Ashton Kutcher’s breakup ritual doesn’t involve pints of ice cream or cheesy rom-coms. Apparently, he relies on starvation and hallucinations to move on after heartbreak.
When The Ranch star and Demi Moore decided to divorce in 2013, he retreated into the woods with only water, tea bags and a notebook.
Videos by PopCulture.com
“Right after I got divorced, I went to the mountains for a week by myself,” Kutcher told his friend Dax Shepard for his new podcast, Armchair Expert. “I went into Big Sky in Montana, and I did no food, no drink — just water and tea.”
The now 40-year-old not only fasted from food, he went off the technology grid. “I took all my computers away, my phone, my everything,” he said. “I was there by myself so there was no talking, and I just had a notepad and a pen and water and tea for a week.”
Despite the extreme conditions of the nomadic trip, Kutcher said the experience was eye-opening and enjoyable.
“I started to hallucinate on like day 2 which was fantastic,” he said. “It was pretty wonderful. I was doing tai chi with my own energy.”
Asked by Shepard if he has any experience with the martial art form, Kutcher said with a laugh, “No, I was just doing what came to me.”
Jokes and hallucinations aside, Kutcher said he spent the week thinking back to his past romances and looking toward the future.
“I wrote down every single relationship that I had where I felt like there was some grudge or some, anything, and then I wrote letters to every single person and sent the letters on day seven. I typed them all out and sent them,” he said.
Kutcher didn’t say how the letters were received by his exes, but he did say the experience was cathartic.
“It was almost like an A.A. exercise, where I was like, ‘I probably have done some damage,’ so I just cleared [my] palate,” Kutcher added.
It was “really spiritual and kind of awesome,” he said of the extreme post-breakup trip.
Kutcher and Moore were married in 2005 and split up six years later. The pair announced the breakup with separate statements, with Kutcher saying, “I will forever cherish the time I spent with Demi. Marriage is one of the most difficult things in the world and unfortunately sometimes they fail.”
In her statement, Moore said, “It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I have decided to end my six-year marriage to Ashton. As a woman, a mother and a wife there are certain values and vows that I hold sacred, and it is in this spirit that I have chosen to move forward with my life.”
Kutcher later married his former That ’70s Show costar Mila Kunis in 2015 and the pair have two children together, 3-year-old daughter Wyatt and 1-year-old son Dimitri.
