Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / Prof. David Nutt on Alcohol Addiction and Beating Depression (#054)

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Prof. David Nutt on Alcohol Addiction and Beating Depression (#054) · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

0:00
SPEAKER_04: Well, the first thing we can do is get is help them stop drinking, get them off the alcohol, make sure they come off safely, they don't have delirium tremens or a severe withdrawal, have seizures or that.
0:11
SPEAKER_04: And then the question then is how do we keep people away from drinking?
0:16
SPEAKER_04: And there are several approaches we can take.
0:17
SPEAKER_04: There are medicines, there are medicines like a camprasate or naltrectone, uh disulfiram, antibuse, which can help people stay sober.
0:29
SPEAKER_04: Uh and the other approach, which I think is very important but not so widely used, is to focus on why people drink in the first place.
0:39
SPEAKER_04: And we know that people drink for different reasons.
0:42
SPEAKER_04: There are people who anxious people drink to reduce anxiety, uh, often in social situations.
0:47
SPEAKER_04: That's why alcohol is such a popular drug.
0:49
SPEAKER_04: Why alcohol is served at parties, is because parties are stress-inducing situations, meeting strangers.
0:56
SPEAKER_04: Humans are desperate to meet other people, but there's an innate anxiety, and alcohol takes that down.
1:03
SPEAKER_04: So if people are really anxious, we can treat them with other medicines or other psychological therapies to reduce their anxiety.
1:09
SPEAKER_04: There are other people who drink too much because they want to get high.
1:14
SPEAKER_04: And in those people, alcohol is you know like a mood elevator, and uh and we can approach that in other ways.
1:21
SPEAKER_04: We can control their mood with other medicines or again with psychological therapies.
1:25
SPEAKER_04: So, so we can tailor interventions to the cause of people's excessive drinking.
1:32
SPEAKER_06: Hello everyone.
1:33
SPEAKER_06: Welcome to another edition of Contraminds.
1:36
SPEAKER_06: In this episode, I'm talking to Professor David John Knott.
1:42
SPEAKER_06: Professor David Knutt is a neuropsychopharmacologist specializing in the research of drugs that affect the brain and the conditions such as addiction, depression, anxiety, and sleep.
1:55
SPEAKER_06: Professor David is the founder and the chief scientific officer of the nonprofit drug science.
2:02
SPEAKER_06: Professor David is one of the world's leading researchers on drugs and he continues to fight for evidence-based drug policies.
2:11
SPEAKER_06: Professor David is also the Edmund J.
2:14
SPEAKER_06: Safra, Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and the head of the Center for Psychedelic Research at the Imperial College London.
2:23
SPEAKER_06: In my conversation with Professor David, I spoke to him about now his famous influential map where he presented the findings of his research on the harmful effects of drugs and the ill effects of alcohol addiction.
2:39
SPEAKER_06: I also spoke to him about his discovery and commercialization of synthetic alcohol, his study and findings of the images of the brain due to the impact of depression, stress, anxiety, and sleep disorders.
2:54
SPEAKER_06: Over to my conversation with Professor David Knott.
2:58
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3:32
SPEAKER_06: And I wanted to specifically start this conversation for our audience.
3:51
SPEAKER_03: Neuropsychopharmacologists.
3:52
SPEAKER_03: What do I do?
3:54
SPEAKER_06: Neuropsychopharmacologist.
3:55
SPEAKER_06: What does a neuropsychopharmacologist do?
3:59
SPEAKER_04: Well, they study the effects of drugs on the brain.
4:04
SPEAKER_04: And I do that.
4:05
SPEAKER_04: I'm a psychiatrist.
4:07
SPEAKER_04: So I have been prescribing drugs for mental illness for very, very many years.
4:13
SPEAKER_04: I think it's over 50 years since I prescribed my first medicine.
4:18
SPEAKER_04: And um but as well as helping people with mental health problems, you can use drugs to explore brain mechanisms.
4:31
SPEAKER_04: And that's really my real expertise.
4:34
SPEAKER_04: I like to say that I think I've probably given more different kinds of drugs to human beings that work on the brain than then probably anyone else in history.
4:49
SPEAKER_04: And I use that because you know the basically the brain is a chemical machine.
4:53
SPEAKER_04: Brain communication is largely dependent on chemicals we call neurotransmitters.
4:59
SPEAKER_04: And they're rather similar to most of the drugs we use mimic neurotransmitters or block them in some way.
5:04
SPEAKER_04: So pharmacology is the way to interrograte brain function as well as to help heal the brain in if it's um disordered.
5:14
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
5:16
SPEAKER_06: So you've been uh so your work specifically on the uh you know the influential map created a huge amount of discussion.
5:25
SPEAKER_06: Uh can you talk to us about uh that specific finding which created a huge amount of wave uh around the world on specifically the way you defined how drugs really affect uh human beings and you really said alcohol was the worst form of addiction ever.
5:43
SPEAKER_06: So, can you talk to me about that specifically?
5:46
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you're talking about my Lancet 2010 paper, I think over 2,000 citations.
5:51
SPEAKER_04: Uh it was a paper that um we wrote after I was dismissed by the government.
5:56
SPEAKER_04: For the previous 10 years, I had been advising the British government on drug policy.
6:03
SPEAKER_04: And uh as part of that process, I set up a methodology for properly assessing the harms of drugs in order to determine you know which whether they should be controlled under the law or and if they were to be controlled under what um level of control.
6:23
SPEAKER_04: And uh I came to a conclusion that um that the Misuse of Drugs Act are and also the United Nations Conventions on Drugs didn't accord with the evidence of harm.
6:36
SPEAKER_04: And that's what got me sacked.
6:38
SPEAKER_04: And uh and ever since then I've been banging the drum.
6:42
SPEAKER_04: Well, let's let's try to put evidence at the center of drug policy, because if you don't, then um people don't believe the policy, and then they they don't learn the messages, they don't heed the messages, they basically don't trust anything you say about drugs.
6:58
SPEAKER_04: So the interesting finding about that analysis, which you intimated, was the fact that overall in the UK, alcohol was the most harmful drug.
7:09
SPEAKER_04: Now, we've since replicated this research.
7:12
SPEAKER_04: It was such an important, interesting finding that the European Department of Justice gave us a grant to do the same in Europe.
7:20
SPEAKER_04: And we took um 30 European experts and uh they took our the original analysis and they changed everything and came up with the same result.
7:32
SPEAKER_04: And then it's more recently it's been done in Australia and in New Zealand, and they all come to the conclusions in Western countries where alcohol is a legal drug, it's the most harmful drug, and that's not surprising because it's actually the most used drug um apart from things like caffeine and tea.
7:49
SPEAKER_04: And that tells you some two important things.
7:51
SPEAKER_04: It tells you that at the very least you shouldn't be advertising alcohol because because you're actually driving people to a drug which is overall the most harmful, but it's most harmful because of the impact that alcohol has on other people.
8:05
SPEAKER_04: Alcohol is not the most harmful drug to the user.
8:09
SPEAKER_04: Though drugs like crystal meth, um, crack cocaine, uh heroin fentanyls, they're more harmful to the user and they're more likely to kill you or injure you.
