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Tristan O'Tierney, Square Co-Founder, Dies at Age 35 (sfchronicle.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the San Francisco Chronicle:
Tristan O'Tierney, a co-founder of San Francisco payments company Square, died Feb. 23 in Ocala, Fla., of causes related to addiction, his family said. He was 35...
His family is awaiting an official cause of death from officials. "I do know that it was in relation to his addiction," [his mother] Pamela Tierney said. "I know he got to the hospital, he couldn't breathe and they couldn't revive him." O'Tierney was in a three-month rehabilitation program in Ocala and had been battling addiction for three years, Tierney said. O'Tierney openly discussed his struggles with addiction on social media. "As some of you may know, I've been battling with addiction for these past few years," he wrote in September in a now-deleted Instagram post that he also shared on Twitter. "With some success. A lot of failure too though."
Bloomberg remembers him as a former engineer at Yahoo and Apple who was hired to develop Square's original mobile payment app in 2009, then stayed on until 2013.
"In addition to his parents, O'Tierney is survived by his three-old-year daughter, according to an obituary on the website for the funeral home."
His family is awaiting an official cause of death from officials. "I do know that it was in relation to his addiction," [his mother] Pamela Tierney said. "I know he got to the hospital, he couldn't breathe and they couldn't revive him." O'Tierney was in a three-month rehabilitation program in Ocala and had been battling addiction for three years, Tierney said. O'Tierney openly discussed his struggles with addiction on social media. "As some of you may know, I've been battling with addiction for these past few years," he wrote in September in a now-deleted Instagram post that he also shared on Twitter. "With some success. A lot of failure too though."
Bloomberg remembers him as a former engineer at Yahoo and Apple who was hired to develop Square's original mobile payment app in 2009, then stayed on until 2013.
"In addition to his parents, O'Tierney is survived by his three-old-year daughter, according to an obituary on the website for the funeral home."
Summary mentions addiction several times, but doesn't say what to. Was he that famous that we're expected to just know?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And yet the Dems wonder why Trump won and is likely going to win again.
(opinion)
(rebuttal of opinion)
REEEEEEEEEEEEEE you're an idiot, russian, orange man bad, etc.
Moderates see that garbage and vote to the right. Debate your opinions without bringing in politics, you can do it, I believe in you.
Seems like rehab isnâ(TM)t doing a very good job. You can clean a person up and prevent them from using, but unless you address the underlying issues that lead to them seeking out the drugs in the first place theyâ(TM)ll eventually wind back up in the same place. Drug use and addiction can be as much of a symptom as it is a disease.
Very true words, and personally I would question even the possibility of a 3-month only program in the first place.
Everyone has their own story and situation, and even as a person who has gone through that myself, I still have few if any generalizations to make that would be helpful.
But one rare one is as you say, you absolutely positively NEED that drive and desire to quit, no matter what the cause.
I've often been told my case is "special" even though I still don't know why.
My story isn't unique, years of medical procedures and pain management, suddenly combined with unemployment and loss of access to those resources, followed by turning to street drug forms to substitute for that sudden lack of any pain management at all.
This was nearly two decades ago now, but for a couple years I was fine with the situation.
I tried a couple times to go back to proper methods and doctors, but at that time I felt that wasn't the better option. No desire to quit, and so no success in doing so.
An especially sad event one day just ended up flipping a switch in my mind, and I was done.
I honestly wanted everything to change.
However withdraw pains can certainly make a person crave death, and at times even seek it out.
There does exist ways to deal with that one problem, specifically with opiates there are substitutions that trick the withdraw pains away and let you ween away completely.
The simple and sad truth is, in the US, such treatments can be difficult to get, are very expensive, and of course as I said only address that one aspect about quitting.
I can only conclude my case was seen as "special" because literally the withdraw agony was the one and only thing keeping me from both quitting and not killing myself.
Even then, it took almost a year and a half of treatment to ween all the way down to being just miserable, instead of in suicidal agony.
Three months just doesn't even register as a possibility to me.
Finding a doctor to provide such treatment was difficult, and it was nearly five hundred bucks a month out of pocket for that year and a half.
Someone like the co-founder of Square isn't going to have the same worry over money problems, but the vast majority of us almost literally can't afford to get such treatment.
If such programs were more available, accessible, and not demonized, I can't help but wonder what percentage of people who currently just die would still be alive.
Worse is the sheer number of people in the world that don't want that number to be above 0%
Personally I feel each and every last person that claims death is deserved is more than just partially responsible for those millions of lives lost.
Those holding such a "tough on drugs" opinion are far closer to murderers than any kind of moral pillar, even while they convince themselves they had no part to play and it is the fault of everyone else.
Across from my house there is a private drug rehab center. The owner is a former addict himself, inherited some money, and started this as a way to plow back into the community. He claims his center has a roughly 50% success rate versus state-run centers' 10% (lot of variables, this is just supposed to be a ball-park indication). State=non-USA.
A friend's son is a heroin addict and has been in and out of rehab for years (including the above). The stuff basically alters brain structures so that the addict craves this as much as oxygen, no exaggeration. He realizes that the best chance he would have is to be locked up until sufficiently dried out - which is prohibited by law even under consent. I've known the kid since birth (he is now late 20's) and the story is basically one big heartbreak on all sides.
The takeaway message I got is Don't Start. If you're just getting high for recreational reasons, then I believe you're incredibly stupid. If you're using to cope with your particular life circumstances, you're not making them better - you're in fact creating even more trouble for yourself that will make it even harder to cope with (by a lot). Addicted in the womb? That really sucks. Still, others have overcome even that. Don't find justifications and excuses, come out of the victim mentality and seek solutions until you find one.