E95: Winter is Coming, Europe's energy crisis, Kim Kardashian's new PE firm & more

Evidence shows Friedberg was broadly right about large energy-price spikes, but wrong about the scale of downstream damage he predicted for winter 2022–2023.

• Energy prices did spike to “multiples over normal.” European gas prices peaked around September 2022 at roughly 25× their level two years earlier, and forward prices for 2023 distribution were estimated at about 7× pre‑crisis norms.(de.wikipedia.org) This confirms the “massive” price increase part of the forecast.
• However, the feared systemic breakdown over winter 2022–2023 did not occur. A very mild winter, aggressive demand reduction, rapid diversification away from Russian gas (LNG imports, more Norwegian supply), and policy support meant Europe avoided gas shortages and blackouts. Multiple post‑mortems describe that winter as having gone “without any issues” from a system‑stability standpoint, with major supply disruptions avoided and gas storage staying comfortable.(thenationalnews.com)
• The broader European economy bent but did not break that winter. Euro‑area GDP still grew 0.1% in Q4 2022, and 2022 growth was about 3.5%, meaning the eurozone avoided a winter recession despite high energy costs.(dw.com) There was serious cost‑of‑living pressure and protests, but not the kind of widespread “critical failure across the economy” implied by the quote.
• Currencies weakened but did not experience a “critical failure.” The euro did fall below dollar parity in mid‑2022, with analysts explicitly tying part of the move to the energy shock and recession fears,(breitbart.com) but it remained a fully functioning major currency and later recovered; there was no collapse or loss of convertibility.
• Debt markets were stressed but remained orderly. Sovereign spreads widened enough that the ECB created the Transmission Protection Instrument in July 2022, explicitly to backstop “unwarranted, disorderly market dynamics” in bond markets.(ecb.europa.eu) In practice, TPI was never activated; later ECB and central‑bank commentary notes that its mere announcement helped keep transmission smooth, and by 2024–2025 peripheral spreads were back near or below pre‑crisis levels, not in a state of systemic failure.(bcl.lu)

So while the price‑spike part of the prediction was accurate, the core claim that those gas cuts would during winter 2022–2023 cause “critical failure… across the economy, across the currencies, across debt markets” did not materialize. Europe experienced severe stress and lasting economic damage in some countries (notably Germany), but no generalized collapse of its currency or debt markets, and no systemic winter breakdown, making the prediction overall wrong.

Key parts of Chamath’s scenario did not occur.

1. Germany did not “capitulate” on Russia due to the energy crisis.

   • After Russia’s 2022 invasion, Germany moved rapidly to reduce, not restore, dependence on Russian energy: it halted Nord Stream 2, built floating LNG terminals (e.g., Wilhelmshaven, Brunsbüttel, Lubmin) and expanded LNG capacity to replace piped Russian gas. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • By 2024 Russia’s share of German imports had collapsed to about 0.1% of total imports, with overall imports from Russia down 95% versus pre‑war levels, indicating a drastic decoupling rather than a political climb‑down. (dw.com)
   • Berlin has even instructed its state LNG terminal operator not to accept Russian LNG at government‑chartered terminals. (spglobal.com)

2. Germany’s overall stance hardened instead of leading a soft reconciliation.

   • Germany is among the largest individual providers of military aid to Ukraine and, by mid‑2025, is the top European military donor, with tens of billions of euros committed. (statista.com)
   • The government explicitly frames its policy as sustaining sanctions and military support until Russia changes course, and backs successive EU sanctions packages against Russia. (bundesfinanzministerium.de)
   • Germany has simultaneously launched a major, long‑term defense buildup, not a rapprochement with Moscow. (breakingdefense.com)

3. No Germany‑led Western political settlement with Russia has been achieved.

   • As of late 2025, there is no comprehensive political settlement ending the war. Instead, a controversial U.S.-driven 28‑point peace plan—developed largely in U.S.–Russia channels—has emerged, with Europeans (including Germany) reacting critically and pushing counter‑proposals, rather than jointly leading a compromise that concedes to Russia. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because Germany neither became the first major European state to fold on its hardline stance toward Russia nor co‑led a successful, concessionary political settlement, the prediction is wrong.

