“Come watch me trip balls,” declared Bryan Johnson, the “Don’t Die” longevity entrepreneur, on X a couple of 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 more than 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 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 setup 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.
