The ex-pilot Alaska Airlines who allegedly tried to crash a plane while tripping on magic mushrooms while off duty wants to fly again.

Joseph Emerson, 44, said the October incident that initially landed him with 83 counts of attempted murder and brought an end to his career in the cockpit was the biggest mistake of his life.

“Of course I want to fly again. I’d be totally disingenuous if I said no,” the former Alaska Airlines pilot told ABC News in an interview published Friday.

“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. It’s not up to me to engineer that. What is up to me is to do what’s in front of me, put myself in a position where that’s a possibility, that it can happen.”

In the sitdown interview alongside his wife, Sarah, Emerson relived the horrifying moment he spontaneously yanked down two red levers that could have shut down both engines, at 30,000 feet while he was riding in the cockpit jump seat as a standby employee passenger.

The lifelong pilot previously revealed the crack-up was part of a days-long mental breakdown and paranoia spiral ignited by a magic mushroom trip he took with buddies.

The group had reconnected for a weekend getaway in Washington state to reminisce on the life of their late friend whose 2018 death plunged Emerson into deep grief — which was intensified by the drug expedition.

Still reeling days later — despite the effects of mushrooms only lasting several hours — Emerson believed he could break out of his dream-like trance by crashing the San Francisco-bound plane.

“There was a feeling of being trapped, like, ‘Am I trapped in this airplane and now I’ll never go home?’” Emerson told ABC News.

Feeling helpless, Emerson relied on his knowledge of the plane to try to bring him back down to earth — literally and figuratively.

“There are two red handles in front of my face,” Emerson recalled. “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.”

That’s when the pilot tried to shut off the engines. Luckily, he was thwarted by a quick-thinking crew and he was removed from the cockpit.

But his erratic behavior didn’t stop there — Emerson drank directly out of a coffee pot and then tried to open the cabin door so he could jump out.

He was stopped yet again, but this time he asked a flight attendant to handcuff him until the plane made an emergency landing in Portland.

Emerson was arrested and charged with 83 counts of attempted murder – one count for every soul on the aircraft.

The ex-pilot is no longer facing attempted murder charges, but he is still facing more than 80 state and federal charges, including 83 counts of reckless endangerment after prosecutors reduced the charges in December.

He could be heading to trial this fall, but it’s still possible that prosecutors offer a plea deal.

Emerson’s jail physician ruled he suffered from a condition called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), which can cause someone who uses psychedelic mushrooms for the first time to suffer from persistent visual hallucinations or perception issues for several days afterward, ABC reported.

“At the end of the day, I accept responsibility for the choices that I made. They’re my choices,” Emerson told ABC News.

“What I hope through the judicial processes 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 on what happened. And I will accept what the debt that society says I owe.”

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Alaska Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, a Republican backed by former President Donald Trump, withdrew from the race for the state’s lone seat in the U.S. House on Friday after finishing third in this week’s primary.

Her decision left second-place finisher Republican Nick Begich as the main challenger to Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, who is the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.

“I entered this race because Alaskans deserve better representation than what we have received from Mary Peltola in Washington,” Dahlstrom said in a statement released by her campaign. “At this time, the best thing I can do to see that goal realized is to withdraw my name from the general election ballot and end my campaign.”

Peltola, Begich and Dahlstrom were the most prominent among a dozen candidates running for the seat in Alaska’s primary. Under Alaska’s open primary system, voters were asked to pick one candidate, with the top four vote-getters in the race, regardless of party affiliation, advancing to the ranked choice general election.

In early results, Peltola led in the vote count, followed by Begich and then Dahlstrom. It was too early to call who would finish fourth.

The general election is expected to be hotly contested. The GOP is hoping to reclaim the seat that Republican U.S. Rep. Don Young held for 49 years before his death in 2022. Peltola won the seat with victories in special and regular elections that year.

“Mary was so proud to have received more than 50% of the vote last Tuesday when many voters probably assumed she would be moving forward to the general election without their votes,” her campaign manager, Elisa Rios, said in a statement, while also touting accomplishments during Peltola’s term. “We think voters will make the same choice this November.”

Begich, who ran unsuccessfully for the seat in 2022, had support from a number of local Republican groups. Dahlstrom was endorsed by Trump and several House leaders, including Speaker Mike Johnson.

Begich congratulated Dahlstrom in a social media post Friday for running a “strong campaign.”

“Today we move forward unified in the effort to replace Mary Peltola, who has proven by her alignment with the left that she is not the moderate she claimed to be,” Begich wrote.

