Anxiety and a Nervous Breakdown

When I started at Baird in 1995, I was just a grunt, doing/building FactSet downloads, model updates, and so on. I think my salary was $27,000 a year plus a bonus, which I remember clearly was $5,000, and I was ecstatic.

When hired I was to support two senior analysts. One quickly left to join another firm across the street, Tucker Cleary, and thank God he did.

A new analyst who was exceptionally kind to me was asked by the firm to pivot from retail to industrials. So now I reported to him.

The decision-making on the sell-side appears and is messaged internally and externally as strategic, but often it is more of convenience and risk avoidance. It’s hard to take a risky strategic stand new concepts if your $750k salary depends on you not looking like an idiot. This is why the sell side has no onlyness. But that is for another post. Sorry, all my sell-side friends, but this is the truth. There is a path to differentiation, but you're just not doing it.

In 1998, three years after I got my job, I became a publishing senior analyst. This is an insane elevation to my role from just 3 years ago. My salary increased ten fold and I was unprepared for the pressure. The pressure to write research notes, to pick up new coverage, all at what seemed to me at the speed of light. “Drew, cover just one more company a month until you’re up to twenty.”

In 1998 I was fine, but by 2000, I was miserable. Generally, the sales team liked me, and my sector was interesting to institutional investors, so that was good for my career but bad for my mental health. I had symptoms. Chronic headaches, check. Body aches and pains, check. Lack of focus and fuzzy thinking, check.

I went to the doctor to describe my symptoms, and he diagnosed General Anxiety Disorder and Fibromyalgia. I got some prescriptions. First for Buspar and later for Paxil. I quit Buspar right away because I didn’t tolerate it well. Paxil took longer to discontinue. The side effects of both are on the internet.

Meanwhile, I kept soldering through each day.

I found a massage therapist who worked with the Milwaukee Bucks to see me weekly just to make the pain subside.

In 2002, following the 9/11 terror attack on our country, I was let go from Baird. I was in Las Vegas at my friend’s wedding and flew home the day before the New York towers fell. He and his new bride drove home from Las Vegas to Milwaukee because air traffic was grounded. Can you imagine what they talked about on that drive? I can’t.

In the end, I turned out fine. I am still on anxiety medication (Lexipro). That’s me, I am anxious. It is OK, I’m not ashamed.

So why do I write a post like this? Well, I want to help those who are in my shoes. And to prep those who could be in my shoes someday. It’s a great career path, but hard to manage. Good luck getting your chair and good luck staying in it. I’m living proof it’s possible.