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Zappos CEO’s final months describe drug-addicted psychosis in court documents

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Re: Zappos CEO’s final months describe drug-addicted psychosis in court documents

#51
post #19

I'm strongly reminded of Howard Hughes, as mentally ill, drug-addicted prisoner of his "staff".

Howard Hughes had severe allodynia in an age in which there was no real medical treatment for it 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…

There are also a number of credible reports that Hughes had severely screwed up his lower back, spine and tendons, ligaments and musculature in earlier airplane crashes. Never properly treated, and medicated over the years with increasing amounts of self-administered drugs of his choice.

Re: Zappos CEO’s final months describe drug-addicted psychosis in court documents

#52
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to Lilly? I was always curious about that. (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.)

Sasha and Ann Shulgin famously believed that dissociatives have no safe role in psychedelic therapy: "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." Al…

I thought he might have had a kid named Sasha and that it might be you. So yeah, I'd say it's confusing - you have to distinguish your own point of view (no doubt entirely clear on the point) from the rest of us who are looking at this with a lot less information and widely varying assumptions. Not everyone knows that he has died, for example.

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).

Re: Zappos CEO’s final months describe drug-addicted psychosis in court documents

#53

Anybody have a link to the court documents referenced in this news article, because I can't find it in the article itself? (As an aside I really would prefer news articles that are summarizations of other documents to please also provide the original document)

The case is docketed in Nevada State Court (District Court, County of Clark). A portal for various Nevada courts can be found at: 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 a…

Awesome, thank you so much! Unfortunate that registration and payment is required for a government portal, but the Daily Mail's embedded images look to have a decent chunk of the arguments there.

Re: Zappos CEO’s final months describe drug-addicted psychosis in court documents

#54
post #3

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…

> 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.

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.

Re: Zappos CEO’s final months describe drug-addicted psychosis in court documents

#55
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sasha and Ann Shulgin famously believed that dissociatives have no safe role in psychedelic therapy: "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." Al…

I thought he might have had a kid named Sasha and that it might be you. So yeah, I'd say it's confusing - you have to distinguish your own point of view (no doubt entirely clear on the point) from the rest of us who are looking at this with a lot less information and widely varying assumptions. Not everyone knows that he has died, for example. Re Lilly - sorry for not being clearer - what I'm curious about is that yo…

Ok, rename me to NotSashaShulgin if you must.

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)."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly

Re: Zappos CEO’s final months describe drug-addicted psychosis in court documents

#56
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Re: Zappos CEO’s final months describe drug-addicted psychosis in court documents

#57
post #34
post #3

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…

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.

Re: Zappos CEO’s final months describe drug-addicted psychosis in court documents

#58
post #34
post #3

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…

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?

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.

Re: Zappos CEO’s final months describe drug-addicted psychosis in court documents

#59
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I picked psilocybin for you. "Psilocybin is not considered to be addictive nor does it cause compulsive use" - [0] [0]: https://drugpolicy.org/drug-facts/are-psilocybin-mushrooms-a...

I know people who got fucked up for years due to a single shroom or LSD trip. Some of them got sorted out eventually, others didn’t.

Anecdotally, After my one and only use of Psilocybin where I cried for about 5 hours straight, I did not feel the desire to do it again.

Re: Zappos CEO’s final months describe drug-addicted psychosis in court documents

#60

Dissociatives (e.g., ketamine, nitrous oxide, xenon, phencyclidine, dextromethorphan in cough syrup) are too addictive, too pleasurable, and reliably produce long-lasting delusional states (e.g., as observed in John C. Lilly and Marcia Moore and Tony Hsieh). 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…

I think your generalizations are very wrong. Ketamine may be bad when abused, but when used correctly for depression, it can be extremely effective and good. It changed my life greatly, for the better. And I wouldn’t say that psilocybin is unequivocally good either. The worst trip I ever had was on mushrooms. It was extremely traumatic in a way that had lasting effects. It changed my life greatly, for the worse.
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