All natural doesn’t always mean its super safe. This is a common misconception about nature’s medicine such as cannabis, and of late, psilocybin mushrooms. As with any drug, dosing amounts and previous experience with the drug, as well as mindset going into the experience all play a huge role in how the user will feel with this drug in their system. And afterwards.

Joseph Emerson was the off-duty pilot who was trying to get home on Horizon flight 2059 last month after a memorial for his best friend, who died too young. This was a sad state of affairs to begin with, and Joseph was maybe nursing this sadness and hollow feeling ever since the friend died, a few years prior. At 44 years old, many of us have these mid-life experiences, call them the cliche crisis if you must, but I know mine was a real wake-up call for how I was living. I was 46, single, and work was my whole world. At least Joseph has a wife and kids, but he most definitely over-identified as a pilot, his whole raison d’etre wrapped up in the pilot lifestyle. I know this because I’ve been reading every article about the incident where he tried to take his own plane down, from the privileged position in jump seat of the cock pit. He is now facing attempted murder charges for 83 passengers and crew.

“I need to be subdued”

Joseph Emerson, the off-duty pilot sitting in the cockpit’s jump seat (quote found in from the CNN article on 10-25-23.)

Matt Johnson, a Johns Hopkins professor who studies psychedelics and other drugs was quoted in the CNN article as saying “It’s possible that the lingering effects of psilocybin, existing depression and sleep deprivation could have created a “perfect storm,” in which Emerson was experiencing behavioral changes or derealization.”

Existing depression? This can affect your magic mushroom experience? Joseph Emerson was a drinker, (lots of pilots are, based on my well-traveled hotel bar observations) and his friends convinced him some ‘shrooms would enhance the weekend memorial party out in the Oregon woods, something they did annually in honor of their dead friend. But he ate them 48 hours before flying home, and he wouldn’t be piloting a plane for another six days at the time of his ingestion. By any reasonable account, you’d think you would have processed this drug out in a quicker timeframe.

Derealization, according to Mayo Clinic, is a feeling that can come and go for most people, but if it lingers or returns frequently, may be part of depersonalization/derealization disorder. It’s where you feel like you’re in a dream, or when reality isn’t really real. I’ve been there myself, and it was back when I was micro-dosing liquid THC in my tea for about a week. (I wrote about it on this blog here.) It put me in the psyche ward pretty quickly, because I couldn’t stop talking super fast, nor could I get any sleep. Sleep deprivation was an issue for Emerson too, he reported he hadn’t slept in about 40 hours.

While Joseph Emerson hadn’t been diagnosed with any existing depression (due to the Medieval FAA Mental Health Policies I wrote about on my other blog here,) I sincerely hope he is getting the care he needs. It’s taken me nearly seven years to metabolize what happened to me with my cannabis overdose, and to address the underlying anxiety that maybe I’d always had, with a good shrink and lots of talk therapy. Now that Emerson is facing attempted murder charges, I hope he has a good lawyer, and a good shrink, but with the way we do things in America, I am not sure he will get either.

Where’s my wife & family, what if I die here?”

Paul Simon’s 1986 song You can call me al

My experience with derealization also met a lot of the criterion shown in Joseph Emerson’s case: sleep deprivation, underlying anxiety, and maybe a dash of apophenia, which is a phenomena where you’re seeing connections that just aren’t there. But when I presented to a hospital, they suggested it might be bipolar. Let me tell you, that kind of diagnosis has far reaching effects. While I knew in my heart and bones, even at the time, that it was my cannabis overdosing, I am not sure it’ll be so clear for Joseph Emerson. I truly hope he gets both a qualified and experienced shrink, and a kick-ass lawyer. I also sincerely hope his wife and kids stick by him in figuring this all out, as it’s not going to be quick, nor easy.

Many thanks for the cool shroom cover photo by Damir Omerović on Unsplash