Executive Interview Series: Dan Freed of Thesis on Stimulant Support, and the Real Work of Cognitive Performance

Dan Freed: Your nervous system gets a chance to power down. Most high performers never let it happen. They’re in a low-grade sympathetic state all day, every day, and if you’re also taking a stimulant, you’re layering on top of that. Stimulants are an incredibly effective treatment. They changed my life. But they elevate cortisol, deplete dopamine over the course of the day, and create oxidative stress at a cellular level. By the time the medication wears off, your body has been doing extra work for hours and gets no recovery. Hot mineral water, breathwork, real sleep, those are inputs that help reset cortisol and the autonomic nervous system. The recovery side of stimulant use is the part nobody was talking about until we built Stasis.

Dan Freed: Stasis is a precision-formulated supplement system designed to complement stimulant use. It’s the first product built specifically for people who take stimulants like Adderall, Vyvanse, Ritalin, or Concerta. It isn’t a replacement for your medication. It works alongside it, supporting the parts of the experience that often go unaddressed. Stimulants can be life-changing, but they come with downsides. Jitters, crashes, irritability, disrupted sleep, feeling depleted by 4pm. Most stimulant users I know just accept that as part of the deal. It doesn’t have to be. Stasis has two formulas, a Daytime that helps you feel steady through the day and a Nighttime that helps your body unwind and recover at night. There’s also a Stasis Kids Daytime gummy for children.

Dan Freed: Formulation. That’s our core competency, built over ten years. Most supplement brands chase trendy ingredients and slap them in a capsule. We started with the biology of stimulant use and worked backward to ingredients with mechanism-of-action evidence. Stasis is built around a three-pathway system. Dopamine support to help replenish what stimulants deplete. Cortisol regulation to manage the stress load. Oxidative stress defense to protect at the cellular level. Every ingredient has to map to one of those three pathways at a clinically informed dose. No proprietary blends. No pixie dust. Every batch gets third-party tested for identity, potency, purity, and label-claim accuracy. If you’re putting something in your brain every day, the standard should be that high.

Dan Freed: I built Stasis for myself first. I’ve had ADHD since I was six and been on stimulants for most of my adult life. They’re how I went from being unable to sit through a chapter of a book to graduating from Yale and getting an MBA from INSEAD. But for years I lived with the downsides and just assumed it was part of the deal. Then I started looking at the research on cortisol, dopamine depletion, and oxidative stress, and I realized nobody had built a product to actually address those mechanisms. So I built one. The brand started with Thesis, which is about the broader question of supporting brain chemistry. Stasis is the focused application of that same formulation science for the millions of people on stimulants who deserve better than toughing out the crash.

Dan Freed: It used to mean output. How much I could get done in a day. Now it means alignment. Can I show up to the work that matters with full attention? Can I rest without guilt and push without burning out? Performance without recovery isn’t performance. It’s a slower version of breaking down. That’s why I appreciate what places like Murrieta Hot Springs Resort represent, and it’s the same principle behind Stasis. Whether you’re soaking in mineral water or supporting your body through your stimulant routine, recovery is where the next level of performance actually comes from.

To learn more about Stasis and how it supports people who take stimulants, visit takestasis.com. To plan your own recovery retreat in Southern California, visit murrieta-hotsprings.com.