When off-duty Alaska Airlines Pilot Joseph D. Emerson tried to disable an airplane's engines mid-flight during a sleep-deprived, psychedelic freakout, he peeved more than just the 83 people who would have died if the plane had fallen from the sky, managing to piss off Reddit’s typically zen psychonaut community.



This trippy beef began on Sunday, when Emerson, who had purportedly gone 40 hours without sleep and had ingested psychedelic mushrooms, allegedly tried to shut down the aircraft’s engines, later trying and failing to open the emergency exit mid-flight.


"I pulled both emergency shut-off handles because I thought I was dreaming and I just wanna wake up,” he reportedly said during his mile-high meltdown.


Though Emerson was ultimately arrested and is now facing several charges including 83 felony counts of attempted homicide, his story captured the attention of everyone’s favorite anti-drug propagandists — conservative news anchors.


“So how would a goody two shoes, squeaky clean pilot with an immaculate record find himself in the cockpit wacked out on psychedelics?” Fox News anchor/bargain bin Tucker Carlson, Jesse Watters, said during a recent segment before denouncing the cities of Oakland, California and Seattle, Washington for decriminalizing mushrooms. “Are we sure we wanna make mushrooms that accessible? They’re turning American pilots into psychedelic kamikazes!”



In fairness, Watters isn’t entirely wrong. While mushrooms may have played a role in transforming one (1) extremely sleep-deprived pilot into a psychedelic kamikaze, one insane pilot is not the be-all-end-all of the mushroom experience — just ask Reddit’s legion of peeved psilocybin purveyors.


“Nice. Way to get some good press for psychedelics. I’m glad his dumb ass was subdued,” u/Phasianidae commented on an r/Shrooms post, while u/Enjoyitbeforeitsover denounced Emerson as a “dumbass.”


“If headlines like this are intended to push an agenda then they are very effective,” wrote u/bruxx, noting that their “parents are already running with the headline and defaulting to ‘see shrooms are dangerous.’”


“Most won’t read the article, and if any part of the story turns out to not be true the news … won't retract it,” they continued. “No one should operate heavy machinery under the influence of mind-altering drugs.”


Similarly, others, including u/mean_ass_raccoon, pondered whether or not this story was nothing more than a pharmaceutical industry PsyOp in the face of increased acceptance of mushrooms’ purported medicinal qualities.


“Could be propaganda put out by big pharma,” they wrote “Wouldn't put it past em. They own the government and the news.”


So let this be a reminder that if you ever find yourself tripping balls after staying up for 40 hours straight, do not try to wake yourself up by pulling an airplane's emergency shut-off handle.