Everybody is unquestionably confident that 
I'm going to emerge as a different human.
Psilocybin is a powerful, powerful drug. 
Within a trip, it can be both heaven and
hell. A profound effect on one's sense of reality,
including one's sense of self. This is 
the tool for understanding the mind.
I don't know how to anticipate this.
Once upon a time, there was a man named Bryan 
Johnson. Bryan was on a mission. A mission to
save life. To protect the planet. To make the 
world healthier. And to solve one question no
one had ever solved before. How to not die. 
Bryan believed aging was a problem. And like
any problem, it could be measured, studied, 
and solved. So, he tried everything science
would allow him to try. Some things worked. Some 
things didn't. But the quest never stopped. Then,
one day, Bryan discovered something unexpected. 
A potential therapy. But this therapy challenged
the very thing his mission was built on. 
It risked clarity. It risked certainty. It
even risked the mission itself. But it also 
hinted at something else. A way that might
unlock something biology had been holding on to 
all along. To discover the truth, Bryan would
have to set aside control and take a step into 
the unknown. This is where our story begins.
For a long time, I had no major interest 
in psychedelics. My work is about control,
doing things with precision, measuring cause 
and effect. And psychedelics don't fit in
that framework. They felt subjective. Then 
I came across something really interesting.
A study showed that psilocybin helped 
human cells live longer in dish. Most
studies are in mice. So, this was 
different. This caught my attention.
In seeing this, I didn't immediately think I 
should go out and do magic mushrooms. I thought,
why would this be happening? Now, 
if this effect was legitimate,
there was something real happening 
biologically. At the same time,
I kept on thinking about the mental health data. 
People's challenges with depression, anxiety,
and cognitive rigidity. What did they do about it? 
Psilocybin kept on coming up again and again as a
potential therapy for these problems. This created 
a real tension for me because on the one hand,
my project is about control and discipline. 
And this therapy was doing the exact opposite,
temporarily suspending both. So, I didn't want 
to jump into anything. So, I decided to post my
findings and thoughts on social media. I wanted 
to see what other people thought. And damn,
was there a reaction. That's a big dose. 
Magic mushrooms like Bryan Johnson again.
Based upon this feedback and enthusiasm,
my team and I decided to review 
all the literature on psilocybin.
Interesting.
So, we designed a protocol and 
wanted to extensively measure it,
the most quantified psychedelic 
experience in history.
This most likely is the most measured 
psychedelic trip in the history of the
human race. I don't think any human before 
me has measured 249 biomarkers before they
took magic mushrooms. 249 biomarkers. Brain 
activity, inflammation, hormones, metabolism,
heart vital, stress markers, sexual function, 
DNA, cellular aging. Yeah, it's a lot. People
think about magic mushrooms as a fun thing to do, 
like a fun psychedelic trip. Or recently, they've
been looking at this for like PTSD or depression, 
but no one's thought of psychedelics in the form
of uh longevity. So, if society reframed its 
understanding of psychedelics to longevity,
it might be a big deal. Cuz psychedelics 
fix broken things. Psychedelics don't make
things younger. The goal wasn't to have an 
experience. The goal was to learn the truth.
I also started having real concerns. What if 
I came out of this and I didn't care about
Blueprint anymore? What if my values changed? 
What if I became unrecognizable from who I am
today? That risk was real. But the flip side 
is that if this therapy had that potential
to improve mental health, brain function, 
and biological aging, then avoiding it out
of fear wouldn't be aligned with the mission. 
As our deliberations matured, it became clear
this was not about taking mushrooms. It was an 
explorer's question. Is the journey worth taking?
The experiment sounded simple on paper. Test 
the compound, measure the results, report
the findings. But the thing is, psilocybin isn't 
just a compound. It alters perception. It changes
how you see yourself and how you see the world. 
I've spent years building my mental discipline,
every decision, and calorie, and minute. 
Blueprint is built on this consistency.
Psychedelics, however, are built on 
entropy, spontaneous flow, and uncertainty.
There was a real possibility that 
something could go wrong. For example,
what if I experienced psychological instability?
What if I disrupted my motivation for this 
project? What if I came out of it and thought,
"Why am I doing any of this?" This wasn't 
hypothetical. People were warning me with
real-life stories. My phone's has blowing 
up with messages of people who have been
expressing concern that there have been 
founders that have done journeys and then
they come back and check out. Yes. They don't 
find meaning anymore. They want to go off-grid.
