Alaska Airline Pilot Says He Tried to Cut Fuel to Engines to Wake From Dream

In his first interview since being arrested for trying to bring down an Alaska Airlines jetliner last month, pilot Joseph Emerson told The New York Times that he tried to shut off fuel to the engines in order to wake from a nightmare that began after a first-time dose of psychedelic mushrooms.

“I thought it would stop both engines, the plane would start to head towards a crash, and I would wake up,” Emerson, 44, told the Times.

Emerson is being held in the Multnomah County Jail on 83 counts of attempted murder, one for each person on the plane. U.S. Attorney for Oregon Natalie K. Wight charged Emerson with one criminal count of interfering with a flight crew and attendants. He has pleaded not guilty.

Alaska flight 2059, operated by Horizon Air, was en route from Everett, Wash., to San Francisco when Emerson, riding in a jump seat in the cockpit, tried to shut down thrust in the plane by engaging an emergency system that cuts fuel to the engines in the event of fire. The two pilots wrestled him into submission before he succeeded in “blowing the bottles,” as the procedure is known.

The plane made an emergency landing in Portland, where Emerson was arrested. He told police he had eaten magic mushrooms about 48 hours before the incident on the plane, according to state court documents.

Emerson told the Times that he had been under stress from long hours at work. The sudden death of his closest friend triggered “long-standing mental health issues,” the Times said. Like many pilots, Emerson was reluctant to get on antidepressants because it would likely trigger Federal Aviation Administration rules that keep pilots on such medication from flying during monthslong monitoring periods, the Times said.

At a weekend getaway to memorialize his friend last month, another friend suggested he take mushrooms, Emerson told the Times. Later that night, he began to feel uneasy and suspected that perhaps his friends were trying to hurt him.

“I started to have this feeling that this wasn’t real,” Emerson told the Times.

The feeling lasted until he boarded the plane in Everett to fly home to his family in Pleasant Hill, Calif.

“For many people, the acute effects of a psychedelic trip last for several hours,” the Times said. “But as a legal therapeutic market for mushrooms recently launched in Oregon, some researchers have cautioned that psychedelics may have prolonged effects for those vulnerable to a psychotic disorder.”