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Medicine Businesses Software

Colin Kroll, Founder of HQ Trivia and Vine, Died of Accidental Drug Overdose (nbcnewyork.com) 117

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC New York: Colin Kroll, the co-founder of HQ Trivia and Vine, died of an accidental overdose, the city's medical examiner announced Tuesday. According to the autopsy results, Kroll died of "acute intoxication due to the combined effects of fentanyl, fluoroisobutyryl fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine." Kroll, 34, was found dead in his SoHo, Manhattan, apartment on Dec. 16, 2018. Police responded to a 911 call for a welfare check at the Spring Street apartment where they found Kroll unconscious and unresponsive in a bedroom of the apartment, a New York Police Department spokesman previously told NBC News. Kroll was named the chief executive of HQ Trivia, a phone-based trivia platform, in September. Prior to that, Kroll co-founded Vine, the popular short-form video service acquired in 2012 by Twitter. Vine was discontinued four years later.
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Colin Kroll, Founder of HQ Trivia and Vine, Died of Accidental Drug Overdose

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  • by Fwipp ( 1473271 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @07:54PM (#58076378)

    Out of all the drugs out there, stay away from heroin.

    • by sexconker ( 1179573 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @08:04PM (#58076428)

      Odds are it was the fentanyl that got him.

      • Odds are it was the fentanyl that got him.

        Probably. Most of what passes for heroin these days in the chic set is actually fentanyl, watered way down.

        • Probably. Mix a little heroin plus a little fentanyl with a good amount, water it down, and sell it as a more expensive real heroin. Bigger profits.

          • Why bother with blending with heroin at all? Why not just cut fentanyl to super-strength heroin potency and sell it as your super strength heroin?

            It makes logical sense -- fucking fentanyl is hard to cut to a dose that won't kill an entire division of infantry at once, I can't imagine getting a partial dose useful for boosting weak heroin is easier.

            If the "drug lords" could ever get just enough chemistry to *reliably* cut fentanyl to heroin strength, its going to make the opiate problem that much worse. A

            • Fentanly's advantage over heroin is that a dealer can make one score of a kilogram from china at a cost that is translate to pennies a dose, and basically be set for a career of dope dealing.

              Not a junkie, but what I've heard from folks I know is that the fentanyl high is less euphoric than a true heroin high. Also doesn't last as long.
            • The reason to lace actual heroin with fentanyl, instead of making a product purely from fentanyl, is about appearances. Black tar heroin is a roughly-made plant product. It appears as a dark brown to black, highly viscous, tar-like substance with the faint smell of acetic acid from production impurities, and a distinctly bitter flavor from a mixture of plant alkaloids.

              If you simply put fentanyl in water - it looks, smells, and tastes like water. Someone who is used to buying black tar heroin is going to re
              • So if black tar is highly viscous, basically tar-like, how the hell are they adding fentanyl to it? Is it happening at the "source" where they're cooking down opium to morphine base and then converting to heroin? It sounds extremely non-practical to try to add fentanyl to tar just from a materials properties basis.

                I've read that a lot of counterfeit pills are out there with fentanyl, and honestly, it's kind of what I would expect would happen with fentanyl. Mostly because it represents what I assume som

        • by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @09:55PM (#58076822)
          If he had cocaine in his system he was likely taking it with the opioids, which is a pretty deadly combo [wikipedia.org]. Of course fentanyl is deadly itself. This article [statnews.com] has an image showing what a lethal dose looks like so it's easy to see why you can so easily end your life accidentally.
      • by Mashiki ( 184564 ) <mashiki@NoSPam.gmail.com> on Wednesday February 06, 2019 @05:33AM (#58077658) Homepage

        Or carfenanil, which is much stronger and is being used to cut drugs more often as fentanyl is being squeezed dry. Carfenanil is just plain nasty, a grain the size of sand will either put you into a coma you never wake up from, or will kill you. I do mean it's nasty, it's easily absorbed(skin/lungs/mucus membranes) and has a long half life in the body. The biggest bust in the US has been about 6kg and they called in a hazmat team for it, and the unlucky cop that found it nearly died via OD from a trace amount in the air. Here in Canada it was 42kg and they considered demolishing the house by a controlled burn if they couldn't get a hazmat team in to deal with it.

