite of that.

I just kept alternating. So I signaled OS, OS, OS, OS, OS, OS. And I was taking pages out of the journal and lighting them on fire and tossing them down the cliff, like hoping that maybe somebody on the boat would see the burning page. It is definitely safe to say that no one on a boat in that ocean saw anything that I was doing.

These were definitely long shot behaviors, but they were the best that I had available. I was also yelling to Q and his girlfriend in case that they had come looking for us, either via the high trail or the low trail. Later in the night, it was, please, please just look for me. Later in the night, the early hours of the morning, it was, what the fuck? Where are you? I'm right here. Where are you?

In his defense, if he had come looking for us, no way he would have found me. I was way off trail and just cycling through the only things I could think of to do, which were all really futile. And then just long stretches would pass where there was like nothing really happening. My voice was hoarse. I lost my voice halfway through the night. I felt like I needed to stay focused on something because that staved off the panic.

And then I would close my eyes and I would drift off and I would be someplace absolutely heavenly, like a porch on a chair. And it would be the most profound sense of relief to just be sitting on a chair. I would realize as I was sitting on the chair how profoundly tired I was. So I would sleep, I would slump back. I would just lean back in the chair and close my eyes in the dream and

and drift to one side of the chair and when my body went off of the vertical axis I would jerk awake and be freezing my ass off on a rock on a cliff overlooking a merciless ocean and I would grab onto that rock because it was the only thing safe

I would wake up and I would have a jolt of adrenaline. I grabbed onto the rock. The first few times you get a jolt of adrenaline in a short period of time, it feels like a burst of energy and your muscles get strong and you have a lot of strength. But like the 20th time you get a jolt of adrenaline in muscles that really have nothing left in them, it just hurts. It's like kind of like getting electrocuted. So that's how the night went.

Eventually, there was a tiny amount of light. Eventually, it got high enough to where the sun was actually in view and it was shining directly on me and I started to feel warm. You know, slowly my limbs started to kind of come back online and I was narrating my experience to John as part of my trying to be comforting to him. All right, I'm going to have a little food now, figure out what to do next. And I...

realized I needed to make a decision. Are this either gonna go up or go down? And I would literally picture where I would put my feet and hands as I was moving away from the spot where I was at. And each time I would get to the point where the spot where John fell and I would have a ripple of panic go through my body. My breathing would get really fast, my heart rate got really fast.

I wasn't even able to imagine it without losing control of my body. And as unpleasant as it seemed to go down, it was better. I took a long, deep breath and headed down. If I wasn't paying attention to where each foot and each hand were going, then I could slip and die. It was like the universe was yelling, pay attention, and it was...

Impossible to not listen to that. As my mind was wandering, I just latched on to these two songs over and over, just looping in my head in the place of thoughts. One, a couple lines of the song, I heard it through the grapevine.

I heard it through the grapevine, da-da-da, not much longer would you be mine. Oh, I heard it through the grapevine. There was another song going through my head at that yoga center that I'd been going to. They did a really simple chant. Asatoma, Satgamaya, da-da-da-da, there's more to it. That was a

profound experience. I really viscerally learned how powerful and useful that can be when dealing with a mind out of control. Probably was about 45 minutes before I could see the shoreline. After a few more minutes, I found a tiny droplet of blood on a rock. And I got a little farther and I found a larger drop of blood

And I got a little farther and I could see this clump of color that didn't look like rock color. And I kept going, getting closer, farther down, and I found a shoe. The last, say, 100 yards, it got more and more clear that I was in less and less immediate physical danger.

And immediately proportional to that, right along with it, my resolve that I wasn't going to entertain the possibility that he was dead went away. So each step that I took that I was closer to not being in danger by panicking, I couldn't keep that thought at bay any longer. That mass of color that I could see at the bottom gradually took form and it was John

He was laying face down with his head on one of his arms and his other arm was in a very unusual angle and I thought, "Just taking a nap." God, what a guy, what a casual response to this dramatic situation and all this stuff. He's just taking a nap. And I'm getting closer and it's more and more obvious that he's not taking a nap.

And I get even closer and I can see that there's a large dark circle around his head on the rocks. I get right up next to him and it's a circle of blood and it's not fresh blood. It's thick like it was spilled a while ago and...

I've been yelling to this guy for 14, 15 hours that everything's going to be okay and that I'm here and that he's not alone and that I love him and that I care for him and he's safe. And I reached out my hand to touch his head, his hair.

And when my hand made contact with his hair, like a jolt of electricity or adrenaline went up that arm because his hair wasn't soft. It was hard. And I sort of lurched back. I closed my eyes for a second and I thought, what if he's not actually dead? And he's like almost dead.