8:19
SPEAKER_04: But to society, alcohol is the most harmful drug because it's so widely used.
8:24
SPEAKER_04: And uh and then people have said, oh well, what that doesn't who cares about that?
8:28
SPEAKER_04: You know, I mean it's what we should the drug policy should be stopping people using harmful drugs.
8:33
SPEAKER_04: And I I support that.
8:35
SPEAKER_04: But the reality is um overall, alcohol is the most harmful drug of all.
8:41
SPEAKER_04: So we ought to have a policy which deals with social harms as well as personal harms, and uh and that policy you know is something countries should really work towards and because it would benefit everyone.
8:54
SPEAKER_06: Why do you define alcohol as a drug and what does it do to the brain, right?
9:00
SPEAKER_04: Well, that is a very interesting question.
9:03
SPEAKER_04: Because of course, actually, until until I got sacked for saying alcohol was a drug, the government said it wasn't a drug, it was a drink, it was a food style.
9:12
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it was a lifestyle choice.
9:14
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, but it you know, every and people just pretended it wasn't a drug, but obviously it's a drug.
9:19
SPEAKER_04: I mean, because what what is a drug?
9:21
SPEAKER_04: Well, a drug is something which you put into a physiological system, otherwise known as a body, and it produces physiological changes, and that's clearly what alcohol does, otherwise you wouldn't use it at all.
9:33
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so if we're thinking, I mean, it's a alcohol is a drug, it's not just a drug on the brain, which we would call a psychoactive drug, it's also a drug on the liver because it's a toxic drug.
9:43
SPEAKER_04: It damages the liver, it damages the heart.
9:46
SPEAKER_04: So it's a drug with that has uh a lot of uh negative effects.
9:50
SPEAKER_04: In fact, you could never license alcohol as a drug because it's far too toxic.
9:55
SPEAKER_04: But historically it's been used for tens of thousands of years.
9:58
SPEAKER_04: So it's kind of it's uh escaped the um in general, escaped the censor that uh uh modern drugs would have.
10:07
SPEAKER_04: Of course, not completely.
10:08
SPEAKER_04: I mean, there was a period uh a hundred years or so ago when the US and the Swedes and the Finns and the Norwegians they went through the temperance movements there, got alcohol banned, uh, because they said it was definitely a drug and it was and actually one of the main reasons for the um the alcohol prohibition, the temperance movement was very concerned about the damage that alcohol did to families.
10:33
SPEAKER_04: That was the real driver.
10:36
SPEAKER_04: But of course, the ban the ban revealed several things.
10:40
SPEAKER_04: It revealed the fact that people like alcohol and people were prepared to break the law to get alcohol.
10:47
SPEAKER_04: It was very corrupting.
10:48
SPEAKER_04: There were these things called speakeasies, under underground um bars, illegal bars in America.
10:56
SPEAKER_04: Policeman outside was being paid off all the time, so that all the all every placement in America was corrupted by prohibition.
11:04
SPEAKER_04: And that's why they had to bring in a new agency, which we now call the Drug Enforcement Agency, it was called the Federal Bureau of Narcotics then.
11:11
SPEAKER_04: A separate army of people to try to control illegal alcohol trafficking.
11:19
SPEAKER_04: They didn't succeed, there was an awful lot of deaths.
11:21
SPEAKER_04: Uh and but uh they still exist now, and of course, one of the reasons we have a war on drugs in America is because there's an army called the DEA to fight that war.
11:32
SPEAKER_06: How do you really approach alcohol addiction?
11:35
SPEAKER_04: Okay, so before I tell you how I deal with people who've got alcohol problems, that's we would call that medical treatment.
11:46
SPEAKER_04: I would say that in general, medicine is does its best when it prevents.
11:55
SPEAKER_04: And you know, we see that obviously classically with the vaccines for whooping, cough, diphtheria, which save hundreds of thousands of lives.
12:04
SPEAKER_04: So primary prevention should be the goal of all healthcare systems.
12:09
SPEAKER_04: And there are ways we can do primary prevention with alcohol.
12:13
SPEAKER_04: We can give people alternatives, which is what I've been trying to do in developing my non-alcoholic functional drink called archoral and called sentia.
12:23
SPEAKER_04: So there are we we should have an active policy in all countries to reduce the consumption of alcohol and reduce the harms of alcohol.
12:34
SPEAKER_04: But even so, even if we do that, there will be people who become dependent on alcohol.
12:38
SPEAKER_04: And so, how can we help them?
12:40
SPEAKER_04: Well, the first thing we can do is get is help them stop drinking, get them off the alcohol, make sure they come off safely, they don't have delirium tremens or a severe withdrawal, have seizures or that.
12:52
SPEAKER_04: And then the question then is how do we keep people away from drinking?
12:56
SPEAKER_04: And there are several approaches we can take.
12:58
SPEAKER_04: There are medicines, there are medicines like a camprasate or naltrexone, uh disulfuriam, antibusin, which can help people stay sober.
13:10
SPEAKER_04: Uh and the other approach, which I think is very important but not so widely used, is to focus on why people drink in the first place.
13:20
SPEAKER_04: And we know that people drink for different reasons.
13:23
SPEAKER_04: There are people who anxious people drink to reduce anxiety, uh, often in social situations.
13:28
SPEAKER_04: That's why alcohol is such a popular drug.
13:30
SPEAKER_04: Why alcohol is served at parties, is because parties are stress-inducing situations, meeting strangers.
13:36
SPEAKER_04: Humans are desperate to meet other people, but there's an innate anxiety, and alcohol takes that down.
13:43
SPEAKER_04: So if people are really anxious, we can treat them with other medicines or other psychological therapies to reduce their anxiety.
13:50
SPEAKER_04: There are other people who drink too much because they want to get high.
13:54
SPEAKER_04: And in those people, alcohol is you know like a mood elevator, and uh and we can approach that in other ways.
14:02
SPEAKER_04: We can control their mood with other medicines or again with psychological therapies.
14:06
SPEAKER_04: So, so we can tailor interventions to the cause of people's excessive drinking.
14:12
SPEAKER_06: So, can you talk to me a little bit about what is synthetic alcohol and how do you see it uh you know getting the attention and the adoption in a society?
14:25
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I'll give you a bit of background.
14:27
SPEAKER_04: So, I mean, I've been thinking about alcohol and the brain ever since my very first day in medical school.
14:37
SPEAKER_04: Oh, is it?
14:38
SPEAKER_04: Very first day, the very first evening in medical school.
14:41
SPEAKER_04: I'm an undergraduate, I'm at Cambridge, in my college, down in college.
14:45
SPEAKER_04: There are nine medical students in the intake.
14:50
SPEAKER_04: And that night, what do you do?
14:52
SPEAKER_04: You go out to meet your friends, you know, you make friends, you go to the pub.
14:56
SPEAKER_04: And I was I was horrified by how much some of them drank because they I couldn't drink that much, and I'm I was yeah, how did they learn to drink that much?
15:04
SPEAKER_04: They shouldn't even be drinking at all.
15:05
SPEAKER_04: They're only just 18.
