Dax Shepard recalls bizarre feeling he had when he realized he was 'seconds away from dying'
Dax Shepard has revealed what was going through his head during a horrifying near-death experience.
During an interview for his Armchair Expert podcast on February 9, Shepard imparted a story about riding in the back of a friend’s car when he was younger.
The 51-year-old, who has had a fair amount of controversial moments in the past few months, such as not being a 'fan' of his wife Kristen Bell, talking about 'dating' Sabrina Carpenter, or offering to freeze his daughter's eggs, opened up about the terrifying moment.
It came right as his co-host Monica Padman, 38, and guest Kaley Cuoco, 40, were talking about not having had a near-death experience.
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Cuoco explained that she wished she’d had one to be able to know what other people go through and think at the time.
"No. Is it weird that I kinda wish I did? I want one," the Big Bang Theory star said, adding: "Because I wanna see what these people are ... what are they seeing?"
That’s when Shepard revealed the scary incident he went through when he was in the12th grade in high school.
He admitted: "I don't know what the definition is. But, I have had the moment, which is among the most unique feelings I've ever had in my life, where I went, 'Oh, I'm about to die. I'm like seconds away from dying'.”
Shepard explained: "I was in the back seat of a car. Like I had folded the seats down in the back of a Ford Probe, in like a hatchback, and my friend was driving. We were coming back from Toledo, back up to Detroit."
The actor said it was ‘late’ at night, and he had work ‘super early in the morning’, so he asked his friend: "Hey, I'm gonna sleep in the back. Are you good to drive?"
According to the actor, his friend confirmed he was ‘totally fine’ to drive and had the ‘cruise control on 85’.
"I'm like back there, I'm listening, and the road was really rhythmic," Shepard said, when suddenly he ‘heard gravel hitting the side of the car’.
Explaining to a wide-eyed Cuoco, Shepard went on to reveal that the car had ‘gone off the road’ and ‘started to go sideways.’
At this point, he was sure he was going to die.
"It's just pine trees lining that interstate in Michigan. And I started to go ... to grab the wheel and there was a moment I just knew it was too far gone. Like we had gone completely sideways. I laid back down and then ... we just launched in the air and we started rolling right down the highway," Shepard shared.
However, he said he wasn’t scared. In fact, he found the thought of dying ‘very calm’.
"I definitely had this moment where I was like, 'Oh, wow, I'm gonna die in a second.' And the feeling was shockingly comforting. Like, that I remember," he said.
Shepard said the ‘chemicals’ in his brain made him ‘kinda weirdly at total peace with it’, adding: "Then we just rolled like 10 times, ended up upside down. We did not hit a tree.
"The car was flat. We crawled out the windows … He was okay, and I was okay."
However, for the next couple of days, he was living in a surreal phase of life.
"Because I already went, 'Oh, I'm dead', and I accepted it. For the next three days, I'd just be places that I felt very peculiar like, 'Am I dead? I know I died.' That was the weirdest part of the whole thing," the podcast host said.
But still, it impacts him.
"It was highly memorable. This may shock you, but I've never been able to fall asleep in a car ever since. So I can never let the other person take a turn driving," Shepard said, adding: "There's no way I could sleep with someone else driving. That's a wrap on that."
Britt Jones