• Jaime Blaustein is a previous junior financial investment banker at Credit rating Suisse.
• He’s in long-expression recovery from compound use and has mentored various other individuals in recovery, as well.
• He just lately still left banking and is embarking on a new journey: founding his individual procedure centre.

A single night time in the course of spring break in 2009, Jaime Blaustein was driving erratically by way of a faculty zone in his hometown of North Caldwell, New Jersey.

The police pulled him around. In his vehicle, they identified a stash of opiates, benzodiazepines, ecstasy, and cannabis.

That was the third time out of 5 that Blaustein was arrested. The College of Michigan undergrad, who was 19 at the time, was charged with possession of numerous managed substances, he mentioned, nevertheless the charges were being in the long run dropped.

He was set on probation for a year, his driver’s license was suspended, and he was subjected to fines. But that incident was the tip of the iceberg.

From ages 16 to 24, Blaustein made use of medication. In an interview with Insider, Blaustein, now 32, estimated that he invested up to $300 a working day on medicine all through the direst times of his habit. Pawning every thing from his function laptop computer to prized household jewels served him cover the expenditure.

After faculty, he struggled to keep on to prosperity-management employment at firms like Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley, the latter of which he misplaced in a subject of months. In his closet, rows of white button-entrance shirts marred by bloodstains where the fabric experienced touched his pores and skin told the story of all the occasions he’d stepped into the bathroom to inject heroin at work.

On Xmas Day in 2013, all through his seventh residential-remedy keep, Blaustein ultimately commenced his recovery. Various a long time later on, he earned an MBA at Duke College, then joined Credit rating Suisse as an expense-banking associate based mostly in New York in 2018.

Now he is concentrating on assisting others achieve recovery, too

In January, Ben Brafman, the founder and former CEO of Place Hope — a substance-use procedure heart in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in which Blaustein experienced when been a client — approached the young banker with a organization prospect.

He invited Blaustein to be part of him in founding a 20-bed facility, the Sylvia Brafman Psychological Wellness Centre, in the close by metropolis of Tamarac, which the pair are set to open up in August.

Their plan will consist of a

telehealth
procedure providing for younger Wall Road financiers to get both non-public and team counseling sessions.

The banking life style normally takes a toll, Blaustein explained. “You can find most definitely an underserved populace of people on Wall Road who need psychological-overall health care, and in the context of what our day-to-day career involves,” he claimed.

“You shed management of your lifestyle” on the position, he added. “You’re now at the mercy of the program of promotions and MDs.”

Even though supplying up his banking career six months ahead of he would have been promoted to vice president was tricky, his working experience was priceless though he navigated the capital-elevating method this spring, concurrently performing from house and juggling his banking responsibilities, Blaustein reported.

He was equipped to increase additional than $1 million in funding from 4 outdoors buyers on a $5 million valuation and has assembled a team of about 15 professionals, like a health-related director, counselors, and nurses.

Blaustein’s mentees are adhering to in his footsteps

In 2010, Blaustein survived a lifestyle-threatening ordeal.

His mom observed him and his father, who also experienced an dependancy, unconscious on a sofa upcoming to every single other in a rented home in a dwelling in New Jersey. They had overdosed on OxyContin and Xanax.

They were hospitalized and lived by way of the overdose. But that was the past time Blaustein noticed his dad in individual he died a 12 months later.

Blaustein’s arrive a extensive way due to the fact then, and he’s concentrated on supporting some others via their restoration journeys and 12-phase systems.

Shaun Champaneria, 28, a former administration expert, is just one of Blaustein’s mentees.

Champaneria will embark on a two-12 months MBA application at Emory’s Goizueta School of Enterprise this summer time and is hoping to pursue a banking career.

Champaneria reported Blaustein “has been very encouraging and has assisted when I have had times of self-question,” like when he took the GMAT. “He’s in the company for the reason of not only aiding folks but giving them the probability that he’s had.”