There was no negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine brokered by Western countries/the EU in the "next several months" after Sept. 10, 2022 (i.e., by early 2023), nor in the years since. Early negotiations in 2022 (Belarus, Istanbul) collapsed without a deal, and Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council formally banned direct talks with Putin in September 2022, a ban that has remained in place, making such a settlement politically impossible. (euronews.com) As of January 2024, major outlets still described Russia and Ukraine as "nowhere near talks," with both sides holding incompatible conditions for peace. (cnbc.com) Fighting not only continued but intensified over winter 2022–23 during Russia’s winter offensive, confirming there was no ceasefire‑based settlement. (en.wikipedia.org)

Europe’s acute 2022 energy crisis eased during and after the 2022–23 winter, but this was due to factors like a milder winter, demand reduction, high storage levels, and a surge in LNG imports from the U.S. and Qatar—not a political deal with Russia. Analyses from early 2023 note that Europe "weathered the energy crisis" because of these measures and that the worst‑case scenarios for winter 2022/23 "did not happen," despite sharply reduced Russian gas flows. (hurriyetdailynews.com) Meanwhile, the EU repeatedly tightened energy‑related sanctions on Russia through 2023–25 rather than normalizing relations via a settlement, underscoring that no such bargain ended the crisis. (finance.ec.europa.eu)

Because neither the predicted negotiated settlement nor its implied mechanism for ending the energy crisis occurred within the stated timeframe, the prediction is wrong.

The condition for the prediction was met: there was no negotiated resolution to the Russia–Ukraine war within weeks of 10 September 2022; the conflict continued without a peace deal into late 2022 and beyond, as reflected in EU economic forecasts that explicitly assume an ongoing war. (economy-finance.ec.europa.eu)

However, the scale and nature of the outcomes Friedberg forecast did not materialize:

Civil unrest

• There were notable cost‑of‑living and energy‑price protests: e.g., about 70,000 people demonstrated in Prague on 3 September 2022 over energy prices and government policy, and further large protests followed in the Czech Republic. (en.wikipedia.org)
• France saw nationwide protests and strikes in October–November 2022 over rising living costs, which included some rioting but were time‑limited and politically familiar rather than system‑threatening. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Broader “Europe inflation protests” occurred across several countries (France, Germany, Romania, Czech Republic), with media noting elevated risk of civil unrest but describing protests as strikes and demonstrations, not continent‑wide breakdown. (en.wikipedia.org)

These events show heightened protests and some unrest, but not the sort of sustained, widespread “significant rioting and civil unrest in Europe” that would match the very dire scenario Friedberg described.

Economic impact

• At the EU/euro‑area level, GDP in 2022 still grew about 3.2–3.5%, and while growth slowed sharply, the EU ultimately avoided a large recession: the European Commission’s Winter and Spring 2023 forecasts describe 2023 growth around 0.8–1.1% with the bloc avoiding the winter recession that had been feared. (economy-finance.ec.europa.eu)
• The IMF similarly characterized the downturn as a mild technical recession around early 2023, with modest growth thereafter, not a deep, prolonged contraction. (imf.org)
• On the energy side, analyses of the 2022–23 winter conclude that “Europe has avoided the worst of the energy crisis”, crediting mild weather, demand reduction, and rapid build‑out of renewables; the feared catastrophic shortages and mass industrial shutdowns did not occur. (sonnenseite.com)

Some individual economies, especially Germany, did experience a serious multi‑year downturn, with 2023 and 2024 contractions and commentators calling it the country’s “greatest crisis in post‑war history.” (en.wikipedia.org) But even with Germany’s problems, the overall European picture was one of high inflation and slower growth, cushioned by massive fiscal support, rather than a “cataclysmic” Europe‑wide economic collapse or deep continent‑wide contraction.

Because the war did indeed continue without a deal, yet Europe experienced limited, episodic unrest and a difficult but not cataclysmic economic adjustment, Friedberg’s conditional prediction is best judged as wrong overall, despite correctly anticipating directionally higher unrest and economic strain.

