# Psychedelic risks depend partly on dose and setting

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/psychedelic-risks-depend-partly-on-dose-and-setting/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Bryan Johnson](https://realalpha.app/people/bryan-johnson/) · Bryan Johnson is a longevity experimenter and investor. · Founded Braintree, sold to PayPal for $800 million, and now runs Blueprint, a longevity experiment.
- Host: [David Friedberg](https://realalpha.app/people/david-friedberg/) · CEO, Ohalo · Founded The Climate Corporation, sold to Monsanto for about $1.1B in 2013.
- Show: All-In
- Episode: [Bryan Johnson: I Just Took the Most Powerful Dose of DMT in the World... Here's What It Was Like](https://realalpha.app/v/Axpnkqd-Agk/), Mar 26, 2026
- Moment: 15:58 to 23:33 of the episode (8 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/psychedelic-risks-depend-partly-on-dose-and-setting/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/Axpnkqd-Agk/?t=958

## Quote

> “I came back **even more motivated** to do what I'm doing now. I don't have a desire to go off in the woods and live that kind of life.”
> — [Bryan Johnson](https://realalpha.app/people/bryan-johnson/) at [20:32](https://realalpha.app/v/Axpnkqd-Agk/?t=1232) · All-In

## Takeaways

1. Unmeasured doses and settings make risks harder to manage.
2. Some people may not be suitable candidates.
3. Johnson says the experience reinforced his work.

## About this segment

Bryan Johnson says uncontrolled doses and settings can raise risks, while acknowledging some people may not be good candidates. He also describes feeling more committed to his work and considers whether psychological flexibility could help people adapt to rapid change.

From “Bryan Johnson: I Just Took the Most Powerful Dose of DMT in the World... Here's What It Was Like”, Mar 26, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/Axpnkqd-Agk/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[16:04](https://realalpha.app/v/Axpnkqd-Agk/?t=964) There's some arguments to be made that psychedelics can induce permanent psychoses, cause functional changes and drive some people that might be predisposed into schizophrenic states. How did you get over those risks? Because for a lot of people, that would turn them off to trying psychedelics. And it's not a non-zero percentage of people that suffer these consequences. Yeah, I agree. And also people who have really bad trips that leave them scarred. So it really is. And I think in part of it is what could be contributing to this is people who, for example, who have tried magic mushrooms.

[16:43](https://realalpha.app/v/Axpnkqd-Agk/?t=1003) you know it's in a social situation someone's got a bag you pull out some mushrooms it's like yeah like ways blank and they pop it in but they have no idea what kind of mushroom strain they're eating they don't know what the dose of psilocybin is so it's like unquantified unsupervised wrong set and setting and so much of it i think you can the risk persists but i don't think we've approached psychedelics with the appropriate rigor that we should to make it safe and so it's not to say that we can solve for the safety issue for all people. Some people just may not be the appropriate candidate for it. But I think if we do create a safety structure around it, they could deliver the benefits people want without with, you know, with less of the risk, but definitely I agree to you like it's, again, it deserves all the caution in the world. Do you think it's like neurogenic

[17:30](https://realalpha.app/v/Axpnkqd-Agk/?t=1050) neuroplasticity, trauma resolution? I mean, what is the way that this is going to be allowed to become, call it a medical therapeutic that can be more broadly trialed and then eventually figure out how to bring it to people without it being carrying all the risks and burdens that it does today. I mean, if I just subjectively compare my experience with 5-MeO to having a better diet and exercising every day and sleeping well and doing the sauna and doing hyperbolic oxygen therapy, this was more efficacious than all of them in terms of the reset of me as a human it just is incomparable and i guess i'm really left pondering i meant for this molecule to have such a gigantic impact now like how long will it last what's the decay curve like you know will i find i i become the former brian within 30 days 60 days i have to repeat this again i don't know but it really is

