Zappos CEO’s final months describe drug-addicted psychosis in court documents
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I know some people who know people who made a lot of money in the 2000s dot com boom. One of them got a "guru" who he paid several thousands of dollars a day to. The "guru" fed him Ayahuasca and people who visited the rich guy at his house said he had removed all furniture from his house, was wearing robes and said he could control the winds with his thoughts.
They often say that there's no one more hopeless than a rich junky. If they have a very large amount of money, they never hit rock bottom until they're dead.
There's no such thing as quietly famous. Many of pitfalls of being rich & famous, like greedy enablers and a larger-than-life lifestyle, stem from the "famous" part.
She’s fortunately still alive, but when I divorced my ex-wife over her substance abuse, she walked away with ~$1M in cash.
It took three years of partying, but she finally ran out of money, hit rock bottom, went to AA, and is actually looking for a job.
It was sad to watch, and infuriating to be forced to be her enabler by the state after she’d already cost me so much. No-fault divorce is a broken system.
Or was it a community property state?
Maybe it'd help if states were required to provide marriage applicants with property allocation statistics from the last year of divorces, and list every penalty and rule that would execute upon divorcing their spouse. Oh, showing how much money people pay in alimony, and how much divorce lawyers rake in would be good, too.
Maybe fewer people would get married. Maybe it'd prompt some changes.
Not all "rich people" have these problems. You just don't tend to hear about the ones who live normal lives.
Of course not, it's just no one cares when a poor person does it. The reason we care about when rich people do it is precisely because we don't expect someone who is rich and seems to have it all to get into these situations, and the reality is that for the most part, they don't.
So yeah, rich people can get wayyyyy deeper in any and all of those than poor people.
A rich person is just a better resourced poor person. I’d argue their quality of life isn’t much different except one can buy their way out of any problem while the other has to suffer it directly.
But if you have 200 million to play with then that is a whole nother ball game.
It mostly seems legit, but I have no clue. Anyone here tried it? What was the experience like?
It's a door that's better off not opened.
Of course, it's hard to know really good advice until you're well beyond not having taken it.
Personally how I view myself destroying my life is by trying to climb the corporate career ladder. There is nothing in there except for money. Your morals, your values, everything that makes you "you" goes out of the whack when you are selling your soul to a corporation.
No, thank you.
Why doesn't anyone make the argument of quality vs. quantity when discussing such examplers
5 years spent as a rich junkie must be worth a lifetime as a 9-5 cubicle worker
This claim demands great evidence.
Empirically it seems to me that people nowadays are more scared of death than they are euphoric about life.
All sorts of problems happen when this condition presents itself in vast pockets of the population.
The fact that nobody makes a quality vs. quantity analysis is further proof of this
Have you not talked to a teenager lately?
I don't agree that it's because they're "scared of death," but they do seem to be less euphoric about life, for whatever reason.
Most people don't value variety all that much which is why 9-5 workers are lot more common than perpetual travellers etc.
That's different from not being sad etc. He can still be satisfied that his decisions were best they could be within his parameters.
I think we have this acquaintance in common.
I mean, it’s a lot, but I’m surprised it’s not higher. Each cartridge yields a minute, maybe two, of intoxication before a quick return to baseline.
Probably less intoxication than hits of ketamine with its half life of 1-2 hours.
But it may have been on top of other substance use. Nitrous use is just very overt.
The chronic nitrous use will make it extremely difficult to maintain adequate vitamin B12 levels. Nitrous is very effective at deactivating it, and diet doesn’t have a ton. B12 deficiency has lots of nasty neurological effects: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12_deficiency
Even passive (same room) exposure to nitrous oxide leads to 25% reduced b12 levels.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17951609/
Who the hell knows what else nitrous is oxidizing away over the long term.
Cartridges often have a little machine oil impurity that will add up when consuming the amount that would be in 1L of whipped cream 50x a day. Hopefully he acquired the good ones.
It is disturbing to read Marcia Moore's "Journeys Into the Bright World" (http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/journeysbrightworld.pdf) where she recounts that John C. Lilly warned her to stop using ketamine. She died in the woods not long afterward, hypothermia after injecting ketamine, trying to hide her addiction from her family. John C. Lilly himself went clean after decades of delusion, but never fully recovered, mentally.
For a frank summary of the dangers, see D. M. Turner's "The Essential Psychedelic Guide". Before he died in his bathtub (after injecting ketamine), he wrote the following (https://www.ketamine.co.uk/dmturner/index.html):
"A major concern regarding safe use of Ketamine is its very high potential for psychological addiction. A fairly large percentage of those who try Ketamine will consume it non-stop until their supply is exhausted. I've seen this in friends I've known for many years who are regular psychedelic users and have never before had problems controlling their drug consumption. And I've seen the lives of several people who developed an addiction to Ketamine take downward turns."
