Off-Duty Pilot Accused Of Trying To Crash A Plane Says He Was Tripping On Magic Mushrooms & Was Trying To Wake Himself Up

The off-duty pilot who tried to shut down the engines on an Alaska Airlines affiliate flight from Washington to California last month is telling his side of the story.

44-year-old Joseph Emerson was seated in the plane's jump seat when he tried to pull two handles that would have cut fuel to the plane's engines. The reason he did this? He was tripping balls and had been for a couple of days.

Joseph David Emerson, 44, is accused of attempting to disable the engines of a plane. (Dave Killen/Pool / Fox News)

He was hoping to send the plane into a nosedive that would have woke him up from his hallucinogenic state, a state that he had been in since consuming magic mushrooms two days before the flight.

"I thought it would stop both engines, the plane would start to head towards a crash, and I would wake up," Emerson told The New York Times from the jail he's being held in without bail.

Emerson had been dealing with some depression, but says he wasn't trying to hurt anyone that day. He had taken the mushrooms during a weekend getaway with his friend to commemorate the death of his best friend, who died in 2018.

It was the first time he had ever tried psychedelic mushrooms and prior to boarding the plane on October 22, he was having a hard time telling if what he was experiencing was real or a dream.

Thankfully, the pilots were able to stop his attempt. Emerson was cuffed by crew members, but still reached for an emergency door in an attempt to jump out of the plane and wake himself up.

This Is Up There As Far As Bad Trips Go

None of those attempts to "wake up" worked. Neither did the attempts inside the airport detention room, where Emerson is said to have stripped naked, tried to jump out of a window, urinated on himself and masturbated.

He likely finally woke up in jail when he realized that he was being charged with 83 counts of attempted murder. He's currently being held without bail and has been relieved of all duties at Alaska Airlines.

And you thought you had a bad trip that one time in college. If you didn't try to take down a plane, or jump out of an emergency door, you probably didn't have all that bad of a trip.