Even if you’re a bigshot on Wall Street, drugs will scramble your brain. Here’s a look at another side to Wall Street’s push to keep up record profits. Boom times are fueling drug use within investment banks. And it’s not just young analysts who are using.                     

On the flip side are the dealers feeding the drug use, who know how to market their product well. When they deal with their Wall Street clients, dealers wear nice suits and use preppy names such as “Nelson” to build their brand. It also helps them fit in better.

“My customers were all business individuals,” convicted drug dealer Juan Rodriguez recounted in courtroom testimony. “I didn’t deal with any street individuals, if you will. … I would create a, you know, take it away from the street image and create a business-like atmosphere so there would be no attention or no heat drawn to me.” 

Rodriguez said even as the price of cocaine escalated his clients didn’t complain. But when his supplier started diluting the purity of his onions (an ounce of cocaine), his clients howled that their highs weren’t as good as before.

Mental health experts who counsel Wall Street executives with drug problems say the pressure to perform can lead them to alcohol abuse, dope smoking, cocaine snorting and shopping for prescription drugs.

Wall Street has seen boom times and drugs before, but this time around, the prevalance of OxyContin (AKA hillbilly heroin) is a new twist for some guys and gals with loads of cash.

And you don’t need drugs for a meltdown. Sometimes anxiety and pressure will do a number on some of the Street’s rising stars.

David Becker was the global chief of Citigroup’s commodities desk when the pressure to meet targets led to cooking the books and a 15-month prison sentence. This didn’t happen overnight. He started seeing one psychiatrist for his anxiety in late 2001, or a few years before he got his top job.

He told his doctor about a painting he owned that depicted a man being pulled by all four limbs. He identified with this tortured man, the psychiatrist told the federal judge handling Becker’s case.

He later got rid of the painting.