The prediction tied several specific outcomes to an 'eventual settlement' of the Ukraine–Russia war within a few months of 10 September 2022: (1) a peace deal in that timeframe, (2) Ukraine accepting loss of some occupied territory, (3) partial lifting of Western sanctions sufficient to restart Russian gas flows to Europe and normalize European economies, and (4) large Western/EU financial support to Ukraine.

In reality, by late November 2025 the war is still ongoing with no final peace settlement; recent reporting describes it as a nearly four‑year war with active combat, and notes that current U.S.-backed peace proposals are only draft frameworks, not concluded agreements. (apnews.com) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky continues to reject territorial concessions in peace plans, insisting that Russia must be held accountable and that occupied areas not be legitimized. (time.com)

On sanctions and energy, the EU has repeatedly expanded, not relaxed, its Russia sanctions, adopting a 19th sanctions package in October 2025 that further targets Russian energy (including future bans on Russian LNG) while broader EU policy aims to phase out Russian fossil fuel imports entirely by 2028. (finance.ec.europa.eu) Russian gas flows to Europe have collapsed rather than returning to pre‑war norms: Nord Stream pipelines were largely destroyed in 2022 and remain offline, and Russian pipeline gas via Ukraine stopped completely on 1 January 2025; EU data show Russian gas supply to the EU falling from about 150 bcm in 2021 (around 45% of EU gas) to 43 bcm in 2023 (about 15%). (cnbc.com)

It is true that Western countries, especially the EU, have committed very large financial assistance packages to Ukraine, totaling over €130 billion in economic, humanitarian and military support by the end of 2024 and creating multi‑year facilities worth up to €50 billion for 2024–27. (op.europa.eu) However, this aid has been provided while the war continues, not as part of a settlement in which Ukraine trades territory and the West relaxes sanctions to restore Russian gas flows.

Because the central, time‑bound scenario Friedberg described — near‑term peace settlement with Ukrainian territorial concessions, partial sanction rollback, and restored Russian gas to Europe — has not occurred and in several respects the opposite has happened, the prediction is best classified as wrong overall, despite correctly anticipating large Western financial support.

Assessment of the prediction’s components

1. “Tip of the spear” = a European energy crisis in fall/winter 2022–23

   • Europe did undergo a major energy shock after Russia cut most pipeline gas flows, leading to extremely high prices and strong policy responses.(imf.org)
   • However, global institutions described the 2022–23 slowdown as driven by multiple forces: the cost‑of‑living crisis, tight financial conditions/interest‑rate hikes, the war in Ukraine more broadly, and China’s weakness, not a single dominant “tip of the spear.”(imf.org)
   • So while Europe’s energy shock was clearly one major risk, the claim that it would be the primary global economic shock is a judgment call rather than something that can be cleanly verified or falsified.

2. Conditional oil‑market call (“if winter isn’t mild, we can go from +1 mb/d surplus to –2 mb/d deficit quickly”)

   • The actual winter was exceptionally mild: December 2022–February 2023 was Europe’s second‑warmest winter on record, which explicitly “offered some short‑term relief” to governments facing high gas prices by reducing heating demand.(aljazeera.com)
   • Because of this mild weather plus conservation and fuel‑switching, European gas demand in the 2022–23 heating season fell by about 16% in OECD Europe and over 20% in wider Europe, a record drop that helped avoid severe shortages.(ogj.com)
   • IEA data show that in 4Q22 global oil supply exceeded demand by over 1 mb/d, leading to inventory builds, and the IEA expected the market to remain well supplied through the first half of 2023; they spoke of a possible later tightening, not an actual swing to a ~–2 mb/d deficit.(iea.org)
   • In other words, the antecedent of his conditional (a non‑mild winter) did not occur, and the extreme –2 mb/d deficit scenario never materialized. That makes the quantitative part of his prediction effectively untestable in real‑world conditions.

Why the overall judgment is “ambiguous”

• Parts of the narrative were directionally reasonable: Europe’s energy situation was a central macro risk, and oil markets started from around a 1 mb/d surplus in late 2022.(iea.org)
• But:
  • The key worst‑case mechanism he highlighted (a non‑mild winter driving a rapid swing to a large oil deficit) never faced the test because winter turned out unusually warm, and
  • Whether Europe’s energy crisis was the primary global economic “tip of the spear” is inherently subjective, given the simultaneous roles of monetary tightening, global inflation, and China‑related shocks.

