While not it's not mentioned in this article, he actually said he took mushrooms around 48 hrs before getting onto the plane, which would mean his trip was definitely over. He said he thought he was dreaming, which would probably be better attributed to the fact he hadn't slept in around 40hrs. I suspect this is a case of "the mushies did it!" being reported over questions of "how was someone in that bad of mental shape was in the cockpit of a plane? " being asked.
My somewhat cynical view is that the airlines are trying to aim for damage control as much as possible, and are tying to throw red herirngs to divert from failings on the airlines part. In this case, shrooms. If the airlines get looked at, I suspect the whole fact that he was probably that sleep deprived and it wasn't seen as not normal could lead to actual action against airlines.
They’re trying to shift the blame entirely to the pilot (who was primarily at fault) rather than their policies that allowed a pilot to fly on no sleep for 40 hours
100%. Not to mention you don’t lose your mind on shrooms, and the trip is over in a few hours. Even if you were to lose contact with reality on shrooms, you wouldn’t have the capability to carry out anything. This feel like a weird deflect authored by someone who knows nothing about mushrooms.
Exactly. If you’re taking enough shrooms to “lose your mind” (aka ego death), then you’re not making it off the floor of your living room, let alone getting through security, getting onto an airplane, and acting normal enough to be let into the cockpit. You’re not even going to be aware that you have a body.
And if you haven’t taken enough for that, then you’re still never going to honestly believe you’re in a dream. That’s not how psychedelics work.
48 hours is too long to blame on an acid trip usually (from my experience) let alone a mushroom trip. Maybe doses and potency were different but I’ve done up to 4 tabs of acid and 1/4 oz of shrooms (different trips) both with some bud smoked, and never had much effect after I slept. From acid sleeping took much longer but not over 40 hours, I wasn’t at a rave doing amphetamines or anything. Not those nights anyways.
I will say people are different and I was well down the road of experimentation by the time I did those strongest trips.
Oh forgot to add if they didn’t sleep that would really fuck someone up. I used to party for days and I made day 3 my limit for good reason, so 48 hours is start of day 3.
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.
Yep. It can take a bit to find a dose that low enough to not get a full-on buzz while still getting the positive effects from it.
The biggest problem is that psilocybin content per shroom, strain and specific grow is wildly variable. It’s better to get a larger batch from the same harvest of the same strain, grind it to an extremely fine powder and then find a good dose. More experimentation is required for the next batch you get. (Powdering shrooms normalizes the amount of active compounds per dose.)
I have only dabbled in microdoses. The main reason is that my trips are always borderline “heroic doses” at around 50mg of psilocybin, with the how strong my shrooms tend to be. Heroic doses get their name for a reason. Synesthesia (full sensory confusion) and near collapse of normal visual processing starts to happen at that level. Needless to say, it takes a bit for my brain to fully process those experiences.
Disclaimer: Even though I have a bit of practice, I have had an occasional rough experience at my dosage levels. Managing emotions in that state can be quite a challenge. All in all, no experience has been truly bad for me. Rough, but never bad.
On a scale of 1 to 7, a microdoses should be in sub-0.5 range, if even that. (Josie Kins and her sister(?) have done an extremely good job of classifying the psychedelic experience as “levels”: youtu.be/UQRfTD6AXPs?si=sfJc3pSYIvYBOVG6)
ITT: people who actually have experience with psychedelics arguing against people who’ve only experienced psychedelics by seeing them portrayed in movies.
Is it though? My understanding is that a murder charge requires intent to cause harm. Causing death without intent would be manslaughter. If someone is out of their mind in a panic attack and tries to shut down the plane so he could get to the ground, it would hard to prove he intended harm to the other passengers. They probably weren’t even in his thoughts.
Not a lawyer though, my understanding could be flawed.
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.
I love mushrooms, and not once have I ever thought about trying to harm anyone during a trip, let alone commit mass murder.
Might as well chock this up to “Reefer Madness”
Let’s set aside, for a moment, that this dude took the shrooms something like 48 hours prior. 100% this guy was not under the influence of psilocybin while on that plane.
But all of that aside, this just isn’t how shrooms work. I know it can affect people in different ways, but I’ve taken heroic shroom doses before. Never, at any point, are you unaware that you’re tripping, or think you’re “dreaming” like this guy claimed, unless you’re literally experiencing ego death. In which case, you’re not even making it off the floor of your living room, let alone onto an airplane (with the company you work for), and into a cockpit.
