Pilot who ‘tried to shut off engines mid-flight was high on magic mushrooms’
Pilot who ‘tried to shut off engines mid-flight was high on magic mushrooms’
Joseph Emerson, who was off-duty at the time, was restrained by Alaska Airlines cabin crew after he tried to open an emergency exit
Terrible journalism. He was sleep deprived after having taken mushrooms 48hrs before, and not slept for 40hrs.
Hey, gotta demonize something and sleep deprivation is boring.
More road accidents happen due to sleep deprivation than alcohol, so this tracks. But we can't have war on sleep deprivation, can we?
Holy shit, how much did he take? I can do grams from sundown to sun up and all I want to do after that is go to bed.
Sure, you want to go to bed but can you really sleep? The first few times I couldn't sleep at all and had to usually wait until the following evening. I am used to it now, so sleep isn't a huge issue like it once was.
thought he was having a nervous breakdown
Is there really a difference between thinking you're having a nervous breakdown and actually having one?
Btw, saying this as a huge fan of psychedelics, please don't take any shrooms and drive. Or fly. Or do anything other than lie peacefully in a quiet place and explore your mind.
Well I wouldn't go that far. What about a nice walk outside with a friend or sitting in front of a fire or a jam session, just to name a few activities.
I've taken a lot of magic mushrooms and I've never tried to stop an airplane.
Can I ask…. How many shrooms do you have to take for it to go 48 hours like that?
I'm almost betting on mixing drugs, the shrooms were just the thing that seemed the least illegal.
It depends on the person, but trips like that may take a fuck ton, multiple times. I have heard of multi-day trips before that were caused because of doses higher than 15-20g. Napkin math puts that in the 150mg-200mg range of actual psilocybin. Regardless, it would be processed out of the body in about 24hrs. I am personally skeptical of multi-day trips, but they probably do happen.
There are plenty of caveats, so give me time to explain.
The effects on the brain after a trip can go into the multi-day range. For my trips I take between 3-3.5g depending on how I feel. I'll peak about an hour after and trip fairly hard for 3-5 hours. (It's also to be noted that the shrooms I grow are generally on the mid-high end of potency.) The afterglow, or come-down, takes another 4 hours or so and I'll still see a literal glow around things or mild visuals. This is where my super-social personality comes out, and I love that part. If the night is going to be long, I'll probably end up eating in in upwards of 10g more through the evening just to maintain very long come-down. Peaking again is possible, but it's unlikely.
For a couple of days after, I still feel something. It's more of a mental clarity or an alternate perspective on things. It's hard to describe.
Edit: It's speculated to act similar to a SSRI antidepressant in that regard. It reduces serotonin uptake for those receptors and increases serotonin availability in other parts of the brain.
What is happening, and from what I understand, is that psilocybin is an extreme 5-HT2A agonist. It saturates those receptors and tends to stick around for a bit when it does. This results in rapid tolerance to psilocybin since there won't be any receptors left for it to "agonize". It can take a week or more of abstinence to get the same level of trip with a similar dose.
You can game your body for a little bit, but you have to double-down on the dose. If you tripped yesterday off of 5g, you would need to eat 10g today and 20g the next and so on. For a 48hr trip, assuming his reaction is "normal" (if there is such a thing) he would of had to double down every 4-6 hours or so. Either way, it's a lot of shrooms to eat and your stomach will absolutely punish you for it.
There is a little science behind this, but the experience and dosages are extremely variable from person to person.
I am not a doctor or a scientist. I read a fuck-ton on this subject from real studies from reputable universities. Search YouTube for some of the more recent lectures coming out of U.C. Davis if you don't like to read. Still, that doesn't make me an expert and I only truly know my own tolerance and experiences.
You will inevitably stumble across Paul Stamets as well. He literally wrote most of the first books about psilocybin and mushroom cultivation. While he is a knowledgeable and almost inspirational person, he does lean heavily into subjective experience. That's fair, but it is what it is and he does mention it himself. And he owns a medical mushroom company. However, I respect that he doesn't hide his own bias.
This subject is extremely understudied at the moment.
I don't think it's possible.
no, he wasn't. The trip doesn't last for 48 hours. He consumed the mushrooms 48 hours beforehand.
