According to the report, Wall Street's cutthroat office culture forces young bankers to resort to snorting rows of crushed Adderall pills from their desks to get through 22-hour workdays. It is said that there is.
People in their 20s and 30s aiming to advance in the financial industry told the Wall Street Journal “Nobody even blinked” as a co-worker took Adderall, a prescription drug used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, like cocaine. Young bankers are also addicted to stimulants such as the drug Vyvanse and energy drinks with high caffeine content, the report said.
According to the magazine, Mark Moran, who interned at New York investment banking giant Credit Suisse, went to a local doctor's office to get a prescription for Adderall, even though his family psychologist didn't think he had ADHD. It is said that he succeeded in receiving the .
He said he needed some help getting through the grueling 90-hour work weeks.
“They handed me the script and within a few months I was hooked,” Moran, 33, told the newspaper. “You become dependent on it to do your job.”
Earlier this year, the death of 35-year-old Bank of America investment banker Leo Lukenas III from an acute coronary blood clot brought scrutiny to the heavy workloads placed on Wall Street workers. Now you can direct it.
In the weeks before his death, Lukenas, a former Green Beret, was regularly putting in 100 hours of work each week to complete a $2 billion acquisition project.
A subsequent Wall Street Journal investigation found that Bank of America regularly ignored its own rules and guidelines meant to prevent bank employees from taking on dangerously excessive workloads. It turned out that it was.
The Journal article prompted other companies, including Morgan Stanley, to impose strict requirements for junior bankers to work no more than 80 hours a week.
Dozens of industry workers who spoke to the Journal said the demands of their jobs have forced them to rely even more on stimulants.
Trevor Lunsford, who works in the mergers and acquisitions department at Ascend Capital in Washington, D.C., told the Journal he has been using Adderall for the past seven years.
“It's a very core, essential element of my life and a very, very important tool for me,” he said.
Lunsford said the trip will involve flying from Washington, D.C., to Denver. For a month, he would wake up at 6 a.m. to catch a flight to Detroit at the beginning of the week, then catch a connecting flight to Denver.
After getting off the plane in Denver, he met with customers and then spent eight hours giving a management presentation.
“There were very regular 20- to 22-hour days on some days of the week,” Lunsford told the Journal.
“If I didn't have access to Adderall, I wouldn't be able to work on this, I wouldn't be able to focus, I wouldn't be able to make quick decisions.”
Jonah Frey worked as an investment banker in the health care sector at Wells Fargo in San Francisco in 2020, when his days often started at 4 a.m. local time and ended around 2 a.m. the next day. He said Adderall will help him get through.
In 2021, he joined New York-based Leerink Partners, the former investment banking arm of Silicon Valley Bank.
“My workload at least doubled or tripled, and that’s when things started going downhill,” he said.
To combat this, Frey increased her dose of Adderall. The prescription was obtained from the online medical company Teladoc.
“I started taking it once in the morning, then once in the afternoon, five days a week at first, but then it became seven days a week because I worked most weekends,” he says. I did.
Frey said the drug made her no longer aware of what day it was. He lost his appetite and lost about 25 pounds.
In 2022, he quit his job and stopped taking Adderall.
“We went in knowing the downside risks” of using Adderall, he said.
“But the reward was to become a managing director and earn a seven-figure salary. I felt I needed an edge to accomplish that.”
The Post has contacted Credit Suisse and Leerink Partners for comment.
Representatives for Wells Fargo and Ascend Capital declined to comment.