And so like if I crash out then it leaves a 
a hole to some extent. I don't know what 5 g
means. I don't know what to anticipate. 
And so I took these concerns seriously.
There's also a cultural history here. 
Psychedelics were once studied seriously
and they were pushed to the margins for decades. 
They were associated with chaos and rebellion,
loss of control. None of those things are 
aligned with how I live my life. So I had
to ask myself a hard question. Was I pursuing 
this because it was interesting or because it
might reveal something true? I wonder if this 
is a a different force that I'm not contended
with before. I wonder if this force is just a 
fundamentally more powerful than my concept of me
or of my desires or my will or my wants. I guess 
this shows that fear can be useful. It tells you
when something matters. And the fear I was feeling 
wasn't about mushrooms. It was about identity. And
so if this experience changed how I think or 
what I value I had to be ready to accept that
outcome. Even if it meant questioning my entire 
mission and existence. And this was the paradox.
And it pushed me in this direction to realize 
that if I'm going to purely pursue longevity,
I can't be over protective of my current 
beliefs. I have to be willing to test them.
The morning of my first dose, 
everything felt ordinary.
The light through the windows, the 
sound of the trees, how my hands felt.
I was being extremely methodical about my 
routines because I knew going into the day
I wanted to feel rested and well. And so, 
the night before I made a lot of plans to
make sure I had a wind down routine. I could 
turn my phone off. I got to bed right on time.
I woke up naturally at 5:04 in the morning. It was 
a good way to start the day because I didn't want
to enter the day feeling like I had a overhang of 
poor sleep or in a bad mood because I knew that
carrying these things into the experience would 
have an effect. I wanted to feel great in my
entire body. I guess what kept on echoing in my 
mind was that I had been approaching this as an
experiment focused on the data and the outcomes 
but I hadn't entered it primarily thinking,
"How am I going to change as a person?" And 
that was all people could talk about. And so,
that kept on echoing in my mind of have I 
appropriately sized this up fully knowing
that this could be a one-shot situation and 
I may change irreparably. Thinking about
all these things and how to sequence all the 
measurements, get all the measurements right to
make sure it's scientific, and the psychological 
uncertainties of this it was a lot. All right,
let's do this. The dose was 4.67 of dried 
magic mushrooms strain B plus. Hey guys,
ready? And a concentration of psilocybin of 24.98 
mg. As some would say, a heroic dose. Now, this
level of magic mushroom is not to be confused with 
a microdose. This would be a full-on experience.
Some people ask me, are you nervous? Yes. 
I'm nervous based upon what I've read in
your responses. That those of you who have 
done this or something similar have said
that even one or two or three grams is a 
significant experience and five is just
next level. It's It's unimaginable. So, yes, I'm 
nervous. In all the experimentation we've done,
control has really been our primary lever. 
It's how we've built the entire protocol.
It's how I live my life. It's how we've built 
Don't Die. And now, I was choosing to set it
down on purpose. Right after I took it, I made 
a phone call. Hello. Hey Tomage. I don't know
if you're watching the live stream, but your dad 
just took the 5 g of magic mushrooms. How are you
feeling into it? I haven't felt anything yet. So, 
it's probably have 10 minutes until take off. So,
I just want to call and tell you I love you 
and I'll see you in a couple hours. I love you,
too. I'll see you on the other side. 
Love you, Tomage. Love you, Tomage. Bye.
There's this moment when you realize that 
you can no longer steer the ship. You are no
longer in control. And the experience begins to 
unfold. And you have a choice. You can fight it
or you can welcome it.
Ah, Ah, that's fun. Hearing that sound. I 
haven't I haven't heard your leaves crack
like that Really? for a long time. I think this is 
what I remember hearing as a kid. What surprised
me the most wasn't chaos, it was actually the 
opposite. A feeling of openness, of connection,
a kind of childlike excitement I hadn't felt in a 
very long time. At one point I revisited the fear,
the idea that I I might not care about this 
afterward, but instead of of losing clarity,
I just felt like aligned. Like 
not euphoric, not irrational,
just just somehow like cohesively 
aligned. I really wish all of you well,
and I really sincerely mean that. You know, like, 
I've been in really dark places in my life. And,
um, you know, there are people who pull up 
for you in life that are there for you and,
um, you know, without judgment, and are soft and 
supportive and strong. And I think that this is,
like, a really special moment, as as, as a species 
that we are transforming into something else,
and it's this really wild time to be alive. It's 
the most spectacular time to be alive in history.
