Well, folks, here it is. The guide you’ve all been asking about, compiled from personal experience, close observation of other noshampooers, and in depth internet research.
So how do you go noshampoo?
Step 1. Make the decision.
As Nietzsche pointed out, the fundamental human resource is will to power, a superset of will power. Yes, once you have decided, really decided, to go noShampoo, the rest of this list is mere child’s play. But what decision do you have to make?
Step 2. Formulate the decision exactly.
Do you want to discontinue using shampoo, that generic item which can be obtained in hundreds of different forms in your local supermarket? Are you going to replace it with something homemade, such as baking soda and apple cider vinegar? What about something which has less environmental impact? My recommendation: save yourself the brainpower involved in researching alternatives and just forget about the whole idea of putting anything in your hair at all.
Step 3. Take a break.
That’s right, now that the hard part is done (will power, remember), the rest is really pretty simple, right? You just stop putting anything in your hair.
Step 4. Put something in your hair!
Well, of course I’d be lying if I said you could just stop putting stuff in your hair and everything would be hunky dory. You’re hair will look like you just mopped the kitchen floor with it. Take a fine tooth comb to it and all sorts of stuff will come out, the most interesting of which is a kind of grayish greasy substance which looks like rillettes. So of course, you will be desperate to remove this matter from your head. To be totally honest, it doesn’t really matter what you put in your hair, even shampoo. You’ve probably got some of that old bottle lying around, so now’s the time to take a small quantity and clean your hair.
Step 5. Work from home.
Not really. The idea here is to take progressively longer and longer breaks from your usual routine. Using shampoo as your hair cleaner will become progessively less enticing (it really is very harsh) so now is the time to use baking soda and apple cider vinegar. Or just vinegar according to my mom. Baking soda tingles your scalp, though, so I like it. Eventually you’ll only be using shampoo when you go to the barber. Then you’ll be asking the barber not to use shampoo.
Step 6. Nirvana
This is the point when you stop thinking about your hair. It’s funny really, because all that time you were using shampoo, you probably weren’t thinking about your hair either, so it may feel like you haven’t progressed all that much. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. In my related study of addictions, I noticed that addicts were people who had returned to their previous truth, only now they required a foreign substance to achieve that state. Look at credit card abusers, at some point they run out of money, so technically they are in the same place they were when they started taking credit, only now they have to pay the fiddler as well. Look at drug addicts, they end being just as miserable as they were when they started taking the drugs (let’s face it, why would they take drugs in the first place) only now they are drug addicted and miserable. Shampoo is the same, you were once an addict, which was easy enough and not particularly expensive (of course I only ever bought cheap shampoo). But in the Nirvana state of no shampoo, you will not only be mentally free to think about whatever it is you were thinking about before going noshampoo, but you will also be slightly richer and you will doing the planet a favor. Of course the poor cosmetic industry will have to take a tumble, but ah well.
Step 7. Learn from your mistakes
For those of you with children, make their lives easier by never instilling them with the foolish desire to use shampoo. With young’uns, it’s easy, you just stop using shampoo and they never know the difference. With older children, you ought just to explain, or, like me, stop buying shampoo. They’ll thank you for it later.
Any questions?
