London's Cocaine Survivors

The financial bust has forced some addicted traders and bankers to come clean. Many of their colleagues remain mired in the culture of booze and coke.

By Stephanie Baker and Thomas Penny
Bloomberg Markets, November 2009

Neill Junor remembers the exact moment he decided to quit snorting cocaine. On a chilly December afternoon in 2005, the former equities analyst took a stroll in London’s deer-filled Richmond Park to select the tree from which he would hang himself.

The decision to step back from the brink marked the end of a six-year binge of drug and alcohol abuse that by then had cost Junor his marriage and a career that paid him as much as 1 million pounds ($1.7 million) a year. He was out of work, having already walked away from both his analyst job at BT Alex. Brown and a subsequent position in a dot-com venture. “I burned through everything,” Junor says. “I knew there was a choice -- and the choice was to hang from that tree or not.”

His story reflects the cocaine use that medical experts say is rampant in the City, London’s financial district. It’s a habit that often goes hand in hand with heavy drinking. Junor says he and his mates wanted to maintain the thrill they felt at work as they poured into the Square Mile’s pubs and clubs after a day of getting high on finance.

“It’s the same rush from doing a deal and doing cocaine,” Junor, 45, says. “The adulation from doing a deal spills into going for a beer and then a party -- it’s an amorphous blob of energy.” Everyone knows about the City’s drug problem, recovering addicts say. Bosses turn a blind eye to drugs, as long as you’re making money for your firm -- and until recently, making big money was easy to do.

Cocaine Culture

Professionals in the detox business say bankers have swamped them with calls since the financial crisis widened a year ago. The Causeway Retreat, an addiction and mental health hospital for professionals on a secluded island 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of London, has 15 people on the waiting list for its 18-bed facility.

While few walk away from addiction as dramatically as Junor, some bankers are questioning whether the diminished rewards of the City are worth sacrificing their health, says Philip Hopley, a psychiatrist who runs a clinic at the Lloyd’s of London insurance building to be in the neighborhood where his patients work.

“Doing cocaine or drinking heavily is part of the City culture; you work hard and you play hard and you get rewarded because your bonus is fantastic,” says Hopley, a consultant at The Priory, a group that runs several mental health centers. When the bonuses are cut and many of your friends lose their livelihoods, things no longer look so good.

Brain Rush

“A number of people now tell me: ‘I finally realize what a shit job I have got,’ ” Hopley says. “ ‘If it wasn’t for the bonus, I wouldn’t be working these hours and I wouldn’t be working with these people.’ ” The number of people in the finance industry coming to see him has jumped by about 15 percent this year, he says.

Scientists say it’s no accident that trading and cocaine sometimes go together. Both involve taking risks and have a similar effect on the brain. Each activity raises dopamine levels, the organ’s feel-good chemical, according to Trevor Robbins, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. Dopamine surges when we take risks, such as going sky diving, betting on stock price movements or hiding in an office rest room and snorting a line of coke.

Studies show that people who take risks have low levels of dopamine receptors and try to shock the brain into a boost of the chemical through novel situations. They’re also more likely to become addicted, Robbins says.

City Casualty

Those who don’t seek help fast enough, like investment manager Melvin Sabour, can become high-profile casualties.

Sabour, a managing director of AKN Investments Ltd., died of a cocaine overdose in February. Sabour was depressed over losses at his privately held firm, his girlfriend Kyara Dekker told an April inquest into his death. She discovered Sabour, 44, unconscious in the apartment they shared in Mayfair, the neighborhood of townhouses and luxury stores that’s home to money managers such as GLG Partners Inc. and Moore Capital Management LLC. Sabour was pronounced dead by paramedics at the scene. A postmortem examination found that Sabour had a lethal level of metabolized cocaine in his blood and attributed his demise to drug­triggered heart failure.

“Cocaine can and does have a bad effect on the heart and it is quite a significant cause of death in men of younger age in this area of London,” coroner Paul Knapman told the inquest that determined the cause of Sabour’s death.

Click HERE to read the full version of this story

		Email this article Printer friendly format