“Come watch me trip balls,” declared Bryan Johnson, the “Don’t Die” longevity entrepreneur, on X a couple days before he livestreamed himself consuming a high dose of psychedelic mushrooms at a psilocybin center in Oregon on Sunday.
It marked the second act of his stunty new investigation into whether using psilocybin can improve almost 250 wellness biomarkers including various measures of brain connectivity, cortisol levels and testosterone.
“There’s a potential for psychedelics to play a more important role in all of our lives, and wouldn’t it be amazing if it was also a longevity therapy,” Johnson proclaimed on the stream. Prior to consuming the shrooms Sunday—which has been legal at licensed facilities in Oregon since 2023—Johnson measured his brain activity with a $50,000 helmet produced by Kernel, a neuroimaging company founded by the 48-year-old. He also took saliva samples and temperature readings. (After his November trip, he shared a lot of information about the state of his erections, but more on that later.)
Then he drank more than five grams of powdered mushrooms mixed with lemon juice, for extra potency. Johnson grimaced, and a bizarre new era of live celebrity psychedelic exhibitionism was born—one that is arguably counter to the introspective nature of the drug. The five-and-a-half hour livestream, which has been viewed over 1.1 million times, also featured Johnson’s 20-year-old son Talmage, whose blood he has injected in his efforts to stay young, journalist Ashlee Vance, a DJ set from Grimes, and Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff. YouTuber MrBeast, while pictured on a cartoonish poster advertising the event, did not show up, which most extremely high people would probably count as a blessing.
Observers noted that livestreaming an intense psychedelic trip might not be beneficial, since it can lead to fragmented attention and performance stress. Johnson appeared to acknowledge this himself before taking the mushrooms, saying “I guess the biggest question is, can I not go off the rails?”
“Having the whole world being able to watch you may not facilitate the best outcome,” says Rayyan Zafar, a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Psychedelic Research and Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London. “Bryan’s set up speaks more to ego enrichment than ego dissolution and is characteristic of many of his pseudoscientific pursuits. These sorts of experiences are often best held with an introspective and internal focus.” (Ego death, where one’s sense of self dissolves, is an experience some people seek when taking various psychedelics.) Jamie Wheal, the author of Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That’s Lost Its Mind, was more brutal in his assessment, telling WIRED the project is “a circus of self-indulgence” and an exercise in “digital narcissism.” He asked: “Is this the psychedelic renaissance that all the supposed freedom fighters and prisoners of conscience have been stumping for?” (Asked if he would like to respond to critiques of his methods, Johnson told WIRED: “Whoever said this, I wish them well.”)
But while someone tripping balls on camera might seem performative and not particularly riveting—at one point Johnson plays with a slinky after declaring “everything is alive”—his broadcast could also help reduce stigma around drug use. “I think it’s fine and good to show people what the experience [of taking psychedelics] looks like, to demystify it to some extent, to show that it can be beneficial,” said journalist and psychedelics industry consultant Hamilton Morris on the livestream; Morris hosted the VICE show Hamilton’s Pharmacopoeia, which depicted him doing drugs on camera.
Johnson’s shrooms experiment comes at a time when researchers are building a case that psychedelics can help ease mental health conditions. But there are concerns that right-wing figures increasingly command an outsized influence on the field. To that end, billionaire and self-proclaimed “avid” Donald Trump supporter Benioff joined the stream to discuss longevity with David Friedberg, co-host of the All-In podcast which is closely linked with the Trump administration.
“There have been studies that have shown that some of these compounds in these psychedelic substances actually change the gene expression profile and as a result can have rejuvenating effects,” said Friedberg. “This is real science.” Johnson later stirred and removed his eyemask. “I think we’re missing a really great opportunity for a sponsorship of a sleep mask,” Benioff said, perhaps hinting at a logical endpoint to this campaign: selling people more stuff.
It remains to be seen whether the experience will have enduring health benefits for Johnson, who made his fortune selling web payments company Braintree for $800 million in 2013, or if it will affect his preoccupation with avoiding death. After his first documented mushroom trip on November 10, which he did not livestream, Johnson said that he had been having “multiple spontaneous erections every day, something I haven’t experienced since childhood.” Claiming a raft of potential benefits, he hypothesized that the mushrooms may have spurred “a more flexible, youthful nervous system.”
But the absence of actual scientists on the live-stream was notable. “Science isn’t declaring something as ‘truth’ on X, or packaging speculation as ‘suppressed longevity science’ while funneling people toward unregulated products [namely, Johnson’s supplement range],” said Colette Schmitt, founder of Decriminalize Nature Philadelphia, which advocates for the decriminalization of psychedelics. Johnson didn’t explicitly advertise his supplements during the livestream but any increased attention on him will naturally benefit his business ventures, and unsurprisingly I started getting ads in my Instagram feed Tuesday selling his company Blueprint’s longevity mix. “America needs science and facts back—desperately,” added Schmitt. “Especially in the psychedelic movement, which is becoming a case study in what happens when high suggestibility meets low scientific literacy.”
As the peak of the trip subsided, Grimes played what one person called an “unhinged” DJ set and Johnson’s father Richard joined the broadcast with Talmage. “It was a journey: It was a force that demanded respect,” Johnson told them. “It was challenging.” Makes sense. Ego death is harder to achieve when the entire globe is watching.
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