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This Zappos article is like the whole catalog of rich people problems in a nutshell: drugs, parasitic relationships, arrests, and dumb accidents.

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.

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> 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.

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.

> No-fault means what?

I believe they are referring to half of all assets going to your spouse without a prenuptial agreement even if there was a good reason for divorce.

That's not the same as no-fault divorce though. That's typically a Community Property provision.

"No-fault divorce is a broken system."

Or was it a community property state?

It’s an “equitable distribution” state; property is divided without regard to marital misconduct or fault.

For whatever it's worth, those laws were built around an idea of marriage that's very different than the institution as it exists today.

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.

That's a pre-nup

More like a codified collection of what the default pre-nup is if you don't have one customized. Probably more than 80% of the married people I know fell into it without a whole lot of intention and planning, and it shows. "Marriage, because baby" is like compound interest, except it's compound stupid.

> 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.

I think we have this acquaintance in common.

Silicon Valley?

You're the guru?

Bill Murray said try being rich before being rich and famous. I'm rethinking the rich part.

Rich is better than famous. Plenty of people are quietly rich and basically just go about their business and live their lives, secure in the knowledge that there's money in the bank if they need it.

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.

The key is to slowly become rich. Tony Hsieh died at 46, around the time most pre-rich people haven't even made it out of upper middle class. Amass wealth slowly and your poor grifting friends will slowly be replaced with rich friends whose grifts will at least have a chance of return.

You see many examples of quiet famous people from Letterman, Carson, Conan or most politicians or most actors like Nicole Kidman. The ones making the headlines are a small percentage.

> This Zappos article is like the whole catalog of rich people problems in a nutshell: drugs, parasitic relationships, arrests, and dumb accidents.

Not all "rich people" have these problems. You just don't tend to hear about the ones who live normal lives.

The point being made is that it’s hard to get by and be deep in more one of those situations if you’re poor.

Poor people don't get deep into drugs, aren't involved in numerous parasitic relationships, don't get arrested or do dumb things? That's only something rich people get deeply involved in?

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.

It can get a lot worse when you have the money to enable drug use, have money to be parasitized, have lawyers for any arrest to pay a meaningless fine, or house-arrest on your compound(s) instead of jail time, pay for any accidents and pay to do dumb(er) things.

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.

I don't think he was referring to rich "normal" people. The types of problems you can only have if you have a lot of money. Most people can't afford to be on 2 week drug binges. And you probably need a job to pay for your drug habit and most of those jobs like being a forklift operator come with mandatory drug testing.

But if you have 200 million to play with then that is a whole nother ball game.

Lol, do you how many homeless drug addicts there are? It doesn’t take that much money to go off the rails and sustain a habit. Even if you’re going broke and can’t get the expensive stuff, there’s always alcohol which can be had for as little as $1.50 for a 24oz.

Homeless junkies and criminal junkies don’t act like Zappos guy did

Woah, quite a sheltered life you live. I’ve seen people spazz out ion all kinds of drugs and alcohol just on the subway.

I have never tried any drugs/alcohol, but I'm curious about Ayahuasca. Don't know anyone personally who has been through the ceremony, but I've listened to a bunch of interviews, read a bunch of articles about it.

It mostly seems legit, but I have no clue. Anyone here tried it? What was the experience like?

Googling [ayahuasca experience reports] should provide a better mix of writeups (including both rigorously-reported mainstream articles & deep-forum anecdotes) than any number of responses inline here could.

If you’ve never tried any drugs/alcohol then I would strongly recommend not do it. I’ve tried plenty of drugs but ayahuesca is still something that I would have to think about before trying it.

Seconded.

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.

I've seen enough intelligent and otherwise reasonable people go down that road and not come back that I would caution you to be very, very wary and to suspect that anybody that invites you to join them in their trips is a lobster looking to pull you down into the pot, not to lift you out of it.

Ayahuasca, hmm, a drug you might choose to use for health reasons in the same way a car accident might re-align your back, it's extremely dangerous to use and anyone who tells you different is probably trying to sell something that cannot be bought.

Try shrooms or acid before Ayahuasca. DMT is something not to be taken lightly

I know someone who, for all practical purposes, destroyed their life after an Ayahuasca trip. He was a VP at a major international company and is now a new age hippie.

Is he less happy now? A burden for anyone else?

It sounds like he found something and left the rat race. Was his life destroyed?

Our lives in this backwater rock are short, and our acts meaningless in a universal scale. Leaving or staying in the rat race are equally valid life choices.

Depends how you consider what is your life. If your life is work, yeah, stepping down from some VP-role looks pretty terrible. When your life doesn't revolve around work, you have enough money, etc... Better to fuck off from that VP position.

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.

lol at the money junkies trying to justify there high over the people who use substances to give them delusions of grandeur.

> 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.

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

"5 years spent as a rich junkie must be worth a lifetime as a 9-5 cubicle worker."

This claim demands great evidence.

I don't think there is a measurement who'd satisfy the requirement of statistical 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

> Empirically it seems to me that people nowadays are more scared of death than they are euphoric about life.

Have you not talked to a teenager lately?

Teenagers today are definitely less rebellious and less hedonistic: they have less sex and take much less intoxicants than previous generations.

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.

In theory if you value variety of experiences than 5 years as junkie may be better outcome than the a desk job.

Most people don't value variety all that much which is why 9-5 workers are lot more common than perpetual travellers etc.

Not saying that your "may" is invalid but in practice I don't think most junkies vary their experience all that much. Getting high/stoned/intoxicated/etc every day does not variety make.

Romantics yearn for a life where the highs are higher and the lows are lower... until they hit that first low.

John McAfee is not here to testify but I think the last few years of his life are certainly evidence - whether for or against that proposition I’m not sure

Toward end, he apparently said he regretted nothing.

That's different from not being sad etc. He can still be satisfied that his decisions were best they could be within his parameters.

Of course, you're assuming that a quality life is measured by the amount of worldly pleasures experienced.

Hedonists vs Utilitarians in a nutshell.

Tell that to your (non-existent) kids

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