15:07
SPEAKER_04: And then we went back to the room and they carried on drinking wine, and one of them had a had an amazing explosion.
15:14
SPEAKER_04: He went from being uh a normal kid to someone who was wailing and crying and wanting to go home and wanting his mother.
15:24
SPEAKER_04: And I thought he was going to commit suicide.
15:25
SPEAKER_04: I thought this man's having an acute depressive reaction.
15:28
SPEAKER_04: Should we call an ambulance?
15:30
SPEAKER_04: And one of his friends said, I I know him.
15:33
SPEAKER_04: They went to the same school.
15:34
SPEAKER_04: He said, I know him.
15:35
SPEAKER_04: Uh it'll be all right in the morning.
15:38
SPEAKER_04: And it was, yeah.
15:40
SPEAKER_04: And I I remember thinking, wow, this is staggering.
15:44
SPEAKER_04: Uh, this drug, which everyone uses, can turn a man who ends up he he is now a professor of medicine.
15:50
SPEAKER_04: I won't tell you, I won't tell you what discipline, because you might identify him.
15:53
SPEAKER_04: But he's a professor in a medical specialty.
15:57
SPEAKER_04: And wow, it can change in.
16:02
SPEAKER_04: In fact, the sad truth, the sad thing, was it the friend who told me he's always like that.
16:08
SPEAKER_04: He had a heavy drinking, and he was drinking, I didn't realize at the time, but he was drinking because of anxiety, and he died in his 30s.
16:16
SPEAKER_04: So, you know, you've got a really talented kid going to one of the top universities in the world to do medicine who dies of alcoholism in his 30s, and his friend actually had some problems with the GMC because of his drinking.
16:27
SPEAKER_04: So, two of the nine people that I followed were there have had problems.
16:33
SPEAKER_04: So I've been interested in alcohol all that my all my life because I've seen those problems.
16:37
SPEAKER_04: And every doctor, pretty much every doctor every day, meets a patient who's been harmed by alcohol.
16:44
SPEAKER_04: And I started off, my research started off trying to actually help people have better with get off of alcohol, less less withdrawal symptoms.
16:51
SPEAKER_04: And then I started working on treatments to stop people craving and relapsing.
16:57
SPEAKER_04: And then about 20 years ago, I was working when I was in favor with the government, I was working on a program called the Foresight Program, where you look forward 25 years and you say, How will science, how might science change the field of drug use and alcohol use in 25 years?
17:16
SPEAKER_04: And looking back, I realized the first 25 years, um, we hadn't achieved very much.
17:22
SPEAKER_04: And I it came to me one day, well, actually, alcohol is such a complicated and promiscuous drug that actually finding antidotes to all its effects was impossible.
17:35
SPEAKER_04: And then the you know, the light bulb, wow, maybe we replace it.
17:40
SPEAKER_04: And then we because by that time we were beginning to understand what alcohol did in the brain.
17:44
SPEAKER_04: So synthetic alcohol is a molecule, we're or a series of molecules we're developing to give people what most people want from alcohol.
17:56
SPEAKER_04: Most people want a bit of relaxation, they want the effect of a small glass of wine or a small beer, they want to just relax socially.
18:05
SPEAKER_04: Most people don't want to get drunk, and no one wants to get addicted.
18:08
SPEAKER_04: So we're targeting the brain mechanisms of that first drink, and that turns out to be through a neurotransmitter called GABA.
18:18
SPEAKER_04: So we're basically mimicking the effect of alcohol on the GABA system to help people relax and uh get what they want from alcohol.
18:26
SPEAKER_04: But by just targeting GABA, we don't target all the multiple other neurotransmitters that alcohol targets to cause problems like addiction, dependence, hangover, brain damage, etc.
18:38
SPEAKER_04: Now, actually, it's not that difficult to do.
18:40
SPEAKER_04: We've made several molecules which can mimic the effects of alcohol.
18:44
SPEAKER_04: The biggest challenge is getting people to fund the research because we once you've got the molecule, you've then it's you've got to put it through what's called food safety testing so that you can say it's safe to be as a drink.
18:55
SPEAKER_04: And that costs a lot of money.
18:57
SPEAKER_04: So hopefully there's someone listening to this uh podcast who would like to invest because you know that's the limiting factor at present, getting funding to take the molecules through food safety testing.
19:08
SPEAKER_06: What's been the uh you know, the research and the study, and uh what's been the finding?
19:14
SPEAKER_04: So while we're waiting for the funding to take a new molecule, we call it arcarel, and it says it's a direct pun on candorrel.
19:25
SPEAKER_04: I don't know if candorel is uh sold in India, but candorel was developed to give you the sweet taste of sugar without the calories.
19:34
SPEAKER_04: Arkarel is to give you the pleasure of alcohol without the harm.
19:38
SPEAKER_04: So archerel, the small molecule, the synthetic molecule, those are made.
19:42
SPEAKER_04: But in the interim, pending taking it through food safety testing, we decided to look in into traditional herbs that are used in food and drink and have been used for centuries, and create a herbal cocktail which mimics the effects of alcohol too.
20:01
SPEAKER_04: And we have one that's called sentia.
20:04
SPEAKER_04: We have two now.
20:05
SPEAKER_04: One's called sentia red, which is a slightly more chilling uh version, and sentia black, which is slightly more for parties, to so it you can you know help you interact more and be a bit more energized with other people.
20:18
SPEAKER_04: So again, they both enhance the effects of GABA in the brain, uh, but they don't give you the other problems of uh of alcohol.
20:27
SPEAKER_04: And those are selling in Britain, and we started selling them in America and a little bit in Europe, and people are finding it you know really quite interesting because there are there are a lot of people who would prefer not to put their body at risk from alcohol, but at present they don't have any alternatives if they want to relax socially.
20:45
SPEAKER_04: So sentier provides that for them.
20:48
SPEAKER_06: You're doing all of this because what I read is you love science first, and then you're using science for human good, right?
20:55
SPEAKER_06: That's really what your philosophy in life is.
20:58
SPEAKER_06: So, given that, how do you propose to kind of uh you know uh drive this agenda?
21:05
SPEAKER_04: Well, the agenda is um changing.
21:10
SPEAKER_04: We have in the 20 years I've been working in this project, we have seen the mood of people, particularly young professionals, change.
21:20
SPEAKER_04: Uh we've seen them becoming more health conscious, and we've seen them moving away from alcohol because they know that it's uh it's fun to go for a drink on the evening, but a hangover does impair your performance the next day.
21:34
SPEAKER_04: Uh and uh so we're already seeing alcohol consumption coming down in some particular uh sectors of the population.
21:42
SPEAKER_04: So there's a there's a population out there looking for what we want.
21:46
SPEAKER_04: And that has also changed the attitude of the drinks company.
21:49
SPEAKER_04: So 15 years ago, when we started talking to drinks companies about this, they just laughed.
21:55
SPEAKER_04: They just said look, we make alcohol is so cheap to make.
22:00
SPEAKER_04: And we make so much profit.
22:01
SPEAKER_04: Why would we bother?
22:02
SPEAKER_04: Why would we bother?
22:03
SPEAKER_04: And I said, Well, to save people dying.
22:05
SPEAKER_04: And they said, that doesn't matter.