        Screwed up thing about the bust in Canada, you might remember the mass shooting in Toronto a year or so ago. The shooters brother(also likely the source of the gun) was running the stuff, and has been in a coma ever since they found it.

        • Yep, carfenanil is another order of magnitude in potency from fentanyl.
          At that point, you basically have a chemical weapon... It's not hard to speculate how some ISIS type person could use it as such.
          • by Mashiki ( 184564 )

            At that point, you basically have a chemical weapon... It's not hard to speculate how some ISIS type person could use it as such.

            A bunch of intelligence agencies have already done a threat analysis on it, the declassified or non-restricted guesses are pretty nasty. Enough so that special warnings(in US, Canada and various EU countries) were issued a few years ago to watch for it.

            • Fentanyl (and/or similar substances) have already been weaponized in Russia, decades ago.
              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

              I'd also go into an analysis of how China is dumping fentanyl on the US as an act of economic war analogous to the Opium Wars in the 1800s - and taking much glee in the turnabout. But then I'd start sounding like a conspiracy theorist...
      • Odds are it was the fentanyl that got him.

        The odds are that choosing to use heroin in the first place got him on the train to fentanyl.

        • Odds are it was the fentanyl that got him.

          The odds are that being prescribed codeine/oxy/etc in the first place got him on the train to heroin, which had a transfer to fentanyl.

          FTFY

    • by Anonymous Coward

      https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/12/09/china-deadliest-export-fentanyl-editorials-debates/2229428002/ - 80 Americans a day = a lot, even for Heroin.

    • One shouldn't, but if you are going to do heroin, Jesus, don't take it with anything else. This combination just kinda screams "suicidal" to me.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Type44Q ( 1233630 )

      I've heard that fentanyl is added to coke to offset the effects of the meth.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        This sounds like the sort of logic that only a true addict could have come up with.

        • Follow the Wikipedia link about "Speedball" several postings up from here for details about that combo.

      • Coke and meth are 2 different drugs. Fentanyl is added to heroin to make it more seem more potent.
    • Don't legislate prohibition, politicians! Don't support it, everyone!

      The fentanyl crisis was directly precipitated by abruptly limiting or terminating access to known-dose pharmaceutical products. Everyone with a clue knew the opiate crackdown would cause an OD spike. Everyone involved in passing, enforcing, or supporting these policies has blood on their hands. The dealers who sell products of unknown potency are more culpable, but those who created, enforced, or supported that situation despite expert a
  • Fentanyl (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @08:04PM (#58076424) Homepage
    Because heroin and cocaine don't fuck you up enough?
    • Did he even know what is in the mix?

      It could well be that a middle man saw an opportunity to sell cocaine+heroin+fentanyl for a bigger profit than a comparable amount of cocaine+heroin. And many customers may actually like this better, at least the ones that live.

      • One would think that a big-name tech entrepreneur could afford a reasonably clean supply.

        • It is not money but some kind of pride that prevents someone from being certain ahead of time, for timely medical care for foreseeable dangerous side effects of their lifestyle. That applies to both Colin Kroll and Michael Jackson. If either had someone reliable on hand actually checking their pulse at regular intervals, they would have gotten assistance in time to save their lives.

    • If you knew anything about the hard drug scene you would know that all heroin and most cocaine is laced with fent these days. Its stupid cheap to obtain from the hundreds of chinese labs who synthesize it.

  • by SirAstral ( 1349985 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @08:05PM (#58076432)

    That is quite the cocktail of drugs right there...

    Seems like less of a mistake and more like no fucks to give.

  • For when you want to go out like a real superstar.
  • How ironic, we keep being told that the way to be happy, the strongest expression of vitality, is to be an Entrepreneur, or a CEO. And yet, in order to sustain this type of life, one must poison himself like that man did.

    • Sam Walton is quite the counter-example.

      Do stupid shit, die of stupid shit. None of those drugs were useful to sustain anything worth sustaining.

  • With that amount of shit in his system I think the word 'accident' is a bit of a stretch!

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