Off-duty pilot attempts to crash plane to escape bad trip on mushrooms Unsplash: Andrew Palmer \/ LinkedInAn off-duty pilot facing 83 counts of attempted murder after he tried to crash a plane claims he was having a bad trip on hallucinogenic mushrooms. A 44-year-old off-duty pilot is facing 83 counts of attempted murder after trying to switch off an Alaska Airlines fuel supply mid-flight. Joseph Emerson was seated in the plane\u2019s cockpit when he reportedly attempted to pull two handles to cut the engine\u2019s fuel but was subdued by the crew and arrested upon landing. Now, Emerson has revealed to the New York Times from a jailhouse interview that the incident took place after he allegedly consumed hallucinogenic \u201cmagic\u201d mushrooms two days prior. Having taken the mushrooms during a weekend getaway commemorating the death of his best friend in 2018, Emerson claims he was experiencing a bad trip in which he didn\u2019t know what was real. Texting a friend that he was \u201chaving a panic attack\u201d, Emerson ultimately determined the best course of action would be to crash the plane he was onboard in hopes of waking up. \u201cI thought I would stop both engines, the plane would start to head towards a crash, and I would wake up,\u201d he said, revealing he had been struggling with depression for months and had not slept for 40 hours prior to the flight. His trip, however, continued even after Emerson\u2019s first attempt to \u201cwake up\u201d was stopped. Upon descent, he allegedly tried to open an emergency exit so that he could jump out and later proceeded to strip down, urinate on himself, and masturbate while in the airport detention room. \u201cI am horrified that those actions put myself at risk and others at risk,\u201d Emerson said. \u201cThat crew got dealt a situation there\u2019s no manual, checklist, or procedure that\u2019s been written for.\u201d Emerson has since pleaded not guilty to all 83 counts of attempted murder and has been relieved of all duties by Alaska Airlines; \u201cI don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll ever fly an airplane again. I really don\u2019t. And I had a moment where that kind of became obvious.\u201d Be sure to check out all the latest entertainment news on our page here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Off-duty pilot attempts to crash plane to escape bad trip on mushrooms Unsplash: Andrew Palmer \/ LinkedInAn off-duty pilot facing 83 counts of attempted murder after he tried to crash a plane claims he was having a bad trip on hallucinogenic mushrooms. A 44-year-old off-duty pilot is facing 83 counts of attempted murder after trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}