The ‘never die’ movement is no way to live

Bryan Johnson has made not dying the sole, unwavering purpose of his life. This might strike most adults as an eccentric ambition, but as the 47-year-old tech entrepreneur claimed in a recent interview with US journalist Bari Weiss, it apparently represents the ‘most fundamental of all human desires’. ‘Most religions’, Johnson said, ‘are selling some version of “don’t die”’. Only now, not dying is ‘technically, potentially possible’, he claims.

Johnson clearly takes his pursuit of immortality seriously, believing the tests he conducts on himself will benefit future generations. He even likens his journey of physiological self-discovery to the exploration of uncharted regions of the Earth.

As part of his obstinate refusal to kick the bucket, he has amassed a team of 30 scientists to test, monitor and experiment his body. He says he is the ‘most measured person in human history’. His personal team of scientists aren’t just checking his heart rate or recording his weight. They are also measuring some rather more peculiar aspects of Johnson’s physical life, including the duration of his nighttime erections and the speed at which he urinates – his personal best is 25 millitres per second.

The lengths to which Johnson is going in order not to die are extreme. Last year, he injected himself with 300million ‘young’ Swedish bone-marrow stem cells. The year before, he controversially infused himself with a litre of his son’s plasma. When this yielded little benefit, he decided to replace all of the plasma in his body with Albumin to ‘remove the toxins from my body’. The quality of his plasma, Johnson boasted, was of such a high quality that the clinician involved ‘couldn’t bring himself to throw it away’.

Every moment of Johnson’s life is intricately mapped-out and regimented. He eats dinner precisely eight hours before he goes to bed so that he has a resting heart rate of 44 beats-per-minute by the time he falls asleep, and takes about 50 supplements each day. He exercises for an hour every day, combining cardio, weights, balance and flexibility.

Unsurprisingly, diet emerges as one of Johnson’s core fixations. Due to his great fear of the ‘heavy metals’ that, according to his research, are everywhere in the food we eat, he consumes no animal products. His usual breakfast, he told Weiss, consists of an assortment of broccoli, cauliflower, black lentils and hemp seeds. ‘Every calorie that enters my body has to fight for its life’, he said. Despite being in a ‘constant state of light hunger’, Johnson said he finds the idea of indulging ‘painful’.

Johnson’s lifestyle is certainly impractical. If everyone lived like he did, nothing would ever get done. It would be impossible to hold down a regular job, raise a family, or care for those who need it under Johnson’s regime (his morning routine takes three-to-four hours alone). It’s also incredibly expensive – although having sold his start-up company, Braintree, for approximately $800million in 2013, that’s one thing Johnson doesn’t need to worry about.

‘Don’t die’ makes for an incredibly self-centred approach to life. The preservation of one’s own body, the maintenance of one’s health, takes precedence over everything else, including relationships with other people. Johnson unsurprisingly finds dating ‘pretty challenging’.

His particular obsession with bodily health could easily be dismissed as one man’s weirdness. After all, abnormal high-achievers like Johnson do seem wired differently to most people. But his obsession with not dying is also, in many ways, an extension of the ‘clean living’ pathology that has reached endemic levels in society today.

Indeed, it’s hard not to see the anti-alcohol ‘sober curious’ movement, the Apple SleepWatch, daily cold-water therapy, intermittent fasting, and any other number of health hacks, as having echoes of Johnson’s ‘never die’ mantra. To that extent, it’s no surprise that Johnson’s rebellion against ageing is attracting legions of fans. He has more than one million followers on Instagram and is already the subject of a recent Netflix documentary, Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever.

Yet to obsess about not dying seems like a waste of a life. Think of all the relationships and projects that would have to be abandoned. Think of all the joys and pleasures that would have to be sacrificed at the altar of health. Given the choice between never dying and a life lived well, I know what I’d choose – the pub.

Hugo Timms is an intern at spiked.