22:07
SPEAKER_04: You know, it's their choice.
22:09
SPEAKER_04: Now, the drinks industry is saying, oh, their sales are falling because people don't want to die.
22:14
SPEAKER_04: Actually, and as a modern younger generation, it actually has knows the truth about alcohol.
22:21
SPEAKER_04: And uh and the drinks industry are now coming to us saying, Well, hmm, maybe you're you know, maybe we can work with you, maybe you know, you could help us develop safer alternative, you know, to alcohol.
22:32
SPEAKER_04: Maybe we can expand our uh um sales and our and our um the different uh forms of of drink we sell by working with you.
22:41
SPEAKER_04: And we're saying, yes, we're saying, absolutely, but what you what we're gonna do is this the plan is this is it we are go what the synthetic alcohol will be an ingredient.
22:53
SPEAKER_04: It will be an ingredient which we can license to any or every drink company.
22:59
SPEAKER_04: Okay, so they all will be able to make a drink.
23:02
SPEAKER_04: It gives people the pleasure of alcohol without the the harms.
23:07
SPEAKER_04: And that way we can really reach a global market, because that's what I want to do.
23:11
SPEAKER_04: Uh you know, I I really would like to reduce the deaths from alcohol.
23:15
SPEAKER_04: There are three million, maybe three and a half million deaths a year, premature deaths.
23:20
SPEAKER_04: If we could just take that down by 10%, 20% by giving people an alternative, that would be a massive, massive public health uh achievement.
23:30
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
23:31
SPEAKER_06: No, I totally agree.
23:33
SPEAKER_06: Uh what's the uh scalability of this idea?
23:37
SPEAKER_06: Because, you know, can this molecules be mass-produced?
23:41
SPEAKER_06: Can it be built across laboratories?
23:43
SPEAKER_06: It can it be built across countries in a uh you know, the consistent and a systematic manner?
23:50
SPEAKER_04: Well, the good news for you in India is it'll be made in India like almost all the chemicals are these days.
23:56
SPEAKER_04: Uh that's where we've we've already been negotiating production uh of a prototype.
24:03
SPEAKER_04: So but it'll be then distributed, I think it'll be made centrally, uh, and then it'll be distributed to different countries or to it'll be distributed pro primarily to the a company that can a drinks company that can tell us and prove prove to us it can actually d deliver products, new products.
24:26
SPEAKER_04: That'll be the constraining factor, and then we will license it to them and and then we will take some of the proceeds.
24:32
SPEAKER_04: And one of the things I'd really want to do is I want the some of the proceeds, it's already part of our plan, to put some of the proceeds back into my charity, drug science, so we can then carry on looking at ways of reducing the harms of other drugs, not just alcohol.
24:47
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
24:48
SPEAKER_06: No, in fact, that was my next question that I was coming to, which is really uh you built a phenomenal organization uh which is for charity drug science.
24:58
SPEAKER_06: Uh and that was something that completely impressed me in the kind of research work that you are releasing, uh, the transparency that you're bringing to understanding about drugs, the kind of programs that you are running, uh, going to schools and teens and talking about drugs uh and their impact.
25:18
SPEAKER_06: So, can you talk to me about the purpose and the mission of drug science and uh what exactly does this charity do?
25:28
SPEAKER_04: So, drug science was set up very soon after my sacking by the government.
25:35
SPEAKER_04: Uh the government didn't like me telling them that alcohol was the most harmful drug, they sacked me.
25:40
SPEAKER_04: Uh and then a few days later, an investor sent me a text.
25:44
SPEAKER_04: He said, David, you don't know me, but I I'm horrified by your sacking.
25:50
SPEAKER_04: Suppose I gave you the same amount of money to set up a parallel organization to the government's drug uh advisory group, which we call the ACMD.
26:02
SPEAKER_04: Would you do that?
26:03
SPEAKER_04: And would your charity then tell the truth about drugs?
26:05
SPEAKER_04: Because we knew the government, the government was blocking the truth.
26:09
SPEAKER_04: That's why they sat me, because I was talking the truth.
26:11
SPEAKER_04: And I said, Wow, wow, yeah, I'd love to thank you.
26:14
SPEAKER_04: So he so he funded us for three years, and we set up the charity and we started communicating in at all levels, the media, the schools, the universities, um, about drugs and drug harms.
26:28
SPEAKER_04: And and over the time, you know, we've managed to keep it going.
26:30
SPEAKER_04: He stopped funding us, but we've got funding from other sources, uh, from grants, uh, from individuals.
26:38
SPEAKER_04: Um and we've managed to, well, we've become, I think, the leading international source of comp non-political, non-commercial uh uh truth about drugs.
26:52
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
26:53
SPEAKER_06: Uh the related uh conversation that I wanted to have on this drugs thing is at one end, uh, we are a society moving towards uh you know depression, mental health, sleep, and uh probably anxiety are the biggest uh you know mental illness, seems to be the biggest epidemic that we have.
27:17
SPEAKER_07: Yes.
27:18
SPEAKER_06: And uh and clearly uh uh if you take an industry like an antidepressant, which is a 17 billion dollar industry, right?
27:28
SPEAKER_06: Uh which is really saying you know you need to have antidepressants all your life, right?
27:33
SPEAKER_06: And that's really how you get addicted to the drugs that uh you have all your life.
27:39
SPEAKER_06: You have a counterview point on that, which is to say, you know what, uh there are other ways in which you can uh address this problem, and it's not something that you need to have uh this drug all your life.
27:50
SPEAKER_06: So can you talk to me about your perspective on that?
27:54
SPEAKER_04: Yes, well, you're referring to the fact that we have essentially come up with a a new way of treating depression.
28:02
SPEAKER_04: Traditional way, which uh has gone back now to the late 1950s, is to give a drug called an antidepressant.
28:12
SPEAKER_04: But they essentially they rectify a depressive feeling when you take them.
28:22
SPEAKER_04: But unfortunately, when you stop, the depression can come back.
28:25
SPEAKER_04: Or you can have in some cases you can have withdrawal reactions.
28:29
SPEAKER_04: Uh and over the last 15 years, um, as a result, emerging from the science we did, the brain science of psychedelics like magic mushrooms, we started to use psychedelics, particularly psilocybin, the active ingredient of magic mushrooms, we started to use that to treat a range of mental health disorders.
28:49
SPEAKER_04: Now we started with depression, and and the story's quite an interesting one because when I began to study psychedelics, I had no expectation that I might use them in medicine.
29:02
SPEAKER_04: I was studying them because I wanted to know what the psychedelic state was, because it was a clearly a powerful change of consciousness, and no one had been able to explore it before because they didn't have the brain imaging techniques that we had.
29:16
SPEAKER_04: And on top of that, these were illegal drugs.
29:19
SPEAKER_04: So most people didn't have the courage or the tenacity to do it.
29:24
SPEAKER_04: So we did it.
29:25
SPEAKER_04: We did the first brain scans, ever proper brain scans of people on psychedelics, and um and we discovered that there are areas of the brain switched off, the areas that were areas which were switched on in depression.
29:43
SPEAKER_04: And we thought, wow, you know, maybe a psychedelic can switch off depression.
