A Successful Banker Needs His Drugs

I read a disturbing but not surprising article in the Wall Street Journal. Junior investment bankers routinely work 100 hours a week. An all-nighter followed by a plane flight or customer presentation in the morning is common. They often lose track of what day it is because they never rest on the weekends. After one employee at Bank of America died from exhaustion, the industry says it’s made policy changes. JP Morgan even asks junior bankers to report their hours. But I suspect that nothing has changed and that the staff is just more discreet about what they report. To get that high paying job they need an edge. So how have the junior bankers coped? They take performance-enhancing drugs.

Adderal is a the top go-to, followed by Vyvanse. Other medicines for enhancing performance are a concoction of energy shot drinks called Monsterbomb, nicotine pouches, and cocaine. One Wells Fargo banker reported that he saw one colleague snort lines of crushed Adderal on his desk. Drug seems to be openly talked about in many institutions.

Many bankers go to doctors to get what they need. Those doctors understand that, “there is a limit to what any human being can really produce and do.” Prescriptions for ADHD medications were up 22% in 2022. Adderal prescriptions increased 27% in 2024 for people 30 to 44. One boutique clinic says that more than half of their patients work on Wall Street. Such high demand means there is a shortage of ADHD drugs. What do conservative bankers do? They go to the street to get their doses from drug dealers. Some of those hits are laced with fentanyl. That is what killed a banker from Royal Bank.

Are there side effects? One banker interviewed had taken Adderall and Vyvanse for three years until he started having heart palpitations. A mergers and acquisitions banker reported that he’d been taking Adderall for seven years. He regarded the drugs like vitamins or supplements. A Wells Fargo banker realized what the drugs were doing to him and quit his job to move back with his parents. He’d get cold sweats at night. Sometimes he’d sleep for twelve hours and sometimes not sleep at all. He said that he had to re-learn how to function as a human being in society.

Instead of as a machine? A continuously performing machine certainly seems to be the model at these institutions. Until they replace their employees with AI.