Morning Coffee: Banking VPs & associates admit to taking drugs to survive in the job. The $70bn hedge fund nepo who seems difficult to work for
What do you do when the energy is flagging, you’re eighty hours into a ninety-hour week and someone needs you to really concentrate on changing the colour scheme on a slide pack from ochre yellow to mustard yellow? According to a number of currently working bankers who have spoken to the Wall Street Journal and been surprisingly willing to be quoted under their own names, you reach for drugs that are meant to treat ADHD and you carry on.
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The bankers talking about their use of Adderall and similar stimulants on Wall Street include Trevor Lunsford, a vice president working in M&A in Washington DC, who said he's taken it for seven years and that it's a «very core, integral component of my life, and to me, something that is a very, very important tool.» This is particularly the case when he works 22-hour days. There's also Jonah Frey, a private equity principal and former banking analyst and associate, who says he increased the dosage when he became an associate and his workload quadrupled. He was whipped into a «productive frenzy» but he lost weight and eventually left work and moved back with his parents to go cold turkey. Frey says he wasn't alone in his habit: colleagues would snort crushed Adderall off the desk; «Nobody blinked an eye.»
The use and abuse of ADHD stimulants on Wall Street is an open secret of the industry. It's difficult to crack down without penalising people who actually need to have their ADHD conditions treated. Former Credit Suisse and Centerview banker turned memelord Mark Moran describes getting a prescription after being coached on what to say by his fellowinterns. Unfortunately, the drug can be detrimental, particularly in excess: another
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