In a study published in the April 1957 issue of Aviation Medicine, 35 percent of 137 pilots interviewed reported having experienced a strange feeling of detachment from Earth while flying at high altitudes, almost always during a solo flight. “I feel like I have broken the bonds from the terrestrial sphere,” said one pilot. The phenomenon was pervasive enough for psychologists to give it a name: the breakaway effect. For a majority of these pilots, the feeling wasn’t one of panic, but of euphoria.
