The Wolf of Wall Street was about excess. It showed how having too much of a good thing is never good. Cars, money, women, power, it doesn’t matter, eventually it will get you.
Jordon Belfort had all those vices, in abundance, back in the 1980s. But what if Belfort ran his game in the year 2014? His life, and wealth, probably would have been triple.
The website Squander took Belfort’s toys, homes, boats and entire life and wondered “what would it all cost today?” The results are ridiculous. Forget the cars, homes and all that stuff. The drugs. The drugs would have killed his bottom line unless he flatlined.
Check this out.
Because the real-life Belfort developed an addiction to Quaaludes, a drug that became banned by the DEA and thus no longer produced in 1984, his drug habit cost him an unfathomable about of money. Leo is seen getting all kinds of high throughout the film. Before being banned, Quaaludes cost around $4 a pill. Belfort claimed to have taken around 4 a day. That’s $16 dollars a day, and $5,840 a year. Not too bad, considering people who smoke cigarettes probably spend as much. However, after the drugs became banned and as the pills available on the black market started to dwindle with passing time, the price went up. So much, in fact, that Belfort claims he spent $850 per pill towards the end of the 90s. If he was still consuming the pills at the same speed, he could have spent as much a $3,200 a day on drugs alone. Add in his self-professed love for cocaine, and Leo could have spent as much as $4,000 a day for his habit.
If we figured out today, a gram of coke cost roughly $140 in 2007. The Wolf’s coke habit alone would possibly cost over $10K. Add the quaaludes and various other stimulants (in the movie he even confessed to Adderall) and the price balloons to close to $15K.
All that money on drugs in one day to feel good. I’d immediately feel awful for blowing, or really snorting, $4K a day. It just proves I could never pull off the life Belfort did. Well, also, I know dick about the stock market.
H/T Squander