In the days that followed, that feeling 
stayed. It felt fresh. I felt gratitude
and curiosity and energy. If anything, I was 
seeing my mission more clearly. But then again,
feelings are data. The question 
was simple. Did the biology agree?
After I took that first dose, we measured 
everything again. The goal wasn't to prove
a theory, it was to see what had changed. 
Some markers stayed the same. Interesting.
That's important. But a few markers stood out. 
Uh cortisol, for example, let's start there.
Uh cortisol is the body's primary stress hormone. 
It affects sleep, recovery, and metabolic health.
We tracked mine throughout the day on the first 
dose. I had my morning cortisol spike, which you
have in your circadian rhythm. Following the dose, 
and for 3 hours after, it peaked again. This was
three to eight times higher than my normal levels 
at noon. By the evening, though, my cortisol had
returned to normal baseline. What we saw in the 
data is actually a healthy response. It's a short,
contained burst of cortisol in response to the 
psilocybin. It was a very fast reset. There was
no prolonged stress. The system fired and was 
able to recover quickly. But that wasn't the
part that surprises. Five days later, my morning 
cortisol had dropped by 42%. Now, another marker
of adrenal activity, DHEA, also dropped 45%. 
This is what researchers call the afterglow.
This is a measured biochemical state of calm that 
follows a psychedelic experience. It's not being
numb or sedated. It's less stress-primed. And 
it aligned exactly with how I felt internally.
My emotions were a choppy sea. And the the 
psilocybin had just smoothed out the ocean,
so it was glass. It took out the rough edges of 
the spikes of emotional deliberation and concern.
It just kind of took my whole psyche and just 
calmed me down. We also looked at my brain and to
my great pride and joy, we got to use Kernel Flow. 
This is the neuroimaging device I dedicated seven
years of my life building. It's a we were able to 
use it and map my neural activity before, during,
and after the experience. Psilocybin is known 
to disrupt rigid neural patterns and in my case,
we observed exactly that. My default mode 
network went quiet. Now, this is like the
command center like the self. It went quiet 
and in that quietness, regions of my brain
began talking to each other, sensory, auditory, 
and language regions. And the technical term
for this increased brain activity is entropy. It 
was My brain was becoming more flexible and more
exploratory and more childlike. It was It was more 
like a younger brain. I remember the feelings,
they were like sensational. It felt like my 
consciousness was dialed up to like a 10 out
of 10, a a hyper awareness and a hyper aliveness. 
I experienced sense of touch with awe. Like flavor
exploded in my mouth. My brain wanted to share and 
study and marvel. It It felt like it restored my
perception to youthful levels, almost like it was 
a factory reset taking me back to my childhood,
dissolving the numbness that comes with 
age. And the cool thing was the data
actually matched my subjective experience. 
The brain had been locked into these fixed
patterns that I had been built up over decades 
of time and now it was something entirely new.
And then, there was something that showed up that 
we actually weren't looking for. We hadn't thought
to look for. My blood sugar control had changed 
significantly. We didn't fully understand why,
but the change was clear and it was dramatic. So, 
more on that one later. So, we had 249 baseline
measurements from before and after the dose. We 
also saw some really positive movement in other
markers, for example, reduced inflammation. 
Now, none of this was definitive. This was
a single dose, it doesn't prove a theory, but 
the early signs were consistent. The experience
wasn't just subjective, there was data. And 
if the results had been neutral, you know,
maybe it would have been time to stop. But, 
they weren't. And so, we expanded the protocol.
After that first dose, we sat with the data and 
I really had a choice. We could treat what we
had just seen as an anomaly, or we could 
test again. One experiment can be noise,
but repetition creates signal. So, we designed 
a second dose, this time 3 weeks following the
first. This experiment would have a dose of 5.35 
g of dried mushroom, the same B+ strain, and
28 mg of psilocybin, an even larger dose of the 
active component. We also expanded our measurement
profile, adding 136 additional measurements. This 
time we added thermal imaging and also continuous
brain scans before, during, and after. Now, all 
of these changes were important, but the biggest
change this time around was the fact that it was 
public. I'm going to do 5 g of magic mushrooms.
I had announced that I was going to live stream 
the second dose. The reaction was dramatic. People
said I was reckless, performative, dangerous, 
but I saw this differently. I'm going to test
something that challenges conventional thinking. 
And transparency matters. Transparency is the
cornerstone to this entire project. And 
the public deserves to see what I'm doing.
It's It's not a performance. It's not a highlight 
reel. It's not a summary. This is the real thing.
