Alaska Airlines magic mushroom pilot Joseph Emerson makes shocking admission nearly a year after he almost killed 83 people by trying to crash plane

The Alaska Airlines pilot who nearly killed 83 people when he tried to crash a passenger plane to 'escape a bad dream' while tripping on magic mushrooms has given a shockingly brazen interview where he says the incident enhanced his life. 

Joseph Emerson admits he had a loose grip on reality when he flew the plane in October. He'd been on a drug-fueled trip with friends when he took to the skies despite being still high and sleep deprived with 83 people onboard.  

During the flight, Emerson, convinced he was dreaming, put his hand on the red lever that - if pulled - would have killed the plane's engines and, likely, everyone on the flight. 

He was stopped by co-pilots and was cuffed for the remainder of the flight. Now, he is awaiting sentencing on 80 counts of reckless endangerment. 

On Friday, he and his wife appeared on Good Morning America to describe how the near disaster has made their lives better. He also revealed that he was an alcoholic at the time of the flight. 

'I'm better for it which is kind of a weird thing to say but I am really better for all of us,' he said, saying he's had more time with his kids, and that the event saved his marriage. 

Emerson spent 45 days in jail. He still faces over 80 state and federal charges including reckless endangerment. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges.

'At the end of the day, I accept responsibility for the choices that I made,' he said.

'What I hope is that the entirety of not just 30 seconds of the event, but the entirety of my experience is accounted for as society judges me. 

The father-of-two had taken psychedelic mushrooms days earlier while on a trip with friends to remember his best friend Scott, a pilot who died six years ago.

Despite not feeling himself, he accepted Flight 2059 from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco. 

During the flight, Emerson believed he was having a bad dream that he needed to wake up from. 

'That's kind of where I flung off my headset, and I was fully convinced this isn't real and I'm not going home,' Emerson recounted. 

'And then, as the pilots didn't react to my completely abnormal behavior in a way that I thought would be consistent with reality, that is when I was like, this isn't real. I need to wake up.' 

He claimed he was still experiencing the drug's effects when he boarded the flight as an off-duty pilot and became convinced his surroundings weren't real.

'There was a feeling of being trapped, like, "Am I trapped in this airplane and now I'll never go home?"' he recalled.

Emerson described the moment he  reached for the engine shut-off controls, believing it would 'wake him up' from what he thought was a hallucination.

'There are two red handles in front of my face,' Emerson continued. 'And thinking that I was going to wake up, thinking this is my way to get out of this non-real reality, I reached up and I grabbed them, and I pulled the levers.' 

'What I thought is, "This is going to wake me up,"' Emerson said. 'I know what those levers do in a real airplane and I need to wake up from this. You know, it's 30 seconds of my life that I wish I could change, and I can't.' 

He said he was brought back to reality when the crew stopped him. 

'It was really the pilot's physical touch on my hand,' he said. 'Both pilots grabbed my hands where I kind of stopped and I had that moment, which I'll just say I view this moment as a gift.' 

'I observe the pilots react to the difficult situation that I just handed them and watch them react in a very professional manner,' Emerson said of the pilots. 'I heard them converse about me and I said, 'You guys want me out of the flight deck?'' 

But Emerson's odd behavior continued after he was brought back to the cabin. 

Emerson said he then grabbed a lever operating the cabin door.

'At some point I thought maybe this isn't real, and maybe I can wake myself up by just jumping out, like that freefall feeling that you have,' he said. 

'I put my hand on the lever, I didn't operate the lever.'

A flight attendant then intervened and stopped him.

'She put … her hand on mine again and with that human touch, I released. I think around that period is when I said, 'I don't understand what's real, I don't I don't understand what's real.''

Emerson then requested to be restrained and handcuffed for the remainder of the flight. 

'I essentially asked to be restrained myself because I knew if this is real, I've already done enough damage,' he said. 'I thought, 'Let's restrain me till I can get the help I need.' That's really kind of what I was hoping coming off this airplane that I would get, get the help I needed.' 

The pilot's wife Sarah described her horror at learning her husband faced 83 attempted murder charges - one for each person on board.

Those charges have now been downgraded.  

'I walk up to the window and say I'm looking for my husband and he kind of just looked on the computer and typed some things in and then nonchalantly tells me the charges, and I lost it,' Sarah told the outlet. 

'I screamed and I keeled over, and I almost fell,' she added. 'They grabbed me and pulled me over because I know what that means. I was in a complete shock.' 

'What I did was, something we don't train for, and they handled it fantastic. It's really a result of their professionalism and the way they handled that situation that I'm alive today,' he said.

'Of course I want to fly again. I'd be totally disingenuous if I said no,' he said. 'I don't know in what capacity I'm going to fly again and I don't know if that's an opportunity that's going to be afforded to me.'

'But at the end of the day, if I'm not meant to fly again, I'm not going to fly again.'

Passengers who were on the plane are yet to react to his comments.