You’re not going through security, getting on a flight, acting normal enough to get into the cockpit, and then being lucid enough to make a deliberate move like he did. You’re not even going to be aware that you have a fucking body.
And if you’re not tripping hard enough for that, then you’re not tripping hard enough to earnestly believe you’re dreaming. Because that’s not how psychedelics work.
I have seen a couple of people take doses of 5 or 6 grams, and they are completely in a trance for hours. Just stuck in one spot and dead to the outside world. Then about 6 or 8 hours later they are back to their normal self. So, yea something is off about this excuse.
Exactly. If you’re taking that much, you’re basically in another dimension while your husk of a body (that, by this point, you’re completely unaware even exists) is essentially incapacitated for a few hours.
And if you don’t take that much, you 100% know that you’re tripping the entire time.
Why can’t it just be a rare side effect of psychedelics?
I had a friend who freaked out on acid. They found him naked in someone’s yard. After trying to break shit at a friend’s house, he freaked out and ran away.
Why can’t it just be that 1/10k people lose it after psychedelics?
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.
Emerson said it was his first time taking mushrooms”. ya fkn right, ill take lies for $500 Alex. Who does magic mushrooms on a plane for their first time, spoiler, no one.
I went to Walmart for the first half of my first shroom trip, and the second half was spent in nature.
The exposure to nature was absolutely better and led to a transcendental experience of a sense of interconnectedness with nature that lead to an identity shift, and which pulled my teenage self out of pervasive clinical depression.
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.
I’ve done mushrooms countless times and mushrooms do not do this. Don’t you even dare try saying it was because of mushrooms. Anyone who has actually done them before will call your bullcrap.
But dude you have no idea what was going on in his trip. He could have eaten a 5g chocolate bar and started freaking out trying to make it stop, thinking “I need to get out NOW” and being on autopilot (himself, not the plane) since he’s flown so many times, turned the engines off. I’m sure the FAA audio will collaborate his freaking out.
You apparently haven’t had a bad trip on a megadose. Don’t go all “weed has zero bad side effects, man” about mushrooms just because you like them. This isn’t a hit piece on shrooms. It’s a piece against dosing before you fly a plane full of people which I’m totally good with.
Yeah the article either intentionally or accidently failed to mention that he took them two days prior to this incident and there’s no way he could still have been under the influence as there are diminishing returns when taking mushrooms (you tyoically need to wait a few days/a week between sessions or they don’t have much effect. The dude obviously snapped from staying awake for 40+ hours straight while also being distressed from the death of his friend.
I find it hard to believe he would have been able to get to the airport, get a flight, and get through airport security if he had simply been ‘tripping balls’ like the article implies.
And this dude hadn’t slept in 40 hours. Who the hell take mushrooms for the first time with severe sleep deprivation while in the cockpit of a comical airliner!? This guy was unstable to begin with. Hopefully this doesn’t set back the public and regulatory perception of psilocybin and all of the therapeutic benefits it has.
It should hopefully not have any effect on regulatory perceptions since legal psychiatric use should involve a medication with a certain dose that’s the lowest amount that will help instead of just eating a bunch of mushrooms but we do live in the dumbest timeline. I felt bad for this guy thinking it was a mental breakdown and he needed help but this was a series of really bad decisions.
From what I understand he had taken the mushrooms 40 hours prior, for his first time ever, and that’s why he’s been awake all that time. However he was also enroute to pilot a flight, which probably wouldn’t have worked out.
Supposedly, he took the mushies around 48hrs before, so they were out of his system. So it was probably just extreme sleep deprevation. Which begs the question, it that just considered normal on airlines?
It absolutely is NOT normal. They have very strict fatigue tracking and rules. This guy shouldn’t have been anywhere near a cockpit. I’m not sure if the rules extend to non-flight crew but I’m sure the FAA will be considering that now.
I found a better article on Reuters that says he took the mushrooms about 48 hours before. Would they even still have an effect at that point? I’ve never taken shrooms.
I’ve grown mushrooms myself and eaten a ton. He is sober within ten hours max, but in reality the high wears off in about five to six hour range and sane people only want to sleep at that point. At 24 hours you are experiencing no mushroom effects at all, let alone 40-48 hours
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”.
As someone who’s been severely sleep deprived before, I hope he gets help and not prison. I don’t know what led to him being awake for 40hrs, but something makes me think it wasn’t the shrooms that kept him awake because, afaik, they should have worn off long before he boarded the flight.
telegraph.co.uk
Active