My own personal sense of anaesthesia is that it's NOT like sleeping or being stoned. Coming out from under, and pre and post operative premed is much more dream like.<p>Actual anaesthesia for me, is time which simply doesn't exist. In dream state I may have wildly atemporal belief in the passage of time, but there is some sense of sequence and flow. Anecdata of 1, anaesthesia is different, you're not there.<p>I argue the mind goes.. away. Into abeyance. Ceases to cogitate in ways which dreams in sleep differ.<p>I try to avoid general anaesthesia. The anaesthetists I've talked to say in geriatrics, what comes back is often not as much as went in. Based on some pre and post surgery interactions with older people I believe them.<p>The effects of anaesthesia last weeks. Bears thinking about.