Patrick Bateman, is that you?
Over the weekend, The Times put out a piece by Jessie Hewitson called “Welcome to the Wellness Revolution,” chronicling the day in the life of four wellness savants. While all make for pretty spectacular reading (“at some point between meetings I’ll try to have a shot of activated charcoal – they sell it at Pret now. We’re so blessed in Britain”), the piece soon went viral due to one man’s routine.
Tim Grey is the 39-year-old founder and CEO of a digital marketing agency and, separately, a founder of the Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Centre. Tim also has a wellness routine that sounds like it was lifted straight from the pages of Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho.
A satire of 1980s New York yuppie culture, American Psycho is made up of endless listings of brand names and consumer products as Patrick Bateman’s obsession with detail turns his narrative into an inventory of what people are wearing, where they are eating and what clubs they are going to. In one famous scene from the movie adaptation, Patrick talks us through his morning routine in the same coldly rational and soulless way he does everything else (“I always use an aftershave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older.”)
After the Times piece went viral, many people noticed the uncanny similarities between Patrick Bateman’s routine and that of Tim Grey, who channels the character in both tone and content. “I imagined each one of these being narrated by Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman and honestly, it makes a lot more sense that way,” tweeted @bucko421.
Tim Grey wakes up at 7.45am having had “seven hours and forty-one minutes’ sleep.” He then goes on to take a multitude of supplements (probiotics, Quinton Isotonic, chaga mushroom powder, potassium, colostrum and collagen, to name a few); measure his urine pH levels with litmus test strips; use a “HumanCharger” which shines light into his ear to give him energy; and stand on his balcony to clear his mind – all of this before 9am.
Other highlights include his 9am fist-bump with the concierge which he does every morning (“I like to make people smile and feel valued. Life is too short not to enjoy the world and the people in it”); the nootropic drug called aniracetam he takes at 10am which switches his brain on and gives him clearer thinking; his evening trip to the Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Centre where he lies “in a pressurised chamber while pure oxygen is pumped into it;” and his 10:40pm watch of “half an episode” of something that adds value to his life, “no more, as I feel that, as we only live once, you’ve got to make the most of things and not waste your life in front of the TV.”.
Read the whole absurdist routine here, it’s well worth it.