Every now and then one reads an article that really blows your mind and I was going through an older edition, from earlier this year, of Wired magazine, when I read an article by Joshua Davis about John McAfee. McAfee formed McAfee & Associates some 25 years ago who made anti-virus software and was eventually bought by Intel in 2010 for $7,68 billion.

He then went to live in Belize and was most recently in the news when his beachfront compound burnt down on 16 May, and he said that the fire was not just a strange coincidence. He is busy working in Oregon at the moment on a novel about his life, and based on this article it is going to make for amazing reading. The journalist writes of his escapades with drugs, to the extent that after one of his intense drug trips he believes that the rest of his life has in fact all been a drug trip, and that one day he will wake up in the room where he took the drugs and it will all have turned out to be a dream. That is probably because in his 60s, while living in Belize where he thought he could get away from people who were trying to sue him in America, he decided to take on drug traders and other people he thought were not good for Belize.

After his dogs were killed, a neighbour, who previously threatened to kill them, turned up executed on a beach and the authorities in Belize want to question him about that. One of his five girlfriends that used to live in the compound appears to be a possible suspect, especially after she told the reporter that she would kill for him. She is 18 now, but became his girlfriend when she was sent to him as a 16 year old prostitute and he fell in love with her, ditching his girlfriend of the last 11 years. The relationship did not break up, when after a month or so, she decided to rob him and tried to shoot him in the head while he was sleeping, but missed and shot a pillow instead. He did however punish her by not allowing her to watch TV anymore and with time moved in other girlfriends, generally aged about 17 to 20 according to the reporter. By his own admission he spent his spare time on the Internet, trying to goad people into taking drugs that he does not believe in, saying that if he was to take drugs again, he would only take LSD or the finest cocaine. One sometimes wonders if being altogether is a requirement to becoming wealthy – he is certainly proof that the two don’t necessarily go together!