Archive for October, 2011

The question I get asked the most these days on Twitter (now that the MACHINE SHIRTS are finally on sale) is “Does Alpha Brain work” and “how does it affect your dreams”.
First off, I have always been a very active dreamer, sometimes up to 8 dreams a night that I can often recount. Crazy, bizarre, sometimes emotional dreams are always tied together like vines, so when I start unraveling one, it triggers another one, then another, and another, that I inevitably bore someone with. I’ve dreamt jokes that I went on to tell on stage, ideas that I have pitched as movies, long winded fights with popular radio hosts, and even my death. On that level Alpha Brain hasn’t necessarily increased my dreaming, it has just made the dreams I do have somewhat stranger. The lucidity I talked about on Joe Rogan’s Podcast is undeniable and not something that I have been accustom to. Usually when I have shit going on in my life that is bothering me, I dream that I am organizing alligators (I know, it’s weird, but very consistent). On Alpha Brain I tend to dream about the specific event, emotion, or action. For instance I was missing my kids the other night when I had the dream that I was in a photo shoot on Wilshire. In the middle of the photo shoot I realized…”Holy shit this is a dream!”…Normally that would wake me up (it has happened in almost every sex dream when I reach for a condom and think, “Wait this is a dream, I don’t need a condom”), but for some reason it didn’t, so I left the photo shoot, stepped outside…& realizing it was a dream…and FLEW home. Of course, it’s still a dream that my brain is orchestrating, and my brain hates me, so I got lost in the hills…regardless that was a crazy feeling when I woke up and realized I could do that. Another example was the day before I did WTF w/ Marc Maron. I’ve known Marc for a long time but never really knew how he felt about me. I was concerned that the interview might go “Gallagher”. That night I had the most realistic dream I have ever had in my entire life of the interview doing exactly that. In the dream I walked out of Marc’s studio in a high rise, stepped into an elevator, honestly and emotionally distraught by the things I had said on mic about certain people, looked at myself as the elevator doors shut, and saw that I was wearing hot pink neon stripped Kaza workout pants, no shirt, and a matching neon striped headband. I literally cheered up, realized I was dreaming, and in the dream thought, “fantastic, now I know what not to do”. That kind of problem solving in a dream was absolutely foreign to me.
Usually I get one of those a night, and have noticed, that even when I hopped off Alpha Brain (for a couple weeks I took 1-2 in the morning) I had somewhat of a residual effect. The reason I hopped off is that the dreams were beginning to exhaust me. I had a dream one night where I was sitting on a couch reading a book and as my eyes read the words I thought, “This is totally a dream, so I am having to imagine the word my eyes are about to read before my eyes can actually read them…I wonder if I can guess what the word is before my eyes read it?” FUCKING EXHAUSTING, I woke up wanting to take a nap. This, I am guessing, was a by product undeniable alertness that Alpha Brain was giving me through out the day…So much alertness that I was driving my wife crazy. So I would hop off AB at home and get back on AB on the road. As a matter of fact, it is the Alpha Brain that made me want to write a blog this morning before I drive to Phoenix (I just got a new bottle).
Last and most importantly…I am Johnny Placebo. I can eat a sugar pill & if you tell me it was poison, I will feel sick. I get contact buzzes at reggae concerts, so take what I am saying with a grain of salt…I’m not a doctor & I’m not a pharmacist. I’m just a comedian who draws inspiration from his dreams and wanted to enhance them. I like the stuff, I go on and off them, and I’m on them right now.

Enjoy your ALPHA BRAIN or don’t,
Bert