This all reminds me of The Serpent and The Rainbow, a book which explained "zombies" as people in a drug-induced torpor that passes for death, all in the context of Haitian religion and history.

Source: https://boingboing.net/2023/06/19/woman-found-alive-in-coffin-during-own-wake-definitely-dead-this-time.html

With the help of the Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky and the cartoonist Roland Topor, he duly turned a post-war period still weighed with conservative torpor, into creative years.

Source: https://worldcrunch.com/focus/new-russia-attack-ukraine-backfire