What if he's like just extremely injured? He's got like one tenth of a percent of life left in him, but it's possible that he could come back if he got medical care, if he got the right sort of attention, if I did something right now, maybe. What if? And how fucked up would it be if I went back to the beach and we got 911 and we came to him and they said, oh, too bad you didn't put your finger on his neck an hour ago. We probably could have saved him. What if?

I reach down and I put my fingers on his neck to feel for a pulse. I had never before and have never since felt anything like that. It was cold and hard. Flesh is never hard like that. It's never...

cold like that. It scared me all the way through my body, like from those fingers that were touching his neck all the way through to the toes, my toes. I have felt that sensation for precisely one third of one second once in my life. And it was two decades ago. And I can feel it right now saying it as clear as day.

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At that point, there was no longer any room for doubting. He's dead. And that was the first time in my life that I'd seen a dead human.

You know, this is death. Hello, death. I've been hearing about you for a long time. I gotta walk down this trail back to the beach, find Q and his girlfriend, and continue on living in a world without John. The rules of reality were changing, and I was trying to get acquainted with these new rules. And it's unsettling. It's unnerving.

Like I was talking to this guy hours ago. He was talking to me. This body was animated. It was moving and thinking and feeling just the last time I saw it. The last time I saw him. This in front of me, this is not that. This is different. This is a shape that's very similar. It's the same shape. Everything looks the same except it's different.

completely different. Should I say something? Should I do something? Is there a right thing that you're supposed to do? I got up and said goodbye and that I was sorry and I headed down the trail to get back to the beach.

And I got back to the beach and I looked around for Q and his girlfriend. I couldn't find them. I went to the parking lot. I looked for their truck and I couldn't find it. And I was trying to make sense of that data. They didn't just leave. This guy came up to me and he said, were you with the hiker on the trail? I said, yeah. Is there anything I can do? I think I'm going to call 911. 911.

For one thing, Q and his girlfriend left. They had their talk that night. John and I never came back to the campsite. We never came back to get our backpack and sleeping bag, etc. We didn't come back in the morning, and they didn't come looking for us. They just went back to San Francisco without us. Who would do that? Why would they do that? This random guy finds a dead body on the shoreline trail and doesn't call 911?

It was just weird. I was so tired and depleted by the whole situation that I had no... I didn't really have any resistance to anything anymore. So I call 911, and one by one these different emergency folks arrived. The police officer asked me to make a written statement.

I start to write down what happened and I can see that I have one I have three-quarters of a page to write down what happened It was really hard to decipher to determine What details I was supposed to include in this thing. I wonder if I'm gonna go to jail I wonder if I'm if I'm if people are gonna think that I killed him maybe I maybe I did and

Maybe I pressured him into doing this thing and what I write in this statement right now could mean the difference between me going to jail or not. Like I'm in such a twisted, fucked up state right now that I think they're just going to believe me because who could lie when they were so just obliterated.

And then I got to the part of the statement about almost to the bottom of the page and I start crying. A sloppy kind of out of control kind of crying. It was really scary to cry like that. It was scary to be, to feel so much pain all at once. I calmed down. I finished the statement. I gave it to the police officer and then I was just standing there. Am I free to go? He said, yes, you can go now. And I said, can I have a ride?

He's like, oh, and he's not happy to say this. I can tell. But he says, oh, I'm sorry. I have to stay here until we're done here. It's going to be a few hours and then I could give you a ride back to 101. You can't even give me a ride down to the end of the road? And he was like, oh, well, OK. It was like a five minute drive. So he gives me a ride down there. I get to the

restaurant, he drops me off. I'm standing there on the corner with my little day pack. I got to do some more problem solving. It's not over. And so I'm like, oh, well, I guess I need to hitchhike back to Petaluma and catch the bus from Petaluma back into San Francisco. So I go into the restaurant. I use the bathroom. I clean up. I make myself as presentable as I can because part of the deal when hitchhiking is that you really...

It's better if you don't look too scary. I basically want to die. I feel like I'm half dead and I want to just be completely dead. And what instead what I'm going to do is try to convince someone that I'm safe and worthy of being given a ride.

So whatever, I turn and I put my thumb out for the first three cars that go by. And the third of those first three cars that went by was a white, a small white hatchback. And there was a woman driving. I made eye contact with her as she drove by.

turned around. I looked up the road and she had pulled over like quite a ways up, but I was just looking at her car. I knew that she was looking at me in the rear view mirror and she was questioning both herself and me about whether or not this was a good idea. I didn't want her to rush into the decision. And she, I think there was a sunroof and she reached her hand up and she, she waved me, she waved me on and I jogged up there and

I'm trying to get back to San Francisco and I'm hoping to at least get a ride to Petaluma. She said, hop in. I said, thanks. Thanks for the ride. And she said, well, you really looked like you needed a ride. And I said, yeah, I've had a hard night. I said, where are you headed? Like, what are you up to? She said, well, I'm actually on my way to seminary school.

