Alpha Brain Dead

The bellicose branding of self-improvement products

Well I think I’ve found a way to curb, if not quit altogether, my crippling Instagram addiction: search for things that will trigger ads of such derangement, delusion and self-loathing that literally anything would be preferable to your feed. Anything including even, gasp, going outside. Ew, I know, but still.

For the past few weeks I have been sorta casually searching around for some encouragement in my half-assed haphazard attempt at self-improvement. I was thinking, like, I always hit the same plateau when I work out — what if, just this once I pushed through into the realm of actually healthy and fit? What then? (I admit that I was probably thinking that, look, I’m 44, and certainly not getting any more employable, any more desirable, any better at life; what’s the harm in trying to feel better, maybe look a little bit better?) A fool’s errand, I know. But, like, I wasn’t doing anything else.

So I started snooping around, for the fitness routine, diet and supplement situation Matthew McConaughey (allegedly) followed to get in shape for Magic Mike. I looked, in vain, for some Daniel Craig bits from Bond. I started looking for nootropics, thinking maybe they’d make some headway on my rotted brain and sagging energy and emotions. I went a bit deep into reishi and lion’s mane and Co-Q10, on creatine, which I used to take in college, and all kinds of weird shit that apparently helps you sleep better, grow more hair, lose weight, and solve crossword puzzles in a snap, or whatever.

Which, of course, I recognize is a bit of a desperate and strange thing to do. Especially for me who has my whole life ranted against powdered diets — like eating soylent — calling it a kind of castration of the spirit. But, to be honest, my spirit is bored to absolute fucking death with food. With cooking. And cleaning. And trying to save money and so eating the same fucking chicken thighs and kale and maybe an avocado at every meal. And when I feel that way I countersteer, hard, to Seamless and DoorDash and whatever, for burritos and chinese food, for sushi and mmmm Indiannnnn. None of which is helping me on the economics front, let alone getting me where I want to be on the scale. And, really, there are some things that are just beyond me and a mediterranean diet. Like, all the caprese salads in the world aren’t gonna re-up my fraying hairline. Olive oil alone isn’t going to put Humpty Dumpty’s cracked face back together again. And I don’t know how many nicoise salads I have to eat to get my brain going again, but it’s a losing cause at this point.

So I searched. I looked into the abyss of the internet. And boy did the abyss look back. The ads that now fill my feed are the stuff of bad b movie dystopian billboards. “Be the most interesting man in every room,” reads one with a sort of elfin version of the Dos Equis guy looking sage and weathered like Gandalf the goat-teed, in an ad for some sort of brain boosting pill. “You can look as attractive as RYAN GOSLING,” read another, for something describing itself as arbor pro care kit, whatever that is or does. But with the sweet offer of 50% off, if I ordered right now! There were ads for pills to help me metabolize alcohol better, of course, because I need that. for a waist trainer band, that presumably jiggles me back to svelte-ness. An ad for “THE THREESOME YOU NEED,” which of course I’ve been thinking about, which are three powders to “skyrocket testosterone, supercharge bloodflow, and amplify metabolism,” all of which sounds very loud and incredible close and makes me want to go lie down somewhere, alone. There is a thing called mud water, which I have to drink if I ever want to sleep again, and a collagen lotion (which, to be fair, I def need) which 91% of people who have tried it claim has lifted their eyelids.

Needless to say that whoever is art direction and doing the graphic design on these ads is taking less reishi (to reduce stress and anxiety) than they ought to. My scroll now looks like a slot machine at a gas station in Reno. Everything is aggressively colored and logo’d, in fonts one could probably read from space.

But my absolute favorite of all of these is something called Alpha Brain, which aims to help you think more clearly “under stress” with the same sort of urgency in design and tenor of those guys who only eat bear livers or whatever, because it is kill or be killed out there in the suburban Whole Foods of the world. In part what I love about the ads for Alpha Brain is that it is so laser targeted, at the people who listen to Joe Rogan, for example (he endorses the product), and those who seem to think that some fundamental purpose has been stripped away from modern men who no longer have to run down a rhino to feed their village. Alpha Brain as a term, too, could also fit as an apt descriptor for this way of thinking, for these guys, who in opposition to soy bois, presumably, are apex predators in the deli aisle, leaders of their tribe, their community, dominating the weight rooms and dinner table conversation. Real men, you know. I love it and find it so utterly deplorable, but I digress.

And listen to this hypocrisy from me! I did go get a bunch of supplements. All of which I am totally certain are pure snake oil in powdered form. Except for maybe the mushroom coffee I’ve been drinking. It had gotten to the point where the six or so cups of coffee I had to drink to get out of bed weren’t working any more and I was just a wreck all day, and this stuff is sorta working so far. And I can drink it without adding anything, like the oat milk I had been using to protect my gut from the toxicity of all that coffee. I’ve been taking a bunch of mushrooms too (though not the kind I used to take — those I am still in search of). I’m now convinced that multivitamins are actual hogwash, and may put you at a higher risk of cancer? So I’ve stopped taking those. I sometimes take this horrific powdered protein mix to give me a little more pep in the gym — because, what, I don’t know, like I might have to slay a dragon in there or something. And I have embarrassingly just ordered a bunch of things meant to be fat burners, metabolism encouragers, whatever. I’m just throwing spaghetti at the all at this point and just half-assedly experimenting.

Because, I don’t know, what else am I doing? Surely it is a failure of imagination (and probably intelligence) on my part, but there is nothing else to do with myself at the moment. I’m too scared, or out of practice, or poor to go socialize (maybe I always have been? really, when every beloved restaurant in New York closes and there is this huge outpouring of nostalgia I’m always like, damn, all these people can afford to go to restaurants?). I’m not traveling for the next coupla weeks — I’ve given myself a few weeks to see if I can break on through to the other side, see if I can get beyond my familiar plateau. Maybe, the thinking goes, I’ll be able to see happiness from over there. Or at least get one of those old man underwear campaigns.

Happy trails.