Wolf of Wall Street Helped Bring Back This Deadly Drug

A once-vanquished pill from the disco era is quietly slipping back into circulation—and Hollywood may be to blame. Writing for the Guardian, Mattha Busby charts how quaaludes, banned in the US in 1984 and long held up as a rare "war on drugs" success, have re-emerged in niche locations, from dark-web markets to party circuits. Researchers and users say Martin Scorsese's 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street jolted the sedative back into cultural consciousness, turning it into an object of curiosity for "connoisseur psychonauts," as one neuroscience researcher put it, and would-be Jordan Belforts. Underground chemists, particularly in South Africa and along the US West Coast, have since rebuilt a supply chain for the drug, known generically as methaqualone.

Busby details how quaaludes—which Bill Cosby was also said to have given to his sexual assault victims—are now traded via Telegram menus and fetishized as a "classy" and "extinct" substance, even as experts stress the real risks that got them outlawed: high addiction potential, rapid tolerance buildup, and a history of deadly overdoses, especially when combined with alcohol or other drugs. "People would lie down to go to sleep and just not wake up," says the author of a book on quaaludes. For a fuller look at how a Leonardo DiCaprio movie helped resurrect this drug, more here.