Oh, that.
And no, they werent smoken any grass, it happens.
But its not an over control limit thing, its more to do with misperception.
One mistake sum make wen in a virtical decent is to allow the machine to enter a tail slide.
Too much backstick, with or without power on, and the machine will slide backwards.
The control surfaces now see reversed airflow, which produce
percieved reversed reactions to inputs.
Rite rudder will make the nose yaw left, and rite stick, while induceing a slight roll rite, makes the machine
appear to turn left [ coz your spirling backwards]. These reversed reactions to inputs confuse the crap outa people, and sum panic.
The unaware wont know they are slipn backwards till they experiance the reversed reactions, coz yaw strings, if you have one, is in turbulance and wont be seen to be leaning out, and most wont 'feel' it coz it dont take much backward slide to induce reaversed reactions.
I call it PIS. [ pilot induced spiral]