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- An off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot is accused of trying to turn off a plane's engines mid-flight.
- He said that he did it because he was trying to "wake up" from a bad psychedelic mushroom trip.
- The pilot suffered from mental health issues but said he didn't seek help as he feared losing his job.
An off-duty pilot accused of trying to crash an Alaska Airlines flight said he attempted to down the plane to "wake up" from a bad psychedelic trip.
Joseph Emerson, a pilot for the airline, was sitting in the cockpit jump seat as a passenger when he tried to turn off the plane's engines mid-flight.
Emerson told The New York Times that he had taken psychedelic mushrooms two days before the flight and had remained in a hallucinogenic state where he felt he was trapped in a dream.
"I thought it would stop both engines, the plane would start to head towards a crash, and I would wake up," he told the outlet.
Other pilots in the cockpit described seeing him grow agitated, and telling them: "I'm not ok."
Emerson is now facing dozens of attempted murder charges for the 83 other people on board. He has pleaded not guilty.
The pilot said that he had consumed the psychedelic mushrooms with friends during a trip to commemorate the death of his best friend, per The Times.
He said that he had been suffering mental health issues for some time but feared seeking psychiatric help or getting antidepressants because he was afraid of losing his job.
Pilots avoid getting mental health treatment because flying regulations often ground them if they're seeking help for mental diagnoses.
"A lot of us aren't as forthcoming as we otherwise would be," Emerson told The Times.
Emerson said during the weekend getaway, his friend proposed taking mushrooms, which he had never taken before. His friends told him the effects of the drug would only last a few hours and would not show up on a drug test, he said.
After consuming them around a fire, he became "fearful" of his friends and "started to have this feeling that this wasn't real," per The Times.
"I thought of a lot of traumatic things in that time where I was like, 'Am I dead? Is this hell?'" he said. "I'm reliving that trauma."
While on the flight, Emerson attempted to pull two fire handles that would have cut off fuel to its engines, but other pilots grabbed his wrists and wrestled him away before carrying out an emergency landing in Portland.
After the incident, Emerson asked a flight attendant to handcuff him and, at one point, tried to open the emergency door and jump out of the plane, hoping that would wake him up, flight attendants told The Times.
Once in police custody, he told the paper that he repeatedly tried to wake himself up by stripping naked, trying to jump out a window, urinating on himself, and trying to make himself ejaculate.
He told authorities during an interview that he had not slept in 40 hours and believed he was having a "nervous breakdown," according to the criminal complaint.
While the effects of a psychedelic trip typically last several hours for most people, some researchers say this can be prolonged in people who are vulnerable to a psychotic disorder, The Times said.
Emerson, 44, accepts his career as a pilot could now be over.
"I don't know if I'll ever fly an airplane again," he told The Times. "I really don't. And I had a moment where that kind of became obvious. And I had to grieve that."