In between cigarettes, Hsieh was inhaling from Whip-It canisters like he was drinking water from a bottle.

Excessive nitrous oxide use can lead to brain damage, and some teenagers have died from chemical asphyxiation.

While it’s illegal to inhale the gas, the practice has been popular for decades among teenagers who can’t legally buy alcohol and festival revelers seeking a cheap, quick high.īut the brain can only handle so much. Better known as laughing gas for its use at dental offices, nitrous oxide is commercially available as an everyday kitchen item: the cartridges used in whipped cream machines, known as Whip-Its. He became convinced that inhaling nitrous oxide was a way to heighten his blood oxygen levels and eliminate the need for sleep. In the weeks following his release from the hospital, Hsieh had become focused on the study of biohacking to increase his personal output. If people had concerns about taking money from a man drifting further from reality due to excessive drug use and other erratic behavior, few had seemed to consider the Faustian bargain they were entering-an oversight that took vivid form when Hsieh found another destructive fascination. With Lee overseeing the finances, he could also help weed out people who were taking advantage of his brother.Īndy’s request came with a sense of urgency, as funds had been hemorrhaging from Tony’s accounts for many months. Coming to Park City made sense for multiple reasons, he explained. Sensing Lee’s hesitancy, Hsieh turned to one of the people at the dinner and suggested that if he could convince Lee to stay, he would receive a 10 percent commission, or $150,000.Īfter dinner, Andy pulled Lee aside. As he had done with others, Hsieh offered to pay double Lee’s current salary, which meant he would be earning $1.5 million a year. Lee’s role would involve overseeing all finances in the Park City ventures. During a dinner in late July at a restaurant on Main Street, Hsieh told him that he was turning Park City into a community similar to the one he had built in downtown Las Vegas a few years earlier, but better. Lee was reluctant to entertain the idea of uprooting his life in Texas and to leave a comfortable job to join the mania of Tony Hsieh’s world, but he agreed to a meeting.

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