29:48
SPEAKER_04: And then we did a study, and it did.
29:50
SPEAKER_04: I mean, a single trip produced long-lasting improvements.
29:53
SPEAKER_04: Some of our patients on that first study, which was over ten years ago now, some of them are still well after 10 years.
30:00
SPEAKER_04: It's because they've kind of worked through, overcome their brain sort of reset, they're no longer locked into depressive thinking.
30:07
SPEAKER_04: Uh, and uh, and that's actually really very exciting because now we have two different ways of treating depression.
30:15
SPEAKER_04: You can either sort of reset the brain with a psychedelic, or you can take an antidepressant.
30:19
SPEAKER_04: And we know from a whole series of studies we've done, they these drugs work in very different ways, very different parts of the brain.
30:28
SPEAKER_04: And and in theory, patients have got now got choice.
30:31
SPEAKER_04: Of course, in practice, they don't, because the psychedelics are still illegal and they haven't got a license, and it could be years before they do.
30:39
SPEAKER_04: But at least we're giving people hope.
30:43
SPEAKER_06: And uh, how does uh how does this uh you know reset the brain vis-a-vis an antidepressant?
30:49
SPEAKER_06: Was this uh what you've seen in the brain scan uh with the uh you know the psychedelic way of therapy, as you call it, right?
30:57
SPEAKER_06: I think that's really what I read.
30:58
SPEAKER_06: Uh so how does it reset the brain and how different is that?
31:03
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's fundamentally different to antidepressants.
31:07
SPEAKER_04: Uh the way I like to describe it is antidepressants work on an uh evolution in the early part of the brain.
31:18
SPEAKER_04: Deep inside the brain, there's a system called the limbic system, an area called the amygdala, and that's the stress center.
31:26
SPEAKER_04: Depressed people often get depressed because of stress, and what happens is it the stress activates the stress center, and that then, through a mechanism we don't fully understand, leads to depression.
31:40
SPEAKER_04: Antidepressants dampen down the stress center.
31:44
SPEAKER_04: And we can image that you can you can actually see that when you put people on antidepressants and you stress them, the stress center is less active.
31:54
SPEAKER_04: Okay, okay.
31:56
SPEAKER_04: But that particular network is not just the stress network, it's also the it's actually the emotion network.
32:04
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
32:04
SPEAKER_04: People on antidepressants say, Yeah, I don't feel stressed, but I don't enjoy things as much.
32:10
SPEAKER_04: I think I have a sort of restricted emotional range.
32:15
SPEAKER_04: Uh and that often translates into the, you know, they is interested in things like food or sex or relationships.
32:22
SPEAKER_04: So there is a price to pay for dampening down the emotional center.
32:27
SPEAKER_04: Psychedelics work in a much higher, you they work in the most evolutionary recent parts of the brain.
32:34
SPEAKER_04: The cortex, which is much bigger in humans than any other species, and uh and they work on the circuits in which negative thoughts, so a disorder like depression is characterized by people having irrational thoughts about themselves.
32:50
SPEAKER_04: They think they're worthless, they're guilty, they've been done bad things, they feel guilty, they feel people don't they don't deserve to have friends.
32:57
SPEAKER_04: These are completely irrational thoughts, but they get locked in, they become thought loops.
33:03
SPEAKER_04: And the more you think a thought, the more and more and more it gets ingrained.
33:06
SPEAKER_04: It's like a it's like a habit, like a thought-that's a habit, as opposed to say a motor habit like washing your hands.
33:13
SPEAKER_04: And what psychedelics do is they break down those thought loops, and we can see that.
33:19
SPEAKER_04: We can see during the trip, the the the brain is in a very, very different state.
33:24
SPEAKER_04: People are no longer locked into those negative thought loops, okay, and that then allows them to escape from depression, and they can see themselves escaping it, and when they're in the escape state, when the depression that for a few days afterwards, they're in a their brain is in a much better place to deal with the problems which led to the depression in the first place.
33:47
SPEAKER_04: So they can not only get out of the depression, but they can also set their mind towards a much more um uh adaptive way of thinking about the future.
33:57
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
33:57
SPEAKER_06: And uh and you believe that uh you know, after multiple interventions, it pretty much uh you can stop the therapy and there is uh some kind of a permanent kind of uh uh It's one one intervention.
34:13
SPEAKER_04: One intervention.
34:15
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, most of the work, almost all the impact comes from one intervention.
34:20
SPEAKER_04: We've done some studies where we've given another one to see if we could prolong the effect.
34:24
SPEAKER_04: Uh we don't know if that does prolong it, but we've because we haven't done the had the money to do comparisons of two versus one.
34:32
SPEAKER_04: But it seems that the first one is the key one.
34:36
SPEAKER_04: And why that is, we don't really understand.
34:38
SPEAKER_04: It might just be that once you've broken free from something, it's a bit like you know, an analogy would be you know, if you've got a sore tooth, you just pull it out, and then things heal up.
34:47
SPEAKER_04: You've got a bad thought, you break it, your brain heals.
34:50
SPEAKER_04: Um, but it depression is an insidious disorder, and it for many people, particularly if they've got an enduring depression, it started in childhood, the depression can come back.
35:02
SPEAKER_04: Uh, and so we're now looking at whether maybe at six months or a year you give another dose when the depression comes back to try to suppress it again.
35:10
SPEAKER_04: Okay, okay.
35:11
SPEAKER_04: But the radical the radical thing about psychedelics is it is just a dose, and that has another huge impact.
35:19
SPEAKER_04: Is that the drug's not present, it's only there for a day at the most.
35:23
SPEAKER_04: So you don't have side effects because the drug's not there to give you side effects.
35:28
SPEAKER_06: And uh and it doesn't uh encourage addiction?
35:33
SPEAKER_04: No, they're anti-addictive.
35:34
SPEAKER_04: In fact, we yeah, there's a very nice study done um last year in the Journal of American Medical Association showing two psilocybin trips within a couple of weeks could massively reduce alcohol addiction.
35:48
SPEAKER_04: And and we're just square just starting is a trial of one psilocybin trip for opiate addiction.
35:57
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
36:00
SPEAKER_06: So so you so therefore you're saying uh by doing this one intervention, uh uh it does not uh become addictive to the patient.
36:09
SPEAKER_06: And uh while the myth is that uh you know it is it it gets addictive, and that's really something which is completely counter to the uh uh you know to the Swami, you're very generous.
36:21
SPEAKER_04: It's not a myth, it's a lie.
36:25
SPEAKER_04: It was always a lie.
36:26
SPEAKER_04: It was a lie that was created deliberately to justify.
36:30
SPEAKER_04: These drugs were banned in the 1960s because they were seen as fueling supporting the anti-Vietnam War movement.
36:39
SPEAKER_04: They had to be, they couldn't, they had to ban the, had to find a justification for banning them, and the justification was in part that they're addictive.
36:47
SPEAKER_04: They knew they weren't addictive, but they said that because that was convenient.
36:52
SPEAKER_06: Okay, okay.
36:54
SPEAKER_06: Uh, the other work that uh professor you do is uh around even uh what you call as food addiction, right?
