An off-duty pilot said he tried to down a plane to 'wake up' from a bad magic mushrooms trip

• 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.

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 a passenger in the cockpit jump seat 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 in which he felt 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.

Emerson said he'd consumed the psychedelic mushrooms with friends during a trip to commemorate his best friend's death, The Times reported.

He said that he had been experiencing mental-health issues for some time but didn't seek psychiatric help or get a prescription for antidepressants because he feared losing his job.

Pilots sometimes avoid getting mental-health diagnoses or treatments because flying regulations often ground them if they're seeking mental-health help.

"A lot of us aren't as forthcoming as we otherwise would be," Emerson told The Times.

Emerson said that during the weekend getaway, his friend proposed taking mushrooms, which he had never taken before. He said his friends told him the effects of the drug would only last a few hours and would not show up on a drug test.

After consuming them around a fire, Emerson became "fearful" of his friends and "started to have this feeling that this wasn't real," The Times reported.

"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 the plane's 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 New York Times 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 people who are vulnerable to psychotic disorders can experience prolonged effects, The Times said.

Emerson, 44, accepts that 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."