There is indeed a distinction between the two things njtt is contrasting, that is, the following two questions:
Q1: What are NDEs?
Q2: What are the statistics on atheists’ responses to having experienced an NDE?
This thread is about Q2. You’re trying to answer Q1.
A1 to Q1: There are no NDEs, so that they are separate or individual experiences for human beings, compared to all other human experiences we already know about.
A2 to Q2: No self respecting atheist would change their position on rejecting unsubstantiated claims for superstitious or imaginary claims of supernatural entities just because someone claimed they had a so called Near Death Experience — that they can’t define or quantify or describe in any way possible.
There are no Near Death anything. There are only physical experiences.
Nobody is even asking the questions you’re answering.
Especially if they were Scottish.
That would be a “Near Heath Experience,” which as it doesn’t rhyme or sound like a NDE in any way, is never mentioned even as a senseless joke. It applies to men who were nearly kilt.
Cecil did do a column on “Do near-death experiences prove there is life after death?” but it doesn’t directly address the OP’s question.
Atheists aren’t necessarily rational. The only thing we have in common is a lack of belief in gods. In fact, the most common type of atheist I know is the conspiracy theory variety who thinks Christianity is a plot by Illuminati to make us pliable sheep. I know quite a few who believe in ghosts and probably NDEs. Skepticism is probably more prevalent among atheists, but I wouldn’t bet a lot of money on it.
I think I’d qualify as a data point here. Done mushrooms a few times and I would rate at least one of those times as pretty high on the “spiritual experience”-o-meter (though I hesitate to use the word “spiritual” - it seems tacky and too vague).
In any case, much of the sense of wonder about the life the universe and everything fades once the immediate effects wear off, but in my experience there were some long lasting positive effects; most of them to do with getting some much needed fresh perspective on myself, coupled with some strong memories of my youth. In other words, most of the significant insights were internal ~ related to myself and my memories and personality ~ rather than external. Which is sort of what I would expect, as an Atheist. 
Thank you for that story. I was reading about a set of therapists who are beginning (very tightly controlled) trials on using LSD to induce a transcendental state in patients to try and raise their mood long-term.
There are a lot of stories of the patients involved having had “religious experiences” that still resonate in their lives after months and sometimes years of follow-up study.
So I had been wondering if they specifically chose their patients to pick only people with a strong belief in a something-or-other to relate those feelings to, or did the atheists in the group just nod and smile and think of england? What if you were a strong atheist and you got those feelings? What would they ‘tie-in’ to in your psyche? Would it just not work at all and you wouldn’t get any happy overwhelming feelings of oneness or peace? I tried asking a few therapists/psychologists about it, and they all totally missed the point of my question and got hung up on ‘drugs are bad for depressed people, m’kay?’
So you did feel happier, just related those feelings to memories and to your own sense of self, rather than to an outside force/being. That’s awesome.
THAT is something I think should be studied. What differences those mental states make in someone who has a very strong sense of self-determination vs people who have very strong senses of other-determination. “I ate the cookie because I was weak-willed” vs “Satan made me eat the cookie.”