And I thought, seminary school, huh? I said, I think you're going to do really well. Dropped me off in Petaluma. She was headed the other way. And I waited and I caught a bus and I immediately fell asleep and immediately was dreaming of being back on the rock again.

And in the dream, I was tilting and I was starting to slide off the rock. I jerked awake again with another shot of adrenaline down both arms and both legs, which burned. I thought, maybe I'll never be able to sleep again. What if I dream of being on that rock every time I go to sleep? I've never been afraid of the possibility of not being able to sleep.

Turns out my fears were unfounded and I have never dreamed of being on that rock again. Yeah, I took the bus and then another bus and I walked and I got back. I called Q and I also called the woman that he used to live with. In that moment, she was

the warmest, kindest human being that I knew she was who I wanted to be around. I think if I had the choice between going to meet up with Michael Jordan, the whole all-star team, the whole dream team, and going to stay with this woman, it would have been the easiest choice I could have ever made. And I certainly would have gone to stay with her.

Fortunately, she answered the phone and I said, can I come over? And she said, yeah, Q is here. I went over there and I went into the kitchen. I sat down and, you know, I went in and she gave me a big hug. He gave me a hug and I told him what happened. And then I just looked at Q and I said, where did you go? And what I meant to say was, what the fuck, man?

How could you possibly fucking leave, you piece of shit? But I didn't have the energy to say that. And he explained he thought that John and I had just gotten into that we'd maybe met some people and we'd just gone off and had an adventure and he didn't think anything was wrong. And he was just stunned. I could see him. He was just scared kid. I didn't I didn't.

labor, the point I didn't write him about it. I never harassed him or anything. That night I took a bath. I slept. I don't really remember the next two weeks very well, but I have just one other memory of California of those two weeks. I was in the Mission District. I was just walking down the street. At one point I was crossing the street and I started to feel happy, like really, really happy.

And the thought that went through my head was, "I'm not dead. I'm alive. Holy cow. I'm alive." I just won the lottery. I won the best thing ever and it is to be just alive. To be able to cross the street, to breathe in, to exhale, to get a glass of water is just a phenomenal gift and I am so freaking happy

And lucky. And I'd love to tell you that that's always stayed with me and I've been grateful for life ever since. But that's not true. What has stayed with me, though, is just a general recognition that it's just lucky. Everyone knows this, and I knew that before, but it's different now. It has a different kind of weight. The rest of it's, you know, the specific details are kind of a blurr.

I didn't have the kind of community that I, in that time period, knew that I needed. I wasn't doing what I needed to be doing. I wasn't in the right place. I wasn't with the right people. I wasn't... it wasn't right. So I decided to go home to my father and stepmother's house. I started changing things. Got into Buddhism, yoga, and then Buddhism shortly after that.

I went to see John's parents. It was a few months later I went to see them and I learned all this stuff about him. He was like a fascinating character. In his late teens he got into hopping trains and he went out west twice. Met the Dalai Lama. Just an interesting guy. They were very kind. They were still in a lot of pain and they just wanted to hear the story basically.

There is yet one more relevant detail. Q, after I went back to New York, I didn't talk to him again until also a couple of years ago. We didn't say a word to each other. We exchanged zero communication for that 15 years. I think, yeah, he found me and he sent me a message like, hey, what's up? And I was basically like, nothing's really up until we have a conversation. And in that conversation, I was like, hey, man, that really sucked. And I needed more of a conversation.

meaningful and concrete apology from you. He was great, owned his piece in that. And he was able to hear my feelings and yeah, it was good. I started working in, um, as a home health aid, started working as a home health aid, um, taking care of elderly or infirm folks. And eventually I did some hospice care as well.

I wanted to come to terms with the fact that we all die. You know, I was at this time, I was a 20-year-old white man in America. So basically, I was under the impression that everything was made for me and that I would be successful at everything and everything was going to be easy and all doors would open for me. And I don't mean that consciously, but it's something about recognizing that we're going to die and we're not going to know when

causes us to live in a way that is just better. More reverent, more respectful of what's important to us, more kind, more compassionate. A human being can be born and it can just go for a century or it could go for a few minutes. You don't deserve or get to choose or how that's gonna go. It's the fragility of life, like the gift of it all.

It was like the universe just like reached down and just grabbed me by both shoulders and like, you know, gave me a real good jolt. It was like, what are you doing? Why are you doing it? What's important to you? And what the hell are you waiting for?

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