Because the prediction hinges on a counterfactual condition that didn’t happen and on a subjective ranking of global shock drivers, the accuracy cannot be determined in a clean, binary way; hence the result is ambiguous, not clearly right or wrong.

Evidence from Eurostat revisions shows that the 20-country eurozone economy contracted 0.1% in both Q4 2022 and Q1 2023, meaning it met the common "technical recession" definition of two consecutive quarters of negative growth, and major outlets reported that the eurozone had entered recession as a result. (theguardian.com) This downturn occurred squarely within the year after Chamath’s September 2022 prediction and was widely linked to the energy shock and inflation caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting loss of Russian gas supplies. (euronews.com) The broader EU (including some non‑euro countries) narrowly avoided a recession, but the main European economic bloc did in fact fall into at least a mild recession rather than the “soft landing” some had hoped for. (theguardian.com) Because he framed a continent‑wide recession as the base case (“probably on the precipice of at a minimum a recession”) with only a possibility of something much worse—and what actually happened was a mild, energy‑driven recession in the eurozone, not a severe depression—this prediction is best judged as essentially correct.

Economic part:

• Europe clearly experienced a serious cost‑of‑living and energy shock in 2022–2023: EU inflation averaged 9.2% in 2022, with housing, water, and energy costs up 18%, pushing over 95 million people to the edge of poverty or social exclusion.(euronews.com) Natural‑gas prices in Europe were around 25× higher than two years earlier at their 2022 peak, and many residents struggled to pay energy bills, prompting governments to earmark hundreds of billions of euros to shield households and firms.(en.wikipedia.org) That’s consistent with the economic crisis for households Sacks warned about.
• However, at the macro level the EU avoided a deep recession. The European Commission’s Winter 2023 forecast described the EU economy as set to “avoid recession”, with GDP growing 3.5% in 2022 and projected to grow (slowly) in 2023–2024.(economy-finance.ec.europa.eu) ECB analysis likewise notes that the euro‑area economy merely stagnated in late 2022 and then began to recover, with unemployment at record lows, and an outgoing ECB hawk later argued inflation was beaten “without heavy economic costs”, as the eurozone avoided recession.(ecb.europa.eu) So whether there was an “economic crisis” depends on whether you focus on macro indicators (mild) or household living standards (severe).

Political part (core of his claim):

• There was visible unrest around energy prices and inflation. Across Europe in 2022, protests and strikes erupted over the cost of living and rising energy prices, with analysts explicitly warning these could fuel political turmoil.(en.wikipedia.org) In the Czech Republic, for example, ~70,000 people joined the “Czech Republic First!” rally in Prague in early September 2022, denouncing the government’s handling of the energy crisis and calling for a new gas deal with Russia and an end to arms deliveries to Ukraine.(en.wikipedia.org) That’s a concrete instance of the tension he described.
• But continent‑wide, public opinion did not turn decisively against leaders’ Ukraine policy. Multiple Eurobarometer surveys from late 2022 through 2023 show large majorities of EU citizens supporting humanitarian, financial and even military aid to Ukraine, as well as economic sanctions on Russia.(enlargement.ec.europa.eu) At the same time, strong majorities backed cutting dependence on Russian energy and accelerating the green transition, including joint gas purchasing and massive investment in renewables.(eib.org) In other words, for most citizens there was not a clean split between “basic needs” and support for the EU’s stance on Russia; they largely approved both cushioning energy prices and continuing pressure on Russia.
• EU institutions and most governments stayed broadly united on sanctions and military support, and the feared winter 2022–23 energy breakdown was avoided thanks to full gas storage, demand reduction and diversification away from Russian supplies.(rttnews.com) Although some countries (notably Hungary and later Slovakia) became more obstructionist and far‑right or populist parties gained ground in several states, this unfolded over several years and had multiple drivers beyond the immediate winter‑heating versus “proxy war” trade‑off Sacks emphasized.(en.wikipedia.org) Europe has faced growing fragmentation and war fatigue, but not the kind of acute, Europe‑wide political crisis he predicted for the energy‑crunch period.

