In rec.aviation.student Mxsmanic wrote:

I still can't believe the recording I listened to a few days ago in
which some pilot was screaming that he was lost and clearly feared
that he was about to die. He had passed from VMC into a cloud or
something, and apparently he had never looked at his instruments
before in his life ... or at least that's the impression I got. Why
not just glance at the artificial horizon and see if you really are
sideways before the panic attack?

Passing into a cloud isn't always (or even often) just a matter of
the windows going white. It sometimes is accompanied by rather violent
turbulance. If you let the plane get sideways (it can happen pretty
fast) looking at the sideways AI if you're not used to looking at it
can be pretty confusing (and scary).

--
Don Poitras