"After about two years of once-per-week Ketamine use I even found that I had developed an addiction. Although it was less severe than what I've described above, it took considerable effort to break the cycle of repeatedly using it, even though I was aware of detrimental effects that it was causing. Since that time I've used Ketamine only occasionally, but find that I must continually exercise a high degree of will power to prevent myself from falling into a pattern of regular use. Amongst those I know who use Ketamine, I've seen very few who can use it in a balanced manner if they have access to it."
On the other hand, there are other classes of psychedelics that are unambiguously good: tryptamines (e.g., psilocybin) and phenethylamines (e.g., mescaline). These drugs produce informative, useful, introspective, challenging mental states and are NOT prone to abuse. These are the valuable psychedelics.
Citation needed.
"Psilocybin is not considered to be addictive nor does it cause compulsive use" - [0]
[0]: https://drugpolicy.org/drug-facts/are-psilocybin-mushrooms-a...
"Psilocybin is not considered to be addictive nor does it cause compulsive use. One reason is that the intense experience, which can be physically and mentally challenging, may cause people using psilocybin to limit their frequency of use."
"Another reason is that the human body quickly builds tolerance to psilocybin, such that people require much higher doses after only a few days of repeated use, making it extremely difficult to have any effect after more than four days of repeated usage."My friends uncle died jumping off a building on acid. Not one of the psychedelics you named, but having done all three I certainly think such a drastic action is possible on mushrooms or mescaline. Whether this means they aren't unambiguously good is up for debate I guess.
(Side note while I have you: if your real name isn't SashaShulgin can you please email hn@ycombinator.com with a different username we can rename you to? It's distracting to use a username like that if it's communicating the wrong thing.)
"We are strongly prejudiced against psychedelic drugs which cause such mind-body separation, as we are against any drug which causes separation from feelings and emotions. However, we acknowledge that the ketamine state can be highly instructive for researchers trying to understand the functions of the human mind."
Is it really so confusing that I use his nickname as a handle online?
John C. Lilly died of heart failure at age 86 in Los Angeles on September 30, 2001. His remains were cremated.
Re Lilly - sorry for not being clearer - what I'm curious about is that you seemed to imply that at a certain point he was adversely affected by his own use of dissociatives, that it had some profound effect on him, and that he never fully recovered from it. I was curious to hear more about what happened there. I'm not super familiar with his work but I read a bit and found it to be a mixture of penetratingly lucid and completely unintelligible (mostly the latter).
John C. Lilly's later books are a beautiful example of ketamine delusions and loss of contact with reality.
Quoting Wikipedia:
In 1974, Lilly's research using various psychoactive drugs led him to believe in the existence of a certain hierarchical group of cosmic entities, the lowest of which he later dubbed Earth Coincidence Control Office (E.C.C.O.) in an autobiography published jointly with his wife Antonietta (often called Toni). Lilly states that "[t]here exists a Cosmic Coincidence Control Center (CCCC) with a Galactic substation called Galactic Coincidence Control (GCC). Within GCC is the Solar System Control Unit (SSCU), within which is the Earth Coincidence Control Office (ECCO)."
I don't know that I would necessarily classify hallucinogenic psychedelics as unambiguously good. I suspect the potential negative effects are understudied and under reported. Beyond hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (admittedly rare), medium-long term induced psychosis (also probably rare), while users frequently report positive effects both short and long term, there are potentially profound psychological/neurological alterations occurring post use which may not be obviously detrimental. What further complicates the issue is that, because of the strong dependence on existing psychological state (set and setting), its quite possible that a user's culture becomes a significant confounding factor and that some groups of people may in fact be worse off after using some or all such psychedelics.
Personally, a year or two post experience I noticed that certain emotions are more apparent to my perception which honestly I would have preferred to continue ignoring.
I still suspect that for the vast majority of people hallucinogens can be positive but let's not make the mistake of preemptively asserting that they are harmless.
But it can also cause powerful and disturbing psychosis. In our case, I woke up at knife point to someone driven to tears by a psychosis telling them to kill me. I managed to de-escalate that without any harm done, but suffice it to say, caution is strongly advised with such things.
I was using K as a temporary vacation from reality aka k-hole. Lovely wonderful experiences and I innately knew it was helping with the depression. The most important factor was the set/setting/almost ritualistic use. And I don't do it anymore, never did it so much like so many other people.... and no compulsion to either. I have been sitting on some MXE for a decade now as well... I am an outlier??
Ritual is an element that is sorely lacking in the majority of westerner's use of psychedelics - it does comes with the ayahuasca package "just because that is what you're supposed to do" aka drugs tourism. But the other stuff... This element of ritual is what I think you're overlooking. Ritual also would have prevented DM Turner from taking ketamine before taking a bath which is a very really bad idea; he was really blatantly ignoring the risk factors for whatever reason.