Psychedelics have spent decades in the 
shadows. They were studied briefly,
then they were dismissed, then they were 
stigmatized. If we're going to take them
seriously again, we have to test them seriously. 
The first dose was intimate in a small room with
trusted faces nearby. This one was different. 
This was family and friends joining virtually,
the world watching live. And that mattered, 
not just emotionally, but biologically.
But, first, the thermal imaging. This had never 
been done before. Nobody has ever recorded a
thermal profile of an intense psilocybin 
experience. And so, we were the first.
What we saw is that my core body temperature 
rose between 1 and 1/2 and 2° Fahrenheit. My
heat redistributed inward toward the center of my 
body, consistent with deep autonomic activation.
And the patterns of change across my face and 
upper body suggested something more specific.
It was this blend of intense joy and deep 
inside, but also a subtle thread of melancholy.
This last one, I I wasn't 
expecting. But, I felt it.
And then, there was the brain. 3 weeks following 
the first dose, my baseline scan showed traces
of what had happened. My My brain hadn't 
fully recovered. And so, the second dose hit,
and the effects just didn't repeat. They built 
upon each other. The entropy went further.
The integration went deeper. The most 
dramatic shift was in the auditory,
speech, and language networks. The regions of 
my brain that listen and speak. The same regions
that were lit up because my family and friends 
were on the screen. Where I enjoyed expressing
and describing my feelings and listening 
to the outpouring of love and positivity.
In this sweet moment, the technology that I'd 
built to study aging was now recording what
connection felt like. We now have two doses, 
repeated signals, stronger the second time. So,
the question changed. It was no longer did 
something happen, it was what does this mean?
After the second dose, we just sat down 
with everything. We had pre-dose baselines,
we had post-dose measurements, short-term shifts, 
and sustained effects. So, we now had two doses,
hundreds of biomarkers, and months of data. 
We expected things in my brain to change,
that's obvious. What we didn't expect is the 
metabolic reset. I had worn a continuous glucose
monitor on my arm. It tracked my blood sugar 
every few minutes, every day. We then compared
my blood glucose for the 3 days before the first 
dose, and then 3 days after. Surprisingly, my mean
blood glucose dropped by 8%. My variability, 
which is the day-to-day swing, dropped 11%,
and time above 125 mg per deciliter, this is for 
the top you don't want to exceed zero. This meant
that my estimated HbA1c, this is basically 
a marker of my body's blood glucose control,
dropped from 4.7 to 4.4, a relative reduction 
of 6.8%. That moves my blood glucose control
from the top 2%of the population to the top 0.2%. 
That means better than 99.8%of healthy 18-25 year
olds. That effect held through day three. This was 
the first documented human evidence of improved
blood sugar control using psilocybin. Now, for 
context, to improve someone's glycemic control, it
typically takes a few months of daily medication. 
For example, there's a drug called Metformin.
My blood glucose improved after a single 
neuroplastic event. A psychedelic experience
may have triggered a downstream reset in how my 
liver and pancreas were functioning. Mimicking and
potentially exceeding the effect of some of the 
most prescribed and powerful drugs in the world
in one dose. Brian, when you saw the glucose 
data come back, what was your first reaction?
This was a a genuinely exciting moment because we 
have taken so much uh hate and trash talking where
people have just looked down upon this project 
as a nuisance to society. And in seeing that,
we thought, did we just discover something 
original? And that was a big victory for the
team. We felt very proud of that. We also tested 
for inflammation. The marker for this is called
hs-CRP. It's a marker of how much low-grade stress 
and damage your body carries at any given time.
Now, my levels of inflammation were low to begin 
with, 0.23. 5 days after the first dose, my levels
dropped below the detection limit, 0.15. After the 
second dose, it stayed suppressed. Why does this
matter? Because chronic inflammation is one of the 
fastest accelerators of biological aging. It is
strongly associated with cardiovascular disease, 
all-cause mortality, and insulin resistance. What
we observed, as far as the tests could tell us, 
my inflammation was effectively erased. Now,
for my hormones, the cortisol pattern we saw 
from the first dose was not a one-time event,
that the 42%morning drop. Also, we had the 45%drop 
in DHEA. It was shifting me to a calmer baseline.
It repeated after the second dose, a measurable, 
durable change in how my body handles stress at
rest. 3 weeks after I had taken the first dose, my 
brain had not fully reset. 3 weeks after my second
dose, the effects on my brain were cumulative. 
