Alaska pilot speaks from jail: I thought ‘I would wake up’ after trying to shut off engines mid-flight, he tells the NYT

By Jason Kravarik, CNN

(CNN) — An Alaska Airlines pilot accused of trying to shut off the engines of a plane midflight told the New York Times he was affected by psychedelic mushrooms he’d taken two days before the flight.

Joseph Emerson, 44, told the Times in a story published Friday he took the mushrooms during a weekend getaway in Washington to commemorate the death of his best friend. He thought he was dreaming while commuting back to California in the cockpit jump seat of a Horizon Air flight on October 22.

According to an affidavit filed by prosecutors, Emerson told investigators he “had consumed ‘magic mushrooms’ approximately 48 hours prior” to the incident.

“I thought it would stop both engines, the plane would start to head towards a crash, and I would wake up,” Emerson told the Times from a visitation room at the county jail in Portland, Oregon, where he is charged with 83 counts of attempted murder.

The pilot said he never took mushrooms before and ingested them at the insistence of an attendee of the getaway.

Emerson said he has dealt with persistent depression since the 2018 death of his friend. At bedtime that night he said he began to feel uneasy, as if his friends may hurt him. “I felt fearful of them,” he said. “I started to have this feeling that this wasn’t real,” Emerson told the New York Times.

Emerson said he began to worry about the safety of his wife and children along with an estranged relationship with his brother. “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.”

Johns Hopkins professor Matt Johnson, who studies psychedelics among other drugs, told CNN last month it is unlikely psilocybin would have remained in the pilot’s system 48 hours after he took the drug sometimes referred to as “magic mushrooms.”

Psilocybin’s lingering effects, sleep deprivation and existing depression could’ve created “a perfect storm,” Johnson said, in which Emerson was experiencing behavioral changes or derealization, which is a feeling of being detached from one’s surroundings that has been described as a movie-like or dreamlike state. 

On the day of the flight, which departed from Everett, Washington, his dreamlike state persisted aboard the plane, Emerson told the Times. He texted a friend who dropped him off at the airport he was “having a panic attack.”

“Send love… I need to be home,” Emerson said he replied. His friend added, “do your breathing exercises,” which Emerson said he heard as a text-to-audio message in his earbud.

That’s when he threw off the cockpit headset and yelled to the pilots for help. When nothing happened, Emerson said he pulled the shut-off handles, convinced he was imagining the whole thing.

While cuffed by a flight attendant in the back of the plane, Emerson said he sent several texts, including one to his wife: “I’ve made a big mistake.”

Emerson told the New York Times his confusion continued while in a detention room at the airport in Portland, where he stripped naked, urinated on himself and tried to jump out of a window in an attempt to wake up.

Emerson told the Times he wants to be transparent and he never intended to hurt anyone. He admitted to struggling with lingering depression in silence, fearing he could be grounded from flying.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever fly an airplane again,” Emerson said. “I really don’t. And I had a moment where that kind of became obvious. And I had to grieve that.”

An arraignment for Emerson is scheduled for November 30.

CNN has reached out to Emerson’s attorney for comment.

CNN’s Pete Muntean, Cheri Mossburg, Josh Campbell and Lauren Mascarenhas, Elizabeth Wolfe, Dakin Andone, Taylor Romine, Holmes Lybrand, Sarah Moon, Jeffrey Kopp and Veronica Miracle contributed to this report.

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