Overall assessment:

• Sacks was directionally right that Europe would suffer serious economic and social strain from the energy shock, and there were protests in which anger over bills and opposition to sanctions/arms for Ukraine were intertwined.
• But the stronger part of his forecast—that this would crystallize into a continental political crisis pitting citizens’ basic needs against leaders “fanatically committed” to a proxy war—has not clearly materialized. Public opinion remained mostly supportive of both aid to Ukraine and energy‑security measures, and EU policy stayed largely intact through and after winter 2022–23.

Because the economic dimension supports his warning while the predicted large‑scale political rupture largely did not occur—and reasonable observers could disagree on what threshold counts as a “political crisis”—the outcome is best classified as ambiguous, rather than clearly right or clearly wrong.

The prediction has a roughly 30‑year horizon starting from 2022, i.e., until about 2052 (2022 + 30 = 2052). As of today (2025), only about three years have passed, so:

• Many major traditional consumer brands (e.g., Coca‑Cola, Procter & Gamble brands, Nestlé brands, Unilever brands, LVMH brands, etc.) are still large, profitable, and competitively relevant; none of the credible analyses of the consumer sector suggest that such brands have broadly “died” or are on the verge of complete disappearance within a few years.
• However, the prediction is explicitly about what will happen over the next ~30 years, not in the first few years. The continued viability of traditional brands in 2025 neither confirms nor definitively falsifies a claim about their status by 2052.

Because the specified timeframe has not elapsed and there is no decisive evidence that such brands cannot decline in the remaining decades, the only reasonable assessment is that it is too early to tell whether the prediction will ultimately be right or wrong.

Evidence to date shows that MrBeast Burger has not become more successful than McDonald’s by any standard business metric, and the venture is now being wound down rather than positioned to overtake it.

• Scale: McDonald’s operates over 41,000–43,000 restaurants worldwide and remains one of the largest fast‑food chains, with global Systemwide sales over $130 billion in 2024. (en.wikipedia.org)
• MrBeast Burger size: MrBeast Burger is a virtual/ghost‑kitchen brand with roughly 1,700–2,000 virtual locations at peak and around a few hundred U.S. locations tracked in late 2025—orders of magnitude smaller than McDonald’s and without comparable systemwide sales or brand dominance. (forbes.com)
• Strategic direction: In 2023, Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) sued his partner Virtual Dining Concepts seeking to shut down MrBeast Burger over quality concerns, and by 2024 he publicly said he was “moving on” from the venture and wanted to close it because it was hurting his brand. (washingtonpost.com)

Even though the chain did reach roughly “thousands” of virtual locations, it has neither surpassed McDonald’s in the burger/fast‑food category nor is it realistically on a trajectory to do so. Under ordinary predictive interpretation, this makes Friedberg’s claim effectively wrong.

The prediction’s horizon is about 30 years from 2022, i.e., around 2052, which is still in the future relative to today (2025-11-30). Therefore, it is too early to evaluate whether “every traditional incumbent brand in core consumer goods and services” will be displaced or rendered noncompetitive by influencer-led brands built on large content-driven audiences.

Even though influencer-led brands have grown significantly across categories like beauty, apparel, and consumer products, there’s no way yet to determine the eventual competitive landscape in 2052. Because the specified timeframe has not elapsed, the correct status is inconclusive (too early) rather than right or wrong.

Friedberg’s claim is explicitly long‑term (“in the future… over the coming decades”), so only about three years of the predicted time horizon have elapsed.

Evidence so far:

• Influencer/creator marketing is growing very rapidly. Statista estimates global influencer advertising spend at about US$44B in 2025, with projections to ~US$81B by 2030, indicating strong structural growth. (statista.com)
• Social media has become the single largest global advertising channel, with ~US$247B in social ad spend in 2025, driven heavily by creator partnerships and short‑form video. (sqmagazine.co.uk)
• In the U.S., ad spending on creator/“influencer” content is projected around US$37B in 2025 and is growing roughly 4× faster than the overall media industry. However, this is still much smaller than major digital categories like search (over US$100B in the U.S. alone). (businessinsider.com)
• Some large advertisers are pivoting strongly toward influencer and social‑first strategies (e.g., Unilever committing about 50% of media budget to social and influencer channels), but they still maintain non‑social channels such as streaming and out‑of‑home, not a full replacement. (theaustralian.com.au)

Taken together, current data support the direction of his thesis (creator/content‑driven marketing gaining share and becoming strategically central), but traditional paid advertising remains very large and far from “replaced.” Given the multi‑decade horizon he specified, there is not yet enough elapsed time to judge whether traditional advertising will be largely or fully displaced in the way he predicted. Hence the outcome is best classified as inconclusive (too early to tell) rather than right or wrong at this point.