37:01
SPEAKER_06: Yes, and uh, you know, that's another huge epidemic that's there given that uh you know, so uh if you look at uh the uh you know the Indian health uh system, they really talk about the fact that the human body is built for scarcity and not for abundance, you know.
37:20
SPEAKER_04: Sorry, precisely, yeah.
37:23
SPEAKER_04: We call it the thrifty phenotype.
37:26
SPEAKER_04: That when you're basically when you're scratching a subsistence from the soil, you actually every single calorie that goes in you gets put somewhere safe, and then suddenly you've got a surface of calories and you end up being large like me.
37:45
SPEAKER_06: So so again, uh your work there, uh, which you call it almost like a food addiction, and then you've studied the brain images of food addicts, and uh, you know, you kind of uh uh you know recommended certain interventions for it.
38:00
SPEAKER_06: So, what's what is that like?
38:03
SPEAKER_04: Well, I've come to it from a slightly different position.
38:06
SPEAKER_04: One of the reasons I'm in Imperial College, uh one reason is because we have fantastic imaging, but the other is because it sort of was a world center for discovering the hormones which control appetite.
38:20
SPEAKER_04: Okay, and and it's so I've been working with endocrinologists for 10 years, seeing we know there are hormones which can stop you feeling hungry.
38:31
SPEAKER_04: Hormones that can stop you eating.
38:33
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, well, there's now there's one called a Zempic, which is everyone in the world's using.
38:37
SPEAKER_04: I mean, you know, we were piling we we were studying that 10 years ago to see whether we could use that to stop people wanting drugs.
38:47
SPEAKER_04: Because we thought that there would be an overlap, and there is an overlap in the brain processes of eating and desiring food and desiring drugs.
38:55
SPEAKER_04: So it may turn out that we can we can target some addictions, some drug addictions using these uh what we call satiety uh hormones, hormones that make you feel full.
39:07
SPEAKER_04: You know, the the hormones which which stop you eating in most cases when you're full.
39:12
SPEAKER_04: There's no question you can eat more, most people could eat more, but they don't want to because that the eating releases hormones which stop you wanting to eat.
39:20
SPEAKER_04: And we want to see if we can stop you wanting to take alcohol or smoking uh by using these um these hormones.
39:27
SPEAKER_04: And you know, the great thing is in those 10 years, they've gone from being a research tool, which we were giving into Venus to eat, to now, you know, you you can go and have your shot of semiglutide anytime you like if you've gone forward inches.
39:39
SPEAKER_06: No, but uh what I uh what I read about semi-glutide is uh it does have side effects on your liver and uh issues around that, right?
39:48
SPEAKER_06: So uh while it's got completely now uh the most wanted uh kind of a drug to uh you know uh protect your uh obesity, but there are a huge amount of side effects, is what they are calling, right?
40:03
SPEAKER_04: Uh yeah, there are side effects.
40:05
SPEAKER_04: Um, but there are side effects of being obese too.
40:08
SPEAKER_04: I think we've got to give, we've got to give people uh basically this is moving the description or the decision making about health away from just doctors.
40:21
SPEAKER_04: Doctors have completely failed to deal with obesity.
40:24
SPEAKER_04: If patients want to use semiglutide, knowing that they've got side effects, they might have diarrhea, they might vomit, they might have stomach pains.
40:35
SPEAKER_04: If I think it's got to be a the patients have got to make a decision, and I think it's almost, I don't know if you saw recently, yesterday or the day before, big study from UCL, five years showing that using this this drug in people with medical illnesses who were also obese reduced the harm, the medical harms.
40:59
SPEAKER_04: So I think, yes, all drugs have side effects pretty much, but but this this is a fundament this potentially can can change the huge burden.
41:12
SPEAKER_04: I mean, there is a big question now, which is the biggest burden.
41:14
SPEAKER_04: I say the biggest burden in the world is mental health problems, and other people say it's obesity.
41:19
SPEAKER_04: It obviously depends a little bit on where you live.
41:21
SPEAKER_04: But here's a here's a strange thing though.
41:25
SPEAKER_04: It's not not everyone reduces their craving for drugs with with these um these uh hormones.
41:34
SPEAKER_04: In fact, it's and we don't know why that is.
41:38
SPEAKER_04: Um it's uh so they're not gonna be, they're not a um a panacea for addiction, but there may be if we could work out why some people stop smoking with it.
41:49
SPEAKER_04: You know, quite a few people say they stop smoking, quite a few people say they reduce their drinking, but we have no idea whether we we can't predict who those people are.
41:56
SPEAKER_04: If we could predict predict that, that's one of the things we're working on, trying to say you could should have this, and that of course then reduces the number of people who need it, and that reduces the the problem of getting it because it's uh there's a huge demand.
42:10
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I think uh it's become the most wanted uh semi-glute has become the most wanted drug now because everybody wants to have it, and uh it's uh I think no one on disk is one of the guys who producing it, is what I know.
42:23
SPEAKER_06: And uh they're the biggest company in Europe now.
42:26
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the biggest company, not just the biggest pharmacan, the biggest company in Europe, all based on this one hormone.
42:36
SPEAKER_06: And uh that's that's this uh hormone that uh uh that uh stops your interest in food, is it?
42:44
SPEAKER_06: That's really what semi-glutide has got.
42:46
SPEAKER_04: It's yes, it's it works on a it's um it works on a receptor called the glucagon-like receptor.
42:51
SPEAKER_04: Glucagon is a way of an appetite suppressant.
42:53
SPEAKER_04: This receptor somehow is an appetite suppressant.
42:56
SPEAKER_04: And um it suppresses your appetites, and if you don't eat so much, you lose weight.
43:02
SPEAKER_07: Okay.
43:02
SPEAKER_04: So it is a it is a it's a it's a gate.
43:05
SPEAKER_04: I mean, we have we've had appetite suppressing drugs before.
43:08
SPEAKER_04: They were called amphetamines.
43:10
SPEAKER_04: The problem is they they do they were rather like some people have got quite high, you know.
43:15
SPEAKER_04: So they could grant you they were more addictive.
43:17
SPEAKER_04: I don't think semigluti's addictive.
43:19
SPEAKER_04: I think it's probably anti-addicatic.
43:21
SPEAKER_06: But but uh but uh is it seen more like an anti-diabetic drug rather than an obesity drug?
43:28
SPEAKER_04: Well that's how it started.
43:31
SPEAKER_04: Right?
43:31
SPEAKER_04: That's how it started.
43:33
SPEAKER_04: But um I think it'll probably end up being I mean, a d a lot of diabetes is driven by obesity.
43:44
SPEAKER_04: So it'll probably be a prof it almost certainly will show prophylactic value in terms of preventing transition to diabetes in OPYP.
43:53
SPEAKER_04: I would guess that.
43:55
SPEAKER_06: Uh so you also made a very interesting statement in one of your interviews.
44:00
SPEAKER_06: Where you said for about 50 years, psychiatry has never improved, right?
44:06
SPEAKER_07: Right.
44:06
SPEAKER_06: And that was an interesting interview that I did.
44:09
SPEAKER_06: What made you make that statement?