[18:26](https://realalpha.app/v/Axpnkqd-Agk/?t=1106) you know you when you sleep well you feel great you exercise great but like nothing like what 5meo did in terms of of like the reset of me as a human so let's just talk about the consequences outside of the physiological which is life yeah there are lots of stories and friends that i have that and people that i know that have tried a heavy psychedelic like an ayahuasca or something they were the ceo of a company and then they quit their company and they go off to the jungle leave their family, divorce their partner, make such dramatic life changes because their perspective has been shifted so much that they reevaluate what matters in life to such a degree that they give up a lot of the things that mattered before. In the wake of that, there are people that feel they're a victim of that behavioral shift, the investors in the company,

[19:20](https://realalpha.app/v/Axpnkqd-Agk/?t=1160) I mean, the employees, the family members, et cetera. Can you just talk a little bit about those broad risks? Because we've seen it and I don't know if you've seen the same, but friends that have kind of like said, I have this new perspective, I'm giving up my life. I've seen the same thing. And one investor told me that he even put it in the deal docs that, you know, if we invest, you're not gonna do these psychedelics because they wanted to minimize the risk profile.

[19:46](https://realalpha.app/v/Axpnkqd-Agk/?t=1186) It's a thing. In your deal, in an investment in you? no i just spoke because i've been doing this uh people bring this up as a topic of conversation right and so they say like i see you're doing this for longevity but you know like i've seen so many examples Where people put money in, then you lose the founder. Like they're off. Everyone's high and dry. And so they were telling me that they put into deal docs that they can't do this for the duration of the company. And so it is a thing. And I have nothing to say about it other than I know it happens. Also, I would say that most people in the tech world that I'm familiar with, again, they've done this in retreat centers or in social environments.

[20:30](https://realalpha.app/v/Axpnkqd-Agk/?t=1230) It's not quantified, it's not set in setting. So it's a different thing. But I will say like, I guess me as a person, what I'm trying to focus on, I came back even more motivated to do what I'm doing now. I don't have a desire to go off in the woods and live that kind of life. It emboldened me to work on these things, but no question about it, you do have a dramatic shift in perspective and it's very hard to get into it.

[20:57](https://realalpha.app/v/Axpnkqd-Agk/?t=1257) a very important philosophical question who am i yes if i'm defined by my experiences it roughly equates to my neurons are wired in a way yes that's a consequence of my experiences and if i go in and take a drug and in a few hours rewire all my neurons am i the same person yeah what makes brian brian you can maybe recall some memories of brian prior to taking the psychedelic but brian as a person has been rewired yes are you a different person now and what does that say about are we ever a persistent person yeah right yeah your question is spot on probably the most dramatic reconstruction of your 60 plus trillion cells than anything you can do in life you know like it may be like a near-death experience you know would maybe uh be close but it's a dramatic rewiring of you as a human your values can change too that's right

[21:57](https://realalpha.app/v/Axpnkqd-Agk/?t=1317) and you could judge the values pre and post right you could judge values ascribed to you by a religion or perhaps values ascribed to you by responsibility to family members children spouses partners what have you you abandon them after you go through this change so your values have changed is it right or wrong that's right i think it's another important question that comes out of all this i agree and like you you know like you now think about that that's through the frame where the world changes at a certain speed now you take the world where it's changing faster so we now know that it's hard to predict what's going to happen two weeks from now or a month right like things are changing very quickly and so now you come up with this practical question can humans change fast enough in the world where ai is the dominant engine of innovation and so in that case

[22:48](https://realalpha.app/v/Axpnkqd-Agk/?t=1368) you may want psychedelics as your ally to say as a human i'm struggling to move with the change yeah and so there's potentially a where it it flips from a liability to an asset where now i do want that restructure changing even though you have some tail risk of like maybe my priorities will shift i think you have profound what i would call psycho flexibility and i think most people don't, they have either a disinterest in changing who they are overnight, or they're fearful of the ramifications or the experience, and that they wouldn't go through it. How far would you take it? Would you wire yourself up to a Neuralink or neural enhancement device that would give you