It’s too early to definitively judge a decade-long investment thesis that runs roughly from 2022–2032 when we are only about three years into the period (as of late 2025).

Evidence so far is broadly consistent with Friedberg’s view:

• The creator economy and distributed content creation tools (e.g., YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, Shopify-integrated storefronts, Patreon, Substack, OnlyFans, and many AI-assisted creation tools) have attracted substantial venture and growth capital since 2020 and especially post‑2022, and many creators are monetizing via diversified products beyond standard ad spots (subscriptions, digital goods, courses, merch, live events, etc.).
• Numerous reports from major consultancies and market-research firms since 2022 project strong multi‑year growth for the creator economy and related tooling, reinforcing the idea that this sector is a major opportunity. However, long-term performance versus other major opportunities (e.g., AI infrastructure, climate tech, biotech) won’t be knowable until much closer to 2032.

Because the prediction is explicitly about "one of the most profound investing opportunities over the next decade," we must wait for the full decade’s trajectory and returns to play out. Early signals are supportive, but not enough time has passed to conclusively say the prediction was right or wrong in a relative, investment-return sense.

Chamath predicted that Kim Kardashian would be able to “stand up what will probably be like a multibillion dollar private equity fund,” referring to her new PE firm SKKY Partners.

What actually happened:

• SKKY Partners set an initial fundraising goal of around $1 billion for its debut consumer-focused fund, according to investor materials reported by Bloomberg/Fortune.(fortune.com) A $1 billion first fund would be the natural first step toward “multibillion” assets under management.
• By late 2024, securities filings and subsequent coverage indicated SKKY had raised far below that target:
  • Several reports cite regulatory filings showing only about $121 million raised versus the $1 billion goal.(the-sun.com)
  • Another report (summarizing a separate filing) says that as of late December the firm had raised around $45 million for its first fund.(theinformation.com) Even taking the higher $121 million figure, that is still barely a tenth of the target, and orders of magnitude below “multibillion.”
• Deal activity has been minimal: SKKY announced a minority stake in TRUFF in 2023 and later a minority stake in skincare brand 111Skin; reports describe these as only one or two deals to date.(caproasia.com) That deal pace is consistent with a small first-time fund, not a large, rapidly scaling PE platform.
• Critically, Kim Kardashian herself stepped down from the managing-partner/executive role at SKKY by late 2024, remaining only as a co‑founder and senior operating advisor, with filings and press noting that her celebrity did not translate into substantial fundraising and that the billion‑dollar target was missed by a wide margin.(axios.com)

As of November 30, 2025, there is no evidence that SKKY Partners has subsequently closed additional large funds or reached anything close to multibillion‑dollar AUM; the available filings and reporting instead show stalled fundraising, sub-$200 million scale, and Kardashian’s reduced operational role. Given that the prediction concerned the fund being able to probably reach multibillion scale and several years have now passed with the opposite outcome (fundraising shortfall and retrenchment), the most reasonable classification is that this prediction has turned out wrong so far, rather than merely “too early” or indeterminate.

As of late 2025, the U.S. and other high‑income countries do not have a clearly recognized, separate addiction or overdose epidemic attributable specifically to overprescription of ADHD‑type psychostimulants to children and adolescents on a scale comparable to the opioid crisis.

