The notion that cocaine use is rife in the City is a total insult to most of the 300,000 clean-living folk who work there.
I was saying that to the boss over a session last week. I dunno what he was saying, I was too busy talking.
He wasn’t really listening to me either. Then again, he’s a complete cokehead. Has been for years.
In the big banks, this sort of thing would be seen as “a problem”. They’d get you treatment if they wanted to keep you, or get you fired if they didn’t.
At smaller firms where the HR function isn’t such a big deal, it’s still seen as a private matter.
If you function, if you deliver, what you are doing to your own health is your own affair.
I used to work for this small broker, years ago — it went bust just recently — where the head trader was a total genius. Really smart. Made loads of money. His form of indoctrination for new recruits was to take them out and get them smashed.
Some of them rolled with it. Others would be snivelling constantly, falling asleep. They couldn’t do drugs and work hard.
The head trader got the boot in the end, but only with reluctance. He was a good guy.
There’s much less of this sort of stuff now than there was. Funnily enough, I reckon there is now more drug use everywhere else. There’s probably more teachers than bankers on coke now. It’s so cheap that even teachers can afford it.
I reckon the reason for drug use are the same as ever. If you wanted to be sympathetic, you’d say we’re under pressure and need to let off steam. If you didn’t, you’d say we are adrenaline freaks who can’t just let go at the end of the day. We haven’t the imagination to get fun from the theatre or a good book.
I’m happy with either explanation.
The thing is, you can say it’s ugly or stupid and I’d have to agree. But I get regular health check-ups. Once a year, the bloke at Bupa says “stop”. But they never actually find anything wrong with me. Seems to make the Bupa bloke really cross actually.
Me and the boss aside — I do worry for him — the main drug of choice in the City is and has always been booze.
We’ve got to be up at 6am and on it at 7am, really on it, so the blow-out that makes by far the most sense is the frantic 5pm till 9pm drinkathon. Then home to bed, and go again the next day.
I keep thinking to myself, I don’t want to be living like this at 50. But I said that when I was 30.
