How the Psychedelic Community Really Feels About Bryan Johnson

Good morning and welcome to another edition of The Drop In! We're kicking things off with a story about Bryan Johnson’s influencer mushroom circus. Maybe you’ve seen people posting about it recently?

We were hoping we could get by without covering the longevity bro’s recent psychedelic experiences. But it seems too much has happened, too many people have sounded off about it, and it yet again reveals another way in which the psychedelic community is split. So we decided to get a temperature check and ask folks what they really think about the whole spectacle. You can find that story immediately below!

If you keep scrolling, you’ll find other stories on mushroom gummies, dieta, and so much more!

Happy Monday 🌞,

Mary Carreón
Editor in Chief

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Forget Mainstream Press, Here’s How the Psychedelic Community Feels About Bryan Johnson

The people of the psychedelic community have spoken.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably had a hard time dodging all the noise around Bryan Johnson — the tech billionaire longevity-bro with aspirations to live forever — and his live-streamed mushroom trips. In case you missed it, Johnson took 5.24 grams of B+, a Psilocybe cubensis strain, twice in the name of science. He wanted to see whether psilocybin could meaningfully shift nearly 249 wellness markers, such as brain connectivity, cortisol, and testosterone, that he believes map the biological pathways of aging. Johnson postulates that psychedelics, but specifically psilocybin mushrooms, might help people live past 120 (more on that in a sec). So, to start testing that hypothesis, he decided to live-stream his trip on X. 

He took a second heroic dose of mushrooms, but this time the livestream felt more like a surreal variety show. Grimes handled the DJ set while a rotating cast of celebrity and influencer guests drifted in and out: Hamilton Morris of Hamilton’s Pharmacopoeia; Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff; Genevieve Jurvetson of the Psychedelic Science Funders Collaborative; David Friedberg, the entrepreneur behind The Climate Corporation’s billion-dollar sale to Monsanto; early investor into Uber and Twitter Naval Ravikant; and Mr. Beast, the YouTuber famous for handing out stacks of cash to strangers.

All of this comes on the heels of a rat study suggesting that psilocybin mushrooms might extend lifespan. That finding has energized the biohacking and longevity crowd within the psychedelic movement, a subculture that focuses on using psychedelics to maximize human potential. Johnson’s spectacle was essentially a public test run of that idea. He wanted to see if psilocybin could help people live longer and do more, and if so, how?

Predictably, a lot of people have feelings about this whole spectacle. Many are wrestling with the cringiness of livestreaming a mega-dose mushroom trip and pulling huge audiences into something so intimate through music, internet hype, tech money, billionaires, and star power. And, like everything in the US right now, the psychedelic community is split: Some genuinely see the event as a win for science, awareness, and the culture. Others think it was an embarrassing attempt at legitimacy that completely missed the mark.

We asked people across the community what they thought about the influencer circus surrounding Bryan Johnson. Here’s what they had to say.

Conor Murray: I was in a group chat with some friends, many of whom are psychiatrists, and we were texting about it as it was happening. All of us were kind of joking around about the part in the promo that said, “Will he still want to live forever?” which we all felt was an interesting question. The data in the pre-clinical literature indicate that psychedelics can extend the human lifespan and that's kind of this guy’s whole thing. So, it makes sense that he's interested in taking mushrooms, and the live streaming thing I guess raises awareness to some degree.

I'm glad he incorporated the Kernel EEG headset. It's another way of tracking biological data and I don't know who's going to be analyzing that data. I I sent him a a message on one of his posts and told him be happy to volunteer to take a look at it. I only now just went back and scrolled through the live stream. I don't really know. I'm excited to see where the data will lead us as far as the longevity piece, also as far as the acceptance or realization of the nature of our existence piece as well is interesting and then, of course, the brain data, how we may be able to measure states of expanded consciousness. Ultimately, that's something I'm interested in, and how we can use our consciousness to model aspects of reality we haven't quite explored yet. You know, he's kind of being a citizen scientist, which is something I resonate with.

