Bryan Johnson describes how startup pressure, a failing relationship, leaving his birth religion, chronic depression, and severe sleep deprivation compounded into a breaking point. Years of grinding without rest caught up with him all at once.
I very much had a grind culture mentality. I ran on the elixir of youth. You know, when you're 20 something, you don't feel it as badly as you get older. Burning fires everywhere in life, you know, multiple little babies. I had a challenging personal relationship. I was leaving the religion I was born into, having an existential crisis. I was chronically depressed and then running a startup. Put a few of those pieces together and it's like it's a pretty tumultuous existence. You're fighting on every single one of those fronts. Every day becomes a lot, and it just compounded itself over time. And so as add one more bad night's sleep to the next day and then one layer deeper of depression over time, it just gets to be to a breaking point.