44:12
SPEAKER_06: Uh, you know, which is quite uh phenomenal in terms of you practicing that for 50 years, and then you come back and then say, Hey, I've not seen improvements in this kind of a profession, and we need to change that.
44:26
SPEAKER_04: So, what I meant was this that in 50 years of massive, massive increased knowledge about the brain, that has not led to almost any major breakthroughs in the treatment of mental illness.
44:45
SPEAKER_04: The drugs we use today, antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics, were all discovered in the 1950s.
44:52
SPEAKER_04: They were discovered by serendipity.
44:55
SPEAKER_04: We now know how they work, but knowing how they work hasn't helped us develop any new drugs.
45:02
SPEAKER_04: And in fact, it's become so difficult to discover new drugs for brain disorders, particularly mental health disorders, that most companies have given up.
45:10
SPEAKER_04: And that's why the psychedelics, even though they're very old drugs, are so important, because they're filling a gap that isn't being filled by pharma companies.
45:20
SPEAKER_06: And and is that uh because uh because there is no funding for uh you know this kind of research, and is that stopping because uh, you know, for somebody, for something like a COVID, you could actually produce a vaccine so fast while uh you know here uh for 50 years uh you're actually saying all these were discovered in the 1950s, yet you don't have research and funding backing for something like this.
45:47
SPEAKER_04: Well, yes.
45:49
SPEAKER_04: People care more about COVID than they care about mental health.
45:52
SPEAKER_04: That's no if we put the same effort into mental health as we did into COVID, we would definitely improve things a lot.
46:00
SPEAKER_04: Um there's no question, but but we've we don't.
46:04
SPEAKER_04: And I'm actually writing that you heard me give that talk.
46:07
SPEAKER_04: Now I'm actually writing a paper, hopefully, for Lancet psychiatry.
46:12
SPEAKER_04: It's called 50 Years of Failure.
46:16
SPEAKER_04: And uh I go through like the 17 reasons why we've got this, and I hope, but there are solutions, and the solution is take it seriously.
46:24
SPEAKER_04: Uh and here's an interesting example is antibiotics.
46:28
SPEAKER_04: Twenty years ago, companies stopped making antibiotics because the regulators said, Well, we need you've got to be better than the current ones.
46:35
SPEAKER_04: And they said, Well, that's impossible.
46:37
SPEAKER_04: And they said, Well, we don't want the new ones.
46:40
SPEAKER_04: Sadly, we do need we did need new ones because we need ones that were different.
46:44
SPEAKER_04: So when one fails, when it when a bug gets resistant to one, we need a different mechanism.
46:49
SPEAKER_04: But the regulators say you've got to be better.
46:51
SPEAKER_04: So the companies just said can't.
46:53
SPEAKER_04: And now, actually, literally today, the British government has just announced a special a new fund to help improve the innovation in antibiotics.
47:02
SPEAKER_04: We should be doing exactly the same for mental health problems.
47:05
SPEAKER_04: Because they're not going away, they're growing, and our treatments, as I say, we've got no innovation in depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia in no.
47:17
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we've improved drugs, we've got less toxic drugs, got safer drugs, got longer acting drugs, but we haven't got new drugs.
47:26
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
47:27
SPEAKER_06: And the innovation is primarily because of policymakers, or do you think the innovation is because of lack of funding or lack of thinking?
47:36
SPEAKER_04: It's because the brain's difficult.
47:39
SPEAKER_04: It's because it takes 13 years to get a brain, uh, uh a brain drug, uh, certainly a mental health drug through the process.
47:48
SPEAKER_04: It takes five years to get a cancer drug through the process.
47:53
SPEAKER_04: You get 11 years of um exclusivity after each.
47:58
SPEAKER_04: Uh, which one are the investors going to invest in?
48:00
SPEAKER_04: They're gonna invest in a five-year one because because you get to results.
48:04
SPEAKER_04: So we we we we don't incentivize people doing the difficult work of getting mental health problems, um treatments through.
48:12
SPEAKER_04: We just we know we we don't we we don't accept it's an issue.
48:16
SPEAKER_04: And that I think largely reflects the fact there's a there's still a lot of hidden stigma.
48:20
SPEAKER_04: People a lot of people still don't think mental illness is an illness, they think it's just shirking or laziness or you know, overeating or something.
48:29
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
48:30
SPEAKER_06: Um, which brings me to a very important question, uh uh, Professor David Nutt.
48:35
SPEAKER_06: Uh you talk about mental healthness, health mental illness being the biggest epidemic, and uh and you also studied the brain like nobody else.
48:46
SPEAKER_06: Uh, have you studied people without depression and people with depression?
48:52
SPEAKER_06: And uh what does it take for people uh to stay away from anxiety, sleep, mental disorders?
48:59
SPEAKER_06: Uh so uh what does your study of the brain tell us?
49:02
SPEAKER_06: Because I think you also wrote a book uh around the brain, and it was very interesting as a read for me.
49:08
SPEAKER_06: So, uh, have you seen the difference?
49:10
SPEAKER_06: And therefore, if I'm an audience, I'm a commoner listening to this podcast, uh, I know mental health is a big problem because I work uh you know long hours, I'm working in stressful jobs.
49:22
SPEAKER_06: So, when you actually analyze this brain, how do you see it one without uh mental health and uh one with uh mental health?
49:30
SPEAKER_06: So, what needs to be done?
49:33
SPEAKER_04: Well, we can definitely see when we look into the brains and do measures of various measures, we can see that people with mental illnesses, you know, there are signatures in the brain which are different from people who don't have them.
49:48
SPEAKER_04: Why do they get them?
49:49
SPEAKER_04: They get them through some of them, some genetic, a lot of it's due to upbringing, stress, poverty, then a lot of it is due to subsequent stress, trauma.
50:00
SPEAKER_04: I mean, a lot you know, a lot of people get trauma, either get assaulted, they uh have accidents happen to them.
50:06
SPEAKER_04: So trauma, so chronic stress is the one of the major features, is one of the major predisposing features.
50:13
SPEAKER_04: Yes, we can see those changes occur in the brain.
50:15
SPEAKER_04: So what we need to be doing is we need to be training children to be resilient, how to cope with stress, how to deal with those setbacks and not to become preoccupied with failure, etc.
50:28
SPEAKER_04: And and we also need to uh well as make sure that people, when they get ill, they get help quickly because the longer you go on being ill, the harder it is usually to rectify them.
50:44
SPEAKER_06: Okay, so literally you're saying uh teaching resilience in children is the most important.
50:51
SPEAKER_06: Uh so you talked about prevention in many of these cases, so you're almost saying, uh, but as a society, we seem to be getting less and less resilient, right?
51:00
SPEAKER_06: In uh because we are so angry, you know, we are as a as a society, we are getting more anxious about many things.
51:06
SPEAKER_06: We probably had better resilience 50 years back to what we are today.
51:12
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think for several reasons.
51:13
SPEAKER_04: One of them was kind of society was much more structured then, and it was, you know, you kind of knew what was happening, and and certainly after the war, there was a lot of optimism that um things would always be good and getting better.
51:25
SPEAKER_04: And now we're in a strange situation where actually we're at the top of the hill.