Aging is associated with rigid neural patterns.
What we observed was the opposite. It didn't 
look like a passing high, it began to look like
a structural reset. The composition of my gut 
microbiome also shifted. Several species that
are associated with stress, anxiety, insulin 
resistance, all declined, and a new species
emerged that hadn't been there before. Now, what 
this means in the long run, we don't really know,
but the gut is one more system that didn't stay 
still. It was evolving. The brain, hormones,
metabolism, inflammation, and the microbiome, 
the signals were not isolated. This was a system
cooperating in whole. The primary drivers of 
biological aging are these. They're stress,
hormone dysregulation, metabolic dysfunction, and 
chronic inflammation. After two quantified doses,
we observed measurable shifts in all four. 
In a body that was already optimized. Ryan,
what does the coordination of all these systems 
aligning mean to you? Some of history's greatest
accomplishments have been the ability to observe 
something new. And often times what prevents us
from those things is measurement. And previous 
generations didn't have the ability to measure
the microbiome or the brain. We now do. And so 
I think what we've done that's unique is we just
took the tools and we pointed them at a specific 
thing. And you know, psilocybin has been used for
thousands of years. Maybe even more. It's been 
a pillar of society. And we took this ancient
medicinal ritualistic medicine and we put it under 
a scientific microscope. And we observed something
new. This experiment produced two things that had 
never been done before in humans. The first ever
was continuous glucose evidence of improved 
blood sugar control following psilocybin.
It was the first ever thermal profile of an 
intense psilocybin experience. Both firsts,
both unexpected, and both consistent. All of 
this leads me to believe that magic mushrooms
are a longevity therapy. Not because they make you 
feel different, but because they measurably alter
the systems that drive aging. This was the most 
quantified psychedelic experiment ever conducted.
Also, these are first in human observations, which 
needs replication. Both the magnitude and the
durability need further study. But, ignoring the 
signal would no longer be aligned with the data.
This experiment did not begin with mushrooms. 
It actually began with a question. How do we
extend healthy human life? I wanted to 
know what was real, not what was popular
or culturally acceptable, but what actually 
moved the needle. Psilocybin did not replace
the fundamentals. Things like sleep, nutrition, 
movement, discipline. Those are the power laws,
the things that do the heavy lifting. What 
psilocybin did was it expanded the framework. Now,
I need to be clear on this point. This is not 
an endorsement of magic mushrooms. This is not
a recommendation to go and try them out. 
Everything we did was under direct medical
supervision. It was done legally, it was done 
safely, it was in a controlled environment.
This was a measured experiment. What we have is a 
quantified observation. One that can't be ignored.
People ask me why I do this. You know, the 
constant measurement, the obsession with data,
the millions of dollars spent on all of it. I 
have this internal struggle all of the time.
I don't feel like I'm running the show. I 
just feel like something else runs me. And
I find out after the fact. This is also true 
when I was depressed, when I was, you know,
really considering suicide. When I'd lay down 
on the floor at night, be like, "I'm done."
You know, I haven't always been this person. There 
were years I couldn't get off the floor. Years I
couldn't see a way forward. Years I wanted to 
end it all. When I started measuring my body,
it wasn't because I wanted to live forever, 
it was because I wasn't sure I would survive
the way I was living. The irony is that Don't 
Die didn't start as a mission to extend life.
It started as a way to stay alive. So, when 
I got the data back from this experiment,
when I saw the inflammation went to below 
detectable levels, when my brain looked younger,
when I saw the convergence across five biological 
systems, it wasn't just a longevity finding;
it was a glimpse of a tool that might help people 
who feel now the way I used to feel. That matters,
and that is worth measuring. As much 
as we learned in this experiment,
there's probably more we didn't learn. You 
know, we're still tracking telomere length.
We're looking at epigenetic age, markers of 
cellular aging. Those answers are still coming in,
and we'll have more questions. This experiment 
isn't finished. The protocol isn't fixed,
and that's the point. Longevity isn't about one 
breakthrough, it's about systems working together.
If a tool measurably restores those systems, then 
it belongs in the conversation. Psilocybin earned
its seat at the table. What surprised me the most 
was not the experience, it was the convergence
in a body that was already optimized, and 
that matters. Everybody is unquestionably
confident that I'm going to emerge as a different 
human. It feels bigger than I can comprehend.
And so, the quest continues. More tests, more 
data, more evidence. Not to chase novelty,
but to pursue truth and the expansion 
of Don't Die. Onward, Brian. Onward.