This reminds me of a psychologist, Mexican I think, who in the 70s IIRC was using datura and other such things in his work helping patients. He's a bit obscure and I haven't found much info (I will hunt down my notes if people insist). So my opinion is that dissociatives have their use, but you really need to know what you are doing which most people do not. Personally, I think salvia is very useful... but I am sort of autistic and there is an Internet theory I came across that only the autistically inclined really take to salvia; neurotypicals can't handle the weirdness at some deep level. I have no proof of this but from what I've read and personally know, of course...
As an aside, I met Ann and Sasha a number of times 20 odd years ago. So I personally find it a bit irksome you're using such a handle. You've agreed to change it which I commend you for... For the newbies who know the name, but not that he's dead, it would be confusing. But you are relaying correct and valuable information, so that is good - except for the wide ranging generalizations ... ;)
> Hi Everyone,
> I have quite probably taken more Nitrous (at least in Whippit form) than anyone else alive. So I feel compelled to share with all of you - my experience.
Read more: https://www.bluelight.org/xf/threads/nitrous-oxide-experienc...
> This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable EU laws.
I wonder if sites will ever stop lying about this.
It also provides negligible benefit for any EU subject, compared to what the privacy-conscious users could achieve via self-help for themselves – by not registering, or clearing cookies, or using other tech measures.
Have trillions (or quadrillions?) of EU cookie popups actually preserved any privacy at all? Or just wasted staff time, reader time, & trained a 'consent dialog blindness' into users worldwide?
The cookie popups were the wrong response to well intentioned legislation, the proper response would have been to stop using cookies, not to use these stupid banners.
Functional cookies were never a problem, but tracking people indiscriminately is a problem.
Consent dialog blindness is a good term, but it is caused by the makers of the consent dialogs not by the legislators. Not tracking is a viable alternative and does not require any dialogs.
What's the tangible harm of this supposed "indiscriminate tracking" - especially as compared to other burgeoning EU initiatives like demanding law-enforcement backdoors into e2e chat sessions?
The consent-dialog-blindness is created by the regulatory demands for their constant re-display, for negligible benefit. If not even asking for cookies was 'viable', major sites – who have far better understanding of the relative tradeoffs than the regulators – would've gone that way. Can you name any that chose that 'viable' path? Are they winning their categories with that 'viability'?
You know what else is 'viable'? User self help. Clearing/disabling cookies. Running a privacy-protecting browser, like say Brave.
The EU could've protected a lot more privacy, without wasting the world's time & burning-out people's attention, if it had coached people into self-protection, rather than threatening businesses worldwide with fines. But hey, haughty mega-super-state's gotta do mega-super-stating.
But also, they know that implementing (& maintaining!) compliance, moreso than a simple block, has nonzero cost, while EU readers provide them negligible benefit. So they take the easy way out, given the incentives created by the EU.
And what had been a free bonanza for EU readers – a peek into info sources from elsewhere, easier for the sites to provide than to limit in any way – has had extra friction added by the EU, to the detriment of EU subjects.
But at least they shouldn’t blatantly lie in the message they show, saying they’re working on it and how important EU visitors are.
Hughes was a direct part of Watergate.
Still, to this day, there is no amazing treatment for it. Especially because there are more than a few not well understood causes of it. Some medications work well for some, but not at all for others.
Hughes was, by all accounts, essentially a prisoner of his unrelenting misfiring nervous system. I think he lived out his final years with it in a fairly reasonable way.
Speaking as somebody with a moderate case of allodynia caused by a functional musculoskeletal condition, if my case was a bit worse, with no hope for treatment in sight, and I was loaded like he was - I too would likely spend my time in isolation and on a lot of drugs, really anything that would relieve the sensory pain, no matter how cognitively impaired it may make me.
allodynia: “Allodynia is a type of neuropathic pain (nerve pain). People with allodynia are extremely sensitive to touch. Things that don't usually cause pain can be very painful. These may include cold temperatures, brushing hair or wearing a cotton t-shirt. Allodynia can result from several conditions.”
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/21570-allodyn...
https://www.latimes.com/visuals/photography/la-me-fw-archive...
https://www.clarkcountycourts.us/Portal/Home/WorkspaceMode?p...
Searching is enabled at the bottom of the page. The index number of the case is: A-21-828090-B (the case caption is: Baby Monster LLC, Plaintiff(s) vs. PCVI LLC, Defendant(s)). Unfortunately, you have to register on the site and pay for a copy of the requested documents.
The Daily Mail printed a story with more detail - some of the individuals named in the original post really come off as horrible - in which they've embedded some of the pleadings:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10116643/Late-billi...
As they say "it's lonely at the top" so people like to be part of those inner circles and take advantage of those who can.
Here is my comment 10 month ago after reading his book "Delivering Happiness": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25326510#25326860 . Worth checking out the book in this context - a shadow-story about depression.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/police-arrest-assistant-tech...