John Emerson believes that the tweakers are crashing on us:
So here’s my explanation of the present Collapse of Western Civilization: amphetamines. The world of finance is a rather small one, populated entirely by supersmart, extremely aggressive and competitive men (mostly) who have to go at top speed twelve or more hours a day, day after day. How do they do it? Performance-enhancing drugs, that’s how: legally-prescribed amphetamines. (Cocaine is uncool, and so Eighties.)And since finance controls the world, when the tweakers crash, the whole world crashes with them. Like a football team collapsing in the fourth quarter, the world has run out of beans. We’ve had our jag, and now we’re crashing. Not much fun.
In my small experience, amphetamines are very nice. The world becomes a happy place. You get smarter and have lots of energy, and you can keep on going indefinitely. Complex ideas seem simple and all of your ideas look good. The crash isn’t even that bad if you use in moderation. But amphetamines are not conducive to moderation.