Stephanie K: Bryan Johnson is putting mushrooms on the radar for people who might never have thought about them, and there’s value in that. His broadcasts aren’t harmful to the psychedelic movement, but visibility alone isn’t the same as progress. I’m not convinced they bring us any closer to legalization or real access for the people. That said, the longevity-testing dimension of what he’s doing is genuinely fascinating — it raises questions we haven’t traditionally explored in psychedelic work. If someone discovers mushrooms through a livestream with Mr. Beast and then devotes their life to psychedelic policy reform… well, that would be a miracle I’d be delighted to witness.

Zeus Tipado: Before I stated my PhD in neuroscience at Maastricht University, I was in contact with Bryan Johnson to use his Kernel headset for my fNIRS research into the effects of DMT on the brain. He was into it, even invited me to his LA headquarters. I began to ask him scientific questions about the Kernel headset, then he and his team ghosted me. Never heard from him since. This was 2022…but good for him for live streaming his trip. Maybe he can come to the Netherlands and be a participant in my DMT experiment. We can livestream that.

Jack from Mushies.co.uk: I think is a cultural watershed moment, and perhaps a glimpse at the future of wellness, where psychedelics like psilocybin play a pivotal role in uniting the science with the spiritual and leading to the next stage of human conciousness.

Martin O’Toole: A man who is openly terrified of death has convinced himself (and others) that he is doing something noble, innovative, or spiritually advanced — when in reality, the same terrified ego has simply put on camouflage. Ego convincing itself that it’s transcending itself… while broadcasting its “death” for engagement. It’s almost darkly comedic. Ego is as ego does. The deeper concern is the knock-on effect. There are many of us working tirelessly to promote safe, ethical, intentional plant-medicine work — and yet caricatures like this are given all the airtime. The algorithm rewards exactly the behaviours that responsible practitioners caution against. It promotes the opposite of preparation, containment, and respect. So, what the public sees, and imitates, is everything we would not recommend.

Charlotte James: I watched a little bit of the livestream, and I don't really know that I have commentary. Maybe that's my commentary…is that I don't really have commentary. More broadly, I think there are some connections to be made around his obsession with immortality, which is, like, man's desire to be greater than the divine, or maybe is man's desire to be in union with the divine, but in his approach, or in his work and the products that he creates, is like biohacking as an extension of colonization…At some point before he takes [the mushrooms] he's talking about, like, ‘this is a time in humanity we could be eradicating disease,’ and it's like, yeah, we could be doing that by eliminating structural inequality. I don't know that we need like fancy ass products and all this data to do that. Also, interesting that typically working with psychedelics helps one to confront their fear of death, which I think, you know, man's desire for immortality is also just a denial of death, and I don't know if that's what arrived for him in this.

Danielle Nova: The biomarkers he’s tracking in his mushroom journey offer a far more holistic view of how these medicines interact with the human body, expanding our understanding beyond just their effects on the brain. The soul remains the final frontier, illuminating the place where this medicine does its most profound healing.

Ayize Jama Everett: I honestly and truly, in my heart of hearts and soul of souls, give less than two fucking rabid rabbit shits about what Bryan Johnson does with mushrooms. How do I feel about him live streaming it? I could give two fucks. When, oh when, can we stop caring about what drugs powerful, rich white men do? Is it good or bad for ‘the culture?’ Like, what which culture? Like I think there's a group of people in the psychedelic community who still are entranced by billionaires and believe that billionaires will save them or billionaires on mushrooms will save them. And so for those people, I think it's great on for the culture. For other folks who've been doing this work day in, day out, in different communities all around the world, just like everything else billionaires do, it's so divorced from the reality of most of us in our day-to-day lives that it does not fucking matter. 

Why do I think so many people have given a fuck about this? What do I think it says about psychedelic culture in the West and the US? Well, I think if there was ever a time, 50 or 70 years from now and somebody says, ‘so when do you think the psychedelic movement got co opted?’ There are few times that I would point to. One would be Elon Musk talking about doing DMT on the Joe Rogan Show. I was like, ‘oh that's a fucking red flag.’ I'm curious about Rick Perry and American Survivor game. That shit is another one of those touchstones where I'm, like, okay I think that's where we’ve started losing it in some way. And another time would honestly be this shit. Like what this says about the culture, if anybody cares about it, is that it's willing to be sold to the highest bidder. Why do so many people give a fuck about it? Because so many people believe that billionaires are part of the solution instead of what they really are: The fucking core of the problem.