Begich said before the primary he would withdraw from the race if he finished behind Dahlstrom. Dahlstrom did not make a similar pledge, but told The Associated Press she would to talk with Begich, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the head of the state Republican party after the primary to analyze “who got what and what it’s going to take to have a conservative in that seat vote-wise.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee had supported Dahlstrom, but said Friday that Begich — who comes from a family of prominent Alaska Democrats — is “a great choice.”

“Nancy Dahlstrom has led a life of service and I want to thank her for stepping into the arena this year,” committee chairman Richard Hudson said in an emailed statement. “Her selfless decision today puts Alaskans and the team first, allowing voters to unite around a single Republican.”

Under state law, if one of top four candidates in the primary dies, withdraws or is disqualified within 64 days of the general election, the fifth-place finisher moves on to the general election ballot. Friday marked 74 days until the Nov. 5 general election.

If early results hold, the other two candidates to advance to the general election would be little-known Republican Matthew Salisbury and Alaska Independence Party candidate John Wayne Howe, who were each receiving less than 1% of of the vote.

Alaska’s Supreme Court issued a decision Thursday that will allow a question regarding repeal of the state’s controversial ranked choice voting system to appear on the November ballot.

The state’s high court upheld a lower court ruling that would allow the ballot measure to come to a popular vote.

“Having considered the record, the parties’ briefs, and the parties’ arguments, we affirm the superior court’s summary judgment order,” the judges said in their ruling. 

“An opinion explaining this decision will be issued at a later date.”

The case came about after three Alaska residents, led by Elizabeth Medicine Crow, sought to disqualify the measure based on allegedly defective petitions.

RANKED-CHOICE VOTING RANKLES ELECTION SEASON AS SUPPORTERS, OPPONENTS TRANSCEND PARTY LINES IN KEY STATES

Alaska’s Division of Elections certified in March that enough signatures had been collected to qualify the repeal initiative after the agency allowed petitioners to fix notarized errors in their paperwork.

In 2020, Alaska voters narrowly approved the original ballot measure — with a 50.55% majority recorded — that instituted ranked choice voting there.

The practice, praised as a way to help moderate candidates, changes the election tabulation system from a simple majority framework to one that holds multiple rounds of counting.

In the first round, totals for each candidate are tabulated, and the candidate with the fewest “first votes” is eliminated. The “second votes” of that candidate’s supporters are added to the totals of the remaining candidates, round after round, until a winner is decided.

Alaska Republicans, in particular, criticized the practice in 2022 after Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, won in an otherwise shocking upset in the red state to succeed six-decade GOP lawmaker Don Young, who died that spring at 88.

The two leading GOP candidates under the new system, former Gov. Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III, the conservative scion of a noted Democratic political family in the state, collectively garnered more votes than Peltola in the first round of tabulation but still lost.

IN THE ONLY STATE BORDERING RUSSIA, ALASKA GOVERNOR SAYS DEFENSES ARE STRONG

Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, speaks to supporters. (Getty Images )

Kelly Tshibaka, a fellow Republican who lost to Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2022, previously called it “deceptive how they sell [ranked-choice voting] to the public” as a “moderating force” when it is not in her view.

She pointed to the failed candidacy of Al Gross, a Democrat turned Independent who, at times, led in the primary but dropped out, leaving Peltola, on his left, to remain.

Meanwhile, proponents argue the practice helps take partisanship out of elections. 

In Alaska specifically, many have pointed to the fact both conservative Gov. Mike Dunleavy and moderate Murkowski emerged victorious in 2022.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio also sung its praises after the “biggest ranked choice voting election in America” in his city in 2021, and states like Maine have also adopted it.

Ranked choice voting however, has also been criticized by Alaska conservative activists like Judy Eledge, a former schoolteacher in Barrow, which is now known as Utqiagvik. 

“You basically don’t get your first choice of who you want to win, and it enables people that otherwise would never win anything,” Eledge said in a recent Fox News Digital interview. 

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American flags and vote buttons  (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

“It gives them enough to win and basically just destroys the party system within the state when it comes to elections.”

Some on the right do support the system, including former Virginia State Delegate Chris Saxman, now executive director of Virginia Free, an organization that provides objective, nonpartisan political information to the business community.

In a recent interview with Fox News Digital, the former Staunton lawmaker noted Virginia Republicans utilized ranked choice voting in their 2021 convention candidate selection process and ultimately won back the governorship after a decade out of power.

Saxman spoke of a run-in with a Republican consultant at a party function who decried the use of the system because the right wing could have “gone after [the more moderate Republican] Youngkin harder, but we couldn’t afford to alienate his voters.”

“I was like, ‘So, it’s a problem not to attack a fellow Republican?’” Saxman countered.

The 2024 general election in Alaska will still be operated under ranked choice voting.

Fox News Digital reached out to Peltola, Murkowski, Dunleavy and Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, for comment.