Nov 18, 2022
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-psychopharmacology-of-the-ftx
Tyler Cowen linked Milky Eggs’ excellent overview of the FTX crash. I’m unqualified to comment on any of the financial or regulatory aspects. But it turns out there’s a psychopharmacology angle, which I am qualified to talk about, so let’s go.
I wrote this pretty rushed because it’s an evolving news story. Sorry if it’s less polished than usual.1
Probably yes, and maybe it could have had some small effect, but probably not as much as the people discussing it on Twitter think.
Milky Eggs reports a claim by an employee that Sam was on “a patch for designer stimulants that mainlined them into his blood to give him a constant buzz at all times”. This could be a hyperbolic description of Emsam, a patch form of the antidepressant/antiparkinsonian agent selegiline. The detectives at the @AutismCapital Twitter account found a photo of SBF, zoomed in on a scrap of paper on his desk, and recognized it as an Emsam wrapper.