51:29
SPEAKER_04: My children's prospects are less good than mine, which is disturbing to them, um uh as uh as and to me.
51:37
SPEAKER_04: But but the other the other thing is we um we've changed our relationships with each other, and our relate far too much of our relationship goes through the see these things.
51:47
SPEAKER_04: We and also we're now children are children of the world.
51:52
SPEAKER_04: You know, they can compare themselves with everyone anywhere, and they can uh see influencers who are impossible to emulate, impossible to get anywhere near, and they have unrealistic sense of their um inability to be what they think they should be, even though of course it's completely ridiculous that anyone would aspire to do that at all.
52:18
SPEAKER_04: So we've corrupted children's attitudes to to themselves and to their families and to what they should, you know, what they should be doing.
52:27
SPEAKER_04: And it it's it's and it's all you know, and it's very big it's become very atomized.
52:33
SPEAKER_04: The individual has now become the center point of their their life uh rather than society.
52:39
SPEAKER_04: And I think that's that is a weakness because humans are social creatures and we need others to make optimize ourselves.
52:46
SPEAKER_04: Whereas now the media is dry it's all about you.
52:49
SPEAKER_04: You've got to you should do this, and if you're not this, if you're not sh that shape, that colour, that that attitude, that makeup or whatever, you're you know, you're not a proper person.
52:59
SPEAKER_04: And that we've got to break that.
53:02
SPEAKER_04: I mean, that is a truly we've cut we've put children into a position where they're in almost all of them are bound to fail because very few people can be these superstars on the on the media.
53:16
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
53:17
SPEAKER_06: So so as somebody who's got tremendous amount of experience in this field, uh, how do you think we should address this problem?
53:25
SPEAKER_06: Because you've studied the brain, you've actually looked at post-depression, uh, I would say uh innovation, which uh I don't think any other scientist uh uh has uh explored and uh you know uh found.
53:42
SPEAKER_06: Uh what how do you really break this problem?
53:46
SPEAKER_06: If you ask me, one is really the interventions that you spoke about, one is uh you know how and somebody who understands uh psychology and who understands the brain and who understands the impact of these drugs, uh, how do you structure the interventions if you were running the policies?
54:06
SPEAKER_04: Well, I say this all the time.
54:08
SPEAKER_04: I say there was a very nice roadmap written in the 1960s by a man called Aldous Huxley.
54:18
SPEAKER_04: The book is called Island, and that book is essentially the culmination of an enormous amount of knowledge about how you can use movement, music, yoga, interpersonal psychology, and psychedelics to make a society which is as close to ideal as you could get.
54:39
SPEAKER_04: And people should read that book and think on it.
54:42
SPEAKER_06: But I'm going to uh you know uh quickly ask you a couple of rapid fire questions, yeah.
54:49
SPEAKER_06: Uh uh, and that's really how we end our podcast.
54:52
SPEAKER_06: Uh so the first question that I have for you, uh Professor David, is uh what does success mean to you?
55:00
SPEAKER_04: Well, to me it means uh help you turning my learning into helping other people.
55:06
SPEAKER_04: That's what success means.
55:10
SPEAKER_06: Beautiful, beautiful.
55:12
SPEAKER_06: Uh so if I were an 18-year-old and uh I was listening to this conversation, uh, what would your advice be for an 18-year-old in a university today?
55:30
SPEAKER_04: Hang in there.
55:32
SPEAKER_04: Things will get better.
55:35
SPEAKER_04: But um definitely make sure you've when you've got a choice to vote, make sure you write you vote for parties which appreciate intellectual growth and development.
55:50
SPEAKER_04: Don't be tempted into parties which are uni-focused, that are nationalistic, that are religious.
55:59
SPEAKER_04: Vote for parties which actually care about the human.
56:04
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
56:05
SPEAKER_06: And what what do I need to do as an 18, 20 year old to myself uh to prepare for this uh future that you're talking about?
56:15
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think the answer is to have a number of different interests, don't just focus on research.
56:23
SPEAKER_04: Research is a truly academics that academia is a very tough field to succeed in.
56:31
SPEAKER_04: Make sure you always get plenty of exercise, you do sport, you have a strong network of friends, um uh to enjoy yourself in other ways.
56:40
SPEAKER_04: Don't don't define yourself simply by your work.
56:45
SPEAKER_06: Don't define yourself simply by your work.
56:49
SPEAKER_06: Brilliant.
56:50
SPEAKER_06: Uh what's you uh you know through these years you would have got lots of advice, and what's one piece of advice that stood by you so many years?
57:02
SPEAKER_06: Can you tell us that one piece of advice that stood by you for so many years?
57:14
SPEAKER_04: That's a good question.
57:16
SPEAKER_04: Um I think the I think it's basically if you're doing science you don't science is a cumul one of the three great pleasures of doing science is it's cumulative.
57:34
SPEAKER_04: You add to what others have done and others will add to what you've done.
57:38
SPEAKER_04: And uh see yourself as part of that process.
57:42
SPEAKER_04: It's not a it's not about you, but you're part of history.
57:45
SPEAKER_04: You know, you're helping to build this uh it's phenomenal.
57:49
SPEAKER_04: I mean, you know, the there's no question that the build the science building is unquestionably the most important building that humans have ever built.
58:00
SPEAKER_04: So, yeah, but every little piece you add does help us get nearer and nearer to wherever we're going.
58:08
SPEAKER_06: Brilliant.
58:10
SPEAKER_06: Uh if you were to have a uh you know uh a dinner with uh say two or three people, uh who would you want to have dinner with and why?
58:25
SPEAKER_06: Imagine you had to have a dinner and they can be living or dead.
58:29
SPEAKER_06: Who would you like to have a dinner and why?
58:33
SPEAKER_03: Well definitely Huxley Okay probably Jesus to have a perspective of those two people talking to each other.
58:50
SPEAKER_03: Um else uh that should be good enough.
58:58
SPEAKER_04: Two people philosopher as well.
59:03
SPEAKER_04: Maybe Spinoza.
59:05
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
59:06
SPEAKER_04: That's a pretty powerful team.
59:07
SPEAKER_04: I think I'd learn a lot from those.
59:11
SPEAKER_06: Great.
59:12
SPEAKER_06: Uh what's one thing that uh you've always believed in that uh others don't seem to agree with you?
59:20
SPEAKER_04: Oh, with very easy to answer that question.
59:23
SPEAKER_03: I I believe that policy should be based on evidence rather than on political experience.
59:31
SPEAKER_03: Great.
59:32
SPEAKER_06: Thanks a ton, uh uh Professor David Nutt.
59:35
SPEAKER_06: It was a real fun conversation, extremely uh engaging, and it was lovely to have chat about drugs and the research that you've done.
59:45
SPEAKER_06: You've got you've done some phenomenal work, and your love for science came out brilliantly in this conversation.
59:52
SPEAKER_06: And uh you've been a crusader and an advocate and uh of science and protecting uh policy with evidence, and that's a phenomenal work in the kind of life that you have led.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_06: Thanks a lot and lovely having a conversation with you.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_06: Thank you, Chip.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_06: Thanks for listening to this episode.
1:00:14
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