Available data show that stimulant‑involved overdose deaths have risen sharply since about 2011, but these deaths are dominated by illicit methamphetamine and cocaine; the CDC category “psychostimulants with abuse potential” (which includes methamphetamine, amphetamine, and methylphenidate) has increased to about 10.6 deaths per 100,000 people in 2023, with analyses emphasizing methamphetamine as the primary driver rather than prescribed ADHD medications. (cdc.gov) Research describing the “fourth wave” of the overdose crisis similarly characterizes the problem as fentanyl plus illicit stimulants, framing it as an evolution of the opioid crisis rather than a new, distinct prescription‑stimulant epidemic. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

CDC guidance notes that prescription stimulants (e.g., Adderall, methylphenidate) can be misused—about 3.9 million Americans aged 12+ reported misuse in 2023—but also states that these drugs "do not tend to cause overdose," underscoring that their direct role in fatal overdoses is limited compared with opioids and illicit stimulants. (cdc.gov) At the same time, overdose mortality overall—though still very high—has recently started to decline from its 2022 peak, and remains predominantly driven by synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. (en.wikipedia.org)

Prescription rates for ADHD medications have increased markedly (for example, in England, about 18% year‑on‑year since the pandemic), prompting concern about possible overdiagnosis and overprescribing, but recent reviews still judge the benefit–risk balance of these drugs to be generally favorable when properly monitored, not evidence of an unfolding catastrophe on the order of the opioid epidemic. (theguardian.com)

Because (1) no large‑scale, clearly attributable ADHD‑medication‑driven addiction/overdose crisis comparable in scope to the opioid epidemic has yet emerged, but (2) the prediction was about future consequences without a defined time horizon and stimulant‑related harms are evolving, the claim cannot be decisively labeled right or wrong at this point. It is therefore best classified as inconclusive (too early to tell), with current evidence leaning against the idea that such a crisis has already materialized.

As of November 2025, there is not yet broad societal or public‑health consensus that the prescribing of ADHD medications and antidepressants to children constitutes a major public health disaster on the scale of the opioid crisis.

1. Opioid crisis remains uniquely severe and clearly defined. The U.S. opioid epidemic has caused more than 500,000 deaths since 1999 and continues to generate tens of thousands of overdose deaths annually; states like Massachusetts and California still report enormous economic and mortality burdens tied specifically to opioids.(jamanetwork.com) This remains the benchmark "public health disaster" in policy, media, and medical literature.

2. Psychotropic use in children is high and controversial, but framed inconsistently. Advocacy and civil‑rights groups (e.g., NAACP) and anti‑psychiatry organizations argue that psychotropic “drugging” and overprescription in children, particularly in foster care and marginalized communities, constitute a serious problem or even a “national crisis.”(naacp.org) Research also documents large numbers of children on ADHD medication and a steep rise in medication errors, though serious outcomes and deaths remain rare.(publications.aap.org) This shows concern, but not a unified framing as a disaster equivalent to the opioid epidemic.

3. Current federal and medical discourse is mixed, not consensus-level alarm. The Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again initiative explicitly flags medication overprescription (including psychiatric drugs for children) as a leading threat to child health, but major medical voices in venues like JAMA Pediatrics caution that the commission’s assessment may not fully align with the broader evidence base.(washingtonpost.com) This indicates an active debate, not settled “we look at this like the opioid crisis” hindsight.

4. Mainstream psychiatry often sees stimulants as beneficial and sometimes underused. Large reviews and consensus statements cited in reference works describe methylphenidate and other ADHD stimulants as among the more effective medical treatments, associated with reductions in injuries, substance abuse, and mortality when appropriately used.(en.wikipedia.org) Other research and summaries argue that, relative to diagnosed need, stimulants and antidepressants may actually be underprescribed to U.S. youth, countering the narrative of massive overprescription.(additudemag.com)

5. Rising prescriptions and shortages are seen as a policy problem, not yet a declared catastrophe. ADHD prescriptions have increased sharply in several countries, and U.S. Adderall shortages since 2022 have been partly attributed to surging demand, possible overdiagnosis/overprescription, and DEA quota limits.(theguardian.com) Yet even where overmedicalization is criticized, policy and media discussions do not generally label the situation as a public health disaster on par with the opioid epidemic.

Because the prediction is explicitly about future hindsight (“we’re going to look at this like the opioid crisis”) and no such broad retrospective consensus exists yet—while the long‑term judgment could still change—the status of the claim is best characterized as too early to call rather than definitively right or wrong.