Ashton Kutcher Fasted for a Week in the Woods After Demi Moore Divorce: 'I Started to Hallucinate'
Ashton Kutcher isn’t the type to drown his breakup sorrows with a carton of ice cream and a box of tissues.
Instead, when the actor-entrepreneur divorced Demi Moore in 2013, he retreated into the woods with nothing but some water, tea bags and a notebook.
“Right after I got divorced, I went to the mountains for a week by myself,” Kutcher, 40, said in a wide-ranging interview on his pal Dax Shepard‘s new podcast, Armchair Expert. “I went into Big Sky in Montana, and I did no food, no drink — just water and tea.”
Not only did Kutcher fast, he went completely off the grid. “I took all my computers away, my phone, my everything,” he explained. “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.”
While the spartan conditions might seem like salt in the wound after a breakup, Kutcher said he enjoyed the experience.
“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.”
The former That ’70s Show star occupied his time by getting introspective about past splits. “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 7. I typed them all out and sent them.”
Kutcher didn’t say how the letters were received by his exes, but he did say he found the experience 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.”
Overall, the actor said his retreat was “really spiritual and kind of awesome.”
Moore and Kutcher wed in 2005. When they split six years later, each released 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 went on to marry Mila Kunis in 2015. They have two children together — a daughter named Wyatt Isabelle, 3, and a 1-year-old son Dimitri Portwood.