(X) doubt
The last time I was on mushrooms I stumbled into a temple I could only describe as doomy and watched a guy rip a heart out of another guy's chest! It was wild. Then when it was my turn the guy kept asking what I wanted to order. I said "I'll order anything, just let me keep my heart" and he responded "Do you want fries with that?" True story, it was later made into a Hollywood blockbuster called Demolition Man and the rest is history.
Even if he was, and I'm guessing he wasn't, high on mushrooms. How does that make it any different than if he passed out at the controls while drunk? Highlighting mushrooms feels like a conservative push
He wasn't at the controls. He was hitching a ride on a flight piloted by somebody else, which isn't unusual for pilots. You should read the full story, but this is what I understand what I heard earlier.
He was already depressed and had lost somebody close to him recently. Did mushrooms, (presumably) had a bad trip, doesn't sleep for the next 48 hours, then boards the flight as a passenger. Apparently he was suicidal and felt like he was dreaming so he probably didn't have a full sense of the consequences of his actions; I don't think he was out to kill anybody but himself. Told the flight crew "you better get me off this flight or it's going to get bad" or something to that effect after already acting out and needing to be restrained. Then they make an emergency stop to let him off.
I'm for legalizing psychedelics, but unfortunately it seems the mushrooms are integral to the story. Although it should be said that this guy very clearly wasn't in a state to be doing psychedelics without any professional supervision, guidance, and/or aftercare. I've said all that I know about the story here, and it's admittedly very little, but chances are that a little bit of education would have gone a long way to prevent this.
Thanks!
Here’s the text:
The off-duty US pilot who allegedly tried to shut down the engines of a plane in mid-air had taken magic mushrooms and thought he was having a nervous breakdown, court documents state.
Pilots wrestled Joseph Emerson out of the cockpit on Sunday after he is said to have lunged for controls that would have starved the engines of fuel and turned the plane into a glider.
Emerson, who told police he had not slept in 40 hours, also tried to open an emergency exit in the rear of the aircraft and had to be restrained by the cabin crew during an emergency landing.
“I pulled both emergency shutoff handles because I thought I was dreaming and I just want to wake up,” Emerson told police, according to a criminal complaint.
Emerson and the investigating officer “talked about the use of psychedelic mushrooms and Emerson said it was his first time taking mushrooms”.
The 44-year-old was arrested on Sunday evening after the Alaska Airlines flight made an emergency landing in Portland, Oregon. He is charged with 83 counts of attempted murder.
Emerson had boarded the flight - which was operated by Horizon Air - between Everett, Washington, and San Francisco, sitting in the jump seat of the cockpit, in line with airline policy for non-working staff.
A short way into the journey, after chatting with the pilots, “Emerson attempted to grab and pull two red fire handles that would have activated the plane’s emergency fire suppression system and cut off fuel to its engines”, the Department of Justice said.
“After a brief physical struggle with the pilots, Emerson exited the cockpit.”
Emerson, pictured on a previous flight, has been 'removed from service indefinitely' On Monday, Alaska Airlines said pilots had reacted quickly to reverse the handles and the aircraft had landed safely.
“During the flight’s descent, Emerson tried to grab the handle of an emergency exit. A flight attendant stopped him by placing her hands on top of his,” the Department of Justice said.
“Flight attendants placed Emerson in wrist restraints and seated him in the rear of the aircraft.”
The US Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon said Emerson faces a federal charge of interfering with flight crew members and attendants.
He has also been charged in Oregon with 83 counts of attempted murder, 83 counts of reckless endangerment and one count of endangering an aircraft.
US media reported he pleaded not guilty to these charges during a brief court appearance in Portland on Tuesday.
Live ATC, a website that archives conversations between pilots and air traffic controllers, published an audio recording of the moments after the incident.
“We’ve got the guy that tried to shut the engines down out of the cockpit,” the pilot said. “And he doesn’t sound like he’s causing any issue in the back right now.
“I think he’s subdued. Other than that, yeah, we want law enforcement as soon as we get on the ground and parked,” the pilot said.
On Tuesday, Alaska Airlines said Emerson had been “removed from service indefinitely and relieved from all duties”.