In this interview on the Human Upgrade podcast, Dan Freed recounts his tumultuous path from severe burnout and depression to academic success, highlighting how self‑directed biohacking and nootropics transformed his cognition. After a high‑pressure career as a Michelin‑star chef, a suicide‑laden environment, and a failed attempt at monastic life, Freed moved to Thailand, where he self‑medicated with an antidepressant to escape deep depression. He later worked on cruise ships, experiencing a different kind of burnout that exposed his ADHD challenges. A mentorship from a former investment banker‑turned‑chef sparked his ambition to pursue an MBA despite being a high‑school dropout. Struggling with GMAT preparation, Freed turned to PubMed and early online nootropic forums, experimenting with various compounds (often sourced from Europe and Mexico) to boost focus. His systematic self‑experimentation culminated in a 99th‑percentile GMAT score, which he credits with changing his life trajectory. Freed also critiques the one‑size‑fits‑all education model, advocating for personalized learning strategies, customized bio‑hacking, and leveraging individual neurochemical profiles, referencing figures like Jim Kwik and his own biohacking community experiences.
Chapters
You really got into some precision cognitive enhancement stuff. But is this like a brain problem that was the fix to your burnout? Was it an adrenal problem? Was it meditation? Was it, you know, getting a girlfriend? Like what. What fixes all that?
I haven't really talked about this too much publicly, but I bought a one way ticket to Thailand. A Michelin three star restaurant is a brutal environment. There were people who I was close with that committed suicide.
Heard it's just really high intensity.
It was. I was so done with life. My plan was to become a monk. That's one of the reasons I. And so like, I thought about that.
I shaved my head once I got it.
And so I ended up in Thailand and I started dealing with severe depression. I just couldn't because this was the dream that I worked for for so long. And it was gone. And I didn't know what to do with my life. And that was the first time that I read PubMed and discovered clinicals. Because I was in such a deep depression and I was in Thailand, I didn't know what to do. So I started looking up antidepressants and I read a bunch of clinicals, chose one antidepressant. I forget what it was back then. Just in Thailand, you walk into a pharmacy, you buy it. Took it for a couple of months and it got me out of bed, it got me dealing with people. I spent a year in Thailand. I tried to start a nonprofit. I was like, I didn't know what to do with my life. And then I got to the point where I was healthy enough that I also ran out of money and failed at starting a nonprofit. And so I went to work on cruise ships. And that was my last role as a chef. I did it for about two years. The burnout there was a different type. So I would sign onto a ship, I would work six months straight, no days off, seven days a week. There was, you know, you talk about biohacking and sunlight and all this. There was one rotation that I did in the production kitchens. So all of these are below deck. I would see the sun once a week. I would work from when I woke up in the morning. Sometimes we'd have to start work at like 4 or 5am if we had inspections all the way till midnight, you know. You know, sometimes I'd get a little break in there. And it was overseeing the butcher, the baker. I used to do ice sculptures on the ships. It was a very intensive environment. And the other thing that happened there was I was cooking a lot less. So My role was more managing people, supply chain budgets, scheduling. And that started hitting up against that ADHD barrier that I had. And so when I burned out from that, I somehow. Well, I know how. I had a boss on the ship who was a burned out investment banker who became a chef, which is crazy. And he taught me how to use Excel. He taught me how to do some of the basic business functions and mentored me. And he told me one day, if you've come this far without an education. At that point, I was a high school dropout. Never took the SATs, never went to college. He said, imagine what you could do with an education. So I got it into my head that I wanted to go back to school and I wanted to get an mba, which was pretty crazy considering where I was.
You know, I did the same thing. I decided when I was 29 I wanted an MBA.
Yep. I was 28 at the time. And so I got a GMAT study guide and I started studying. It felt like I was back in high school. I would read the page five times. I couldn't internalize the information. I never had any high level math. I never. It was a completely foreign concept to me to study like this. And that's when I went back to PubMed and started looking for nootropics and different ways that I could improve my focus.
Oh, so instead of being just kind of helpless, you decided to control your own biology. Who would have thought? How dare you?
That was such a huge thing for me. And it was. You know, I discovered Reddit, all the different nootropics forums back then, there was very little. So this was 2013.
Yeah. I just started the blog at the end of 2011, and I was actively saying, guys, nootropics are real. But I'd been mentored by the guy who ran Smart Drug News, which was a print newsletter in the 80s named Steve Fowkes, who was an advisor to the anti aging nonprofit that I ran. And so he'd sit down and tell me these things. And it was funny. I'd ordered them from Europe and spent a huge amount of money. I was like, oh my God, I got my brain back. And I feel like they saved my career. And I would have failed out of Wharton absolutely if I wasn't on nootropics, because that's not what my brain does. And I like to think I'm smart. But if you want to feel really dumb and if you have a brain that's smart in one way, just do the standard education system. Like, you'll feel like an idiot overnight. So I don't do standard education anymore, but I like to think I'm reasonably successful.
There's this standard path, and if you don't fit into, you know, like, my sister's a perfect example, and there's nothing against her. She, like, is able to succeed in that environment and do incredibly well.
Is she really happy? Does she love it? Or did she just like, you can. Some people can make themselves do that better. I'm not sure that's healthy for anyone because there's just better ways of learning. It's just, it's more work to teach someone in a way that's customized. Just like nootropics. You can't. You can't say everyone needs X amount of this vitamin, or everyone needs X amount of running or X amount of sleep. It's all customized, including learning. And when they try to cram everyone into, you know, you will have six ounces of skim milk and one scoop of military grade peanut butter and seven pounds of wheat. And, you know, you know, two scoops of soy, and that will be your meal. Oh, and a cricket for dessert. I'm like, how about you go fuck yourself? Because it doesn't work for almost anyone except for that one person who's at the middle of average. And even they probably don't want to eat crickets. So you have to be like, well, what works for you with your brain, with your electrical signaling, with your neurochemical signaling and your learning style? Right? And you're probably familiar with Jim Kwik, right?
Yep.
Dear friend, same thing. He had a brain.
He's great. Yeah, right?
And he's been on the show a bunch of times and on my stage at the biohacking conference so often because same thing, like, okay, how is it that you can be successful, I can be successful, and everyone listening can be successful? It's because we changed our environment for learning and for the type of work we do so that it suits our strengths. And then we found teammates who could do the other stuff. So you've managed to do this for yourself.
It sounds like exactly the. My story is almost exactly like yours in that, you know, I bought a bunch of stuff from Europe, from Mexico, from anywhere I could find nootropics. And I methodically tested different ingredients. Most of them did nothing. I used to be. And, you know, this was again, back in the 2013, I would go into a coffee shop to study. I would take out a milligram scale and I would be weighing white powders. And everybody is like, looking at me like, what the fuck is this guy doing? And then I'd put it under my tongue or I'd take it. And while most of the nootropics did nothing, I just kept going. I was desperate. More than anything, I needed to pass the GMAT. And when I went in to take the GMAT, like, I ended up scoring in the 99th percentile. Surprised the hell out of me. I never. I wasn't even shooting that high, and it was almost. I knew that I was intelligent, but I didn't think that I could function at that level. And once I was able to focus, everything else became easy. And that score changed my life.
You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.
