Wolves of Wall Street are ditching cocaine for ADHD drugs

Junior Wall Street bankers are ditching cocaine for focus-boosting ADHD prescription drugs and nicotine pouches in an effort to 'have an edge' through the long hours, insiders say.

Jonah Frey, a former investment banker for Wells Fargo, told the Wall Street Journal that Adderall and Vyvanse are becoming increasingly common in finance to help ambitious newcomers push through 90-hour weeks.

He alleged that one colleague would 'sometimes snort lines of crushed up Adderall pills from his desk in the bullpen', a common area for junior bankers, and 'nobody blinked an eye'.

Frey said that he also received a prescription for Adderall, an amphetamine used to treat narcolepsy and ADHD, or illicitly as a performance enhancer, from an online healthcare company to help cope with the long hours.

He told the outlet that it was not unusual for work days at the San Francisco office to start at 4am to link up with clients on the East Coast, ending around 2am the next day.

'I felt that I had to have an edge to make it,' he said, adding that he had gone in believing the seven-figure salary outweighed the 'downside risks'.

Frey ultimately resigned in 2022 and dropped his drug habit, but said it took a month to get over the withdrawals, suffering cold sweats and insomnia as he relearned 'the basics of how to operate as a human being' and went back to business school.

Mr Frey was not alone in his claims about the long hours and high demands of Wall Street jobs, and the more recent turn to prescription medication.

Trevor Lunsford, a banker for Ascend Capital, told the WSJ that staff in the Washington DC office could 'regularly' expect a 20 to 22 hour day a couple of times a week.

He said that he had been taking Adderall for seven years to manage the intense environment.

Lunsford added that the hours were 'something that I would not have been able to be on for, be focused and be quick with decisions if I wasn't able to take Adderall'.

Adderall is a lifeline for sufferers of narcolepsy and ADHD, helping to recalibrate focus and boost concentration levels by stimulating the nervous system.

But there are risks to taking the drug for extended periods of time, and dangers when healthy people use it illicitly as a performance enhancer.

Students have long used the drug to guide their attention during long periods of revision.

Studies show the drug helps with memory, self-regulation and executive function in individuals with ADHD, but 'little impact' on performance in healthy users.

Mark Moran, a former intern with Credit Suisse in New York, said he began taking the drug to hold his focus while working 90-hour weeks.

It was colleagues who advised him that he could get a prescription after filling in a short questionnaire and speaking to a physician at a Wall Street health clinic, he said.

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Despite the fact a psychologist in the family did not think he had ADHD, the clinic 'gave me a script and within months, I was hooked', he said.

Mark reported some positive effects at first, being able to carry on working for hours and maintaining interest in the subject matter.

The pills can help make even the most mundane of tasks seem interesting as levels of dopamine and norepinephrine levels in the brain increase.

The problem, Mr Moran said, was that 'you become dependent on it to work'.

Mr Moran switched to Vyvanse, another stimulant medication used to treat ADHD, and slowly increased his dosage as he became tolerant to the drug.

A doctor allegedly offered to prescribe it alongside Adderall, which he turned down.

He said he started having heart palpitations as his body strained under the high dose of medication and long hours, working until 5am in New York and getting back into the office for 9am with Centerview Partners.

The 33-year-old has since left and is running his own investor-relations firm.

Others reportedly used Zyn - a nicotine pouch - to excess or mixed energy drinks with extra strength 5-hour energy shots to stay awake and focused, putting significant pressure on their hearts.

The caffeine payload was equivalent to five cups of coffee in one go, the WSJ reports.

Reports of high stress and incidence of health conditions has flagged real concern about the long hours and high demands on Wall Street.

Last year, 29-year-old Michael Bloom, who worked at the Royal Bank of Canada in New York, died from the combined effects of fentanyl and ethanol, it was ruled.

Someone close to Mr Bloom said a superior had raised concerns that he was using Adderall to manage his workload, something Mr Bloom allegedly dismissed, saying he needed them to concentrate.

The DEA has warned that Adderall specifically could become the next opioid epidemic, given the soaring rate of new prescriptions and the potential for abuse. 

A Drug Enforcement Administration chief compared the influx of new prescriptions and high risk of abuse to that of opioids in the early to mid-2000s. 

The drugs have been linked to insomnia, anxiety, seizures, hallucinations and psychosis - and there is some evidence they may raise the risk of heart disease. 

Matthew Strait, deputy assistant administrator in the diversion control division at the DEA, said: ‘I’m not trying to be a doomsday-er here... It makes me feel like we’re at the precipice of our next drug crisis in the United States.’

Prescriptions exploded during the pandemic with the rise of telehealth firms - with prescriptions jumping from 35.5 million in 2019 to 45 million last year.

Wells Fargo declined to comment.