Adaptogens and Alcohol is a health/wellness themed column about pop culture and personalities. Adaptogens and Alcohol reference the two extremes of health or lack thereof, a reference to Gwenyth Paltrow’s, “Organic products…Laser Treatments…The balance between cigarettes and tofu.”
On February 20th, 2024, we missed our flight to New York from LAX. Trapped in the airport for about 12 hours, there is nothing much to do except get belligerently drunk, pick at an arugula and quinoa salad for 6 hours, and finish reading the generously free pdf book Don’t Die by ‘Zero’. Zero is the pseudonym of tech entrepreneur and eccentric Bryan Johnson. Johnson was the founder and CEO of various companies and venture capitalist firms that were all generally related to science and technology.
I came to know about Bryan Johnson when he was being referred to as ‘Moon Brah’, the other side of the coin as ‘Sol Brah’, for his experimental health techniques. He came to prominence by an article announcing that he was sharing blood plasma with his son in order to be biometrically younger.
In Don’t Die, the book, Bryan as Zero explains his idea for Project Blueprint by framing it as a conversation between long lost friends all representing different parts of his personality. It is narrated by ‘Scribe’, a character who is going to die tomorrow, and invited his long lost friends that include ‘Farm Boy’, ‘Self Critical’, and ‘Game Play’ among others, to introduce an idea of everlasting life created by his friend, ‘Blueprint’.
The idea being, in the year 2500, what can we do today to make a lasting impression? The book explains that death itself is the only thing mankind hasn’t conquered, and if there was a measurable way to live longer, maybe even forever, why wouldn’t we do it?
His eccentricities and scientific creepiness have caused major backlash, death is a fact of life. Mankind is not ready to give up the one certainty that we have. It also seems outlandish, impossible, and seems like a scam to sell supplements. Many have a reverence for the old and wise, for life’s pleasures that may cause a few days shaved off our life like good food and cigarettes, why should we give that all up to maybe live a year or two longer?
Blueprint was mainly inspired by Johnson’s father, an attorney noticing his own signs of cognitive decline as he was taking notes and noticed what he wrote down was complete nonsense. This seems the most noble and probable cause, slowing down the effects of aging so that we can fight things like Alzheimers and dementia, and give ourselves a lasting quality of life. But that doesn’t sound as interesting as getting your teenage son’s blood infused into you so that you may both live forever. Trolling and feeding the trolls is how to get traction, memes being the most modern form of communication. Johnson’s goal to be remembered for centuries is simple, ‘Don’t Die,’ and the rest can be figured out later.
Recently, on August 19th, 2024 in New York City, a coworking space called DeSciNYC hosted a ‘Longevity Party’ with Bryan Johnson as its keynote speaker. Calling in from LA, Bryan Johnson did not attend the event in person. Neither did I, and my account of the event is from Crumpstack and quasimatt.com. Both of these retellings have confirmed my suspicions about Johnson’s exact goals. Youth can be achieved by closely measuring your ‘biological age’ and experimenting with the foods you eat, bedtimes, and supplements, but the way to stay spiritually young is to infiltrate the social scene of the internet’s most popular 20-somethings. Hosted by Matthew Donovan with a list of socially relevant writers/DJs/musicians and general personalities, you would think “What does this have to do with science?” Well it doesn’t. And it doesn’t have to. This is all about making science ‘Cool.’
The lecture and gathering being described as a ‘party’ and having a bar where guests lined up for gin and tonics, did not make it likely that anyone attending was going to get a Perfect Sleep Score later that night. One of Johnson’s recent marketing ploys for his ideology centers around his nighttime erections, whose lasting ability rivals an 18 year old, the age by which he compares all of his research being the youngest possible adult and therefore most vital. I suspected that the young people of New York City were interested in the blood and penis stuff, since that’s edgier and cooler than eating blended lentils every day, and in my reading I found I was basically right.
Something Bryan Johnson has spoken about in articles and on podcasts references a common question that he’s asked, if everyone were to follow Blueprint, what would happen to the arts? He thinks this is a ridiculous conflation, why would creativity disappear if everyone was focussed on being their best self? But it’s obvious when people think of the arts, they think of tortured souls with a strong death drive fueled by drugs and cigarettes and black coffee, not people who go to bed on time. Such a strict regimen doesn’t seem to make room for a free spirit, and Johnson’s main philosophy even specifically mentions ‘firing’ the brain in decision making, only allowing the body to make the decisions.
There is a bit of a contradiction in this, though. A couple years ago I interviewed Mike Crumplar of the titular Crumpstack in an issue of Moral Crema themed around health, and I revisited it to see if anything had changed regarding the New York social scene in regards to health and wellness and it was decided that the tides have changed in forever youth meaning dying an early death into having an extensive skin care routine. Maybe the youth today are interested in being healthier, with things like Classpass allowing things like reformer pilates to get trendy, maybe health is becoming cool. It’s already a status symbol, with celebrity diets and supplements being at an all time high popularity on platforms like Tik Tok and Reels. Bryan’s branding reaches an untapped market that woo-woo Alpha Males and Clean Girlies can’t reach; self proclaimed ‘Artists’.