Dennis Walker: Taking a surprisingly pro Bryan Johnson stance on this one: Bryan Johnson’s livestream was a net positive for psychedelic culture. I didn’t watch it, don’t follow his work, but weighted against other rich and influential people funding AI weapons systems and Black Mirror style surveillance capitalism tech, the political discourse run off the rails, etc., a goofball exercising his cognitive liberty while demonstrating that mushrooms are physiologically beneficial and reconciling with his estranged father on a livestream seems like a real stretch to gatekeep against. He did it in a controlled setting with sober tripsitters, expressed awe and humility at the beauty of the world, and desigmatized intentional mushroom use for a broad audience who may be unfamiliar with heroic mushroom doses. Can we cringe at it? Of course. But god forbid a man catch a vibe.

Camille: The reality is, what’s happening in the psychedelic movement at large and then more specifically, the social media, gamification side show that was brought to us by the likes of Bryan Johnson and company shouldn’t come as a surprise. Other thought leaders, philosophers, well-intended psychonauts, along with scores of Indigenous wisdom keepers throughout history — all who have spoken to this very thing much more eloquently than I can — have been sounding the alarm forever. I’m thinking of folks like Terence McKenna, Maria Sabina, Dr. Katherine Maclean, Psymposia to name a few. And, anyone who’s been paying attention and who understands the historical context of any movement, but especially one that promises — dangerously — a panacea of mystical leverage as the psychedelic movement and its advocates have. It has become wildly apparent that this movement has gone off the rails — it is merely a microcosm of the world at large and if we are to use the framework of psychedelics, set and setting is key and the very foundation for its existence. All one has to do to truly understand the ultimate endpoint of this movement is to look at the collective setting.

Amezcua: It’s always a trip when someone is hailed as a trailblazer for doing something that so many people have already been doing. On one end it allows for other people to be more willing to talk about psychedelics, but when influential people in the healing space call him his own personal FDA and condemn the FDA for taking regulations seriously, it turns into this whole fake positivity movement for the purposes of pushing a product that he and his connections can make money from in the supposed pursuit to “extend life.”

Jeff Benion: One the one hand, I think it's important to bring visibility to the medicine and study the scientific effects, but on the other hand, I think it's the wrong attention and sets a bad example for a sacred experience that is very personal. People looking at him who have never experienced the medicine are not going to get the right feeling about such a sacred practice. He's live streaming dj sets and having FaceTimingbwith YouTubers during what is supposed to be a healing experience. I'm trying to not be judgemental because everyone experiences the medicine in their own way, but I also think what he's doing is a farce and a disgrace.

I am extremely open about my experiences on social media. I've posted about the positive effects about my experiences and even made a YouTube video about it and I've brought a lot of people to try the medicine. But it seems to me that this man just wants attention. I hope he sits with that in a real ceremony, not a side show spectacle, and finds the healing he deserves

Margot and George of My Intuitive Integration: We know that Bryan Johnson is a controversial figure and what he is doing with his longevity project brings up a lot of feelings for different people, but we think that streaming his mushroom trips is showing that this can be done in a safe and therapeutic way and help the people that seem to “have it all together.” Healing as a privilege. Healing is part of health. It is a human right to be able to expand our consciousness and deepen the relationship within our self. The public should note that mushroom medicine is a very old and sacred ritualistic medicine that indigenous people have been using all over the world for millennia. And that method and approach is as profound and therapeutic (I would argue even more so) than this western and modern medicinal approach.

Is Colorado’s NMHA Setting Psychedelic Reform Off On the Wrong Foot?

As Colorado pushes ahead with psychedelic legalization, Indigenous leaders are raising urgent questions about who gets heard — and what gets lost — when policy moves faster than relationship. A new report from a state-appointed Indigenous working group offers a rare inside look at the tensions simmering beneath the reform movement, from cultural protection to the quiet ways colonial systems still shape the conversation.

This week’s Friday Feature follows the people behind that report — the members who showed up, spoke up, and are now urging other states to move differently. Their reflections reveal a deeper story about trust, power, and what ethical progress might actually require.

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