Professor David Nutt - The Truth About Drugs

Full transcript: David Nutt on London Real

6:10 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Professor David Nutt, the British psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist specializing in the research of drugs that affect the brain and conditions such as anxiety, addiction and sleep. You conduct your studies at Imperial College London and were once the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs before famously being sacked in 2009. I recently attended your LSD Revealed event at the Royal Society, great evening, where you unveiled groundbreaking research and said to me, if you want to understand the brain, if you want to understand consciousness, you’ve got to study psychedelics.

6:45 Professor Nutt, welcome back to London Real. Thank you, good to be here. It’s been three years, so much has happened. I think you alluded on the last show that you might have been doing studies on LSD but you hadn’t done it at that point. That’s right.

6:59 I got home that night after being at the Royal Society where I saw you speak, Amanda Fielding, Graham Hancock was there, Rupert Sheldrake was there. It was a big night and my 12-year-old always asked me, what’s a drug? And when I say what a drug is, she said, well, what’s alcohol? And I get into this conversation and she said to me, why is LSD illegal? And I figured I would ask the source himself, which maybe is you and maybe that’s how we should start this out.

7:28 Yes, okay, great question. I mean, LSD, along with the other psychedelics like psilocybin, which were made illegal on the coattails of LSD, they’re the only drugs to be made illegal because they were too politically dangerous. So these drugs were banned because they changed the way people viewed, the way America was waging its war in Vietnam. And it’s a remarkable story, really, because LSD was discovered in 1943, yet the real effects were discovered. By the end of the 1940s, the company Sandow that employed Robert Hoffman, who discovered it, they could see what he saw.

8:15 It was a very interesting drug for research. And for about 10 years, there was widespread use. Sandow gave it away. They made it as a medicine. They gave it away.

8:25 There were 1,000 clinical papers published. 40,000 patients, I think, were studied. There were conferences. Everyone said, this is a great breakthrough. We’re really beginning to understand the brain, and I’ll come to this a bit later on, beginning to use LSD to help deal with disorders like depression and alcoholism.

8:48 And then, as often happens with drugs, it began to move from the medical fraternity into more recreational use. And the real trigger for that was the war in Vietnam, because a lot of young men, when conscription happened, when people were being forced, depending on their birthday, to go and fight in Vietnam, that triggered quite a backlash. And you think about it, you’re an 18-year-old American guy, and suddenly, just because you happened to be born on an odd day of the month, you were going to be sent to this place, which you’d never heard of until the war, to fight a war that you didn’t understand, to shoot at people you would never see, be blown up or killed by them.

9:33 And you thought, why am I doing this? And then there was a migration. These guys went to California and went to San Francisco, hate Ashbury, started taking LSD, and realized there was a different way of viewing the world. And that cultural shift away from war that was induced by LSD, that was extremely threatening to the American way of life. Because up to that point, America was about ruling the world, being big enough, powerful enough, to keep communism at bay and use a military approach to control things.

10:06 And people were saying, we don’t want to do that, actually. There was this famous, wonderful protest placard, drop acid, not bombs. And that was anathema to the American way, which was drop bombs and keep dropping bombs. And so the drug had to be banned, because it was going to undermine the whole political strategy of the states. And amazing, in those days, that sort of is the case today, but less so.

10:37 You couldn’t ban a drug just because you didn’t like it, because it changed people’s political stance. You had to find some harms. So there was this wonderful collusion between the drug enforcement people, the CIA, and the newspaper editors, things like The National Enquirer, these really, these scurrilous magazines that are even the worst in the British newspapers. And they concocted this a range of absurd stories. Claiming LSD was the most dangerous thing.

11:08 Famous one, girl gives birth to a frog after taking LSD. I mean, absurd. You put these headlines up at the event. I did. And they’re outrageous.

11:18 And I think everyone knew there were lies. But politicians could say, well, look, if newspaper editors are concerned and they’re responsible people, we should be concerned. So there’s a concern about the drug, so we will ban it. But the most staggering thing of all was that it was banned despite opposition from senior politicians. Bobby Kennedy, Secretary of States, unquestioning the most powerful, intellectually powerful man, probably the most powerful man in America, would have been president if he hadn’t been assassinated.

11:56 He says to his, he’s the boss. He says to these drug enforcement administrators, sorry, six months ago, this drug was a wonderful invention and it was helping us understand depression. Now you’re telling us it’s a dangerous drug and we’re going to make it illegal. Excuse me. What’s happened?

12:12 What’s the evidence? And of course, they wouldn’t answer. They just kept prevaricating and trying to say, to sort of get him off the topic. And then he got angry. He said, well, I think you’re wrong.

12:22 I think the LSD used properly in medical hands could be a wonderful advance. It could be very helpful. But even he could not stop it. And of course, what they did, they said, oh, well, we’re only stopping recreational use. We’re not stopping scientists using it or doctors using it.

12:42 But they did. In fact, since LSD was banned in America in 1967, there has never been a study on LSD in America, even though apparently you can, but no one has ever managed to work their way through this Kafka-esque network of blind alleys through the regulations to do it. So that proves it’s been banned. I mean, de facto are banned, even if theoretically you can work with it. So 50 years, there’s been no studies.

13:09 50 years in America. In fact, now there have been only three, four studies of LSD and they’ve all come in the last couple of years. And two of them have been ours. Because it seems to me, isn’t that outrageous? Something that could, was shown to be really promising as a treatment, as a way of exploring the brain, as a way of even modeling some brain disorders.

13:34 It could have opened up real new avenues of insight and research. It gets banned simply because it’s not, you know, it’s changing the way people vote. I mean, that’s outrageous. What if the war had come 10 years later? Do you think it was just bad timing?

13:49 If that had happened, could LSD maybe have been embraced? Or was it being embraced because of those turbulent times? Well, I think, I think, yes. I think people were trying to make sense of the insanity and they couldn’t, they didn’t feel they could do it. Well, they couldn’t do it through the ballot box.

14:06 I mean, you know, if you, I don’t even know if you had to vote at 18 in America. You probably did. But you were going to be, you know, you suddenly you’re going to go to Vietnam. You know, what can you do? You can’t wait for four years of the next election.

14:16 You had to do something. So some went to Canada, some went to San Francisco, others went to Vietnam and died. And I think, yeah, so I think it was the, there was a desperate attempt to try to define something that made more sense than the Vietnam War. So maybe you’re right. Maybe if there hadn’t, you know, been a war.

14:33 Although I’m not so, like, you know, I’m not very, I’m not sure because, you know, 20 years later we get MDMA. And that, there’s no particular war coming on then. But once it gets, once drugs become used for fun, they become demonized. And even though that means taking them out of medical use, you know, the hatred that some politicians and some newspapers have for particularly young people doing something different, you know, it kind of knows no bounds. It overrides any kind of rational interaction and even, you know, the concern that patients might benefit.

15:12 Do you think that whole aspect of something, you know, being recreational, fun, has this weird subconscious effect on our brain where we’re like, oh no, you cannot do that or there must be something bad with that? Kind of the way that, you know, religious fundamentalism can ban dancing. And do you think it’s almost an internal human reaction to scare away from these things? No, I don’t, no, it’s definitely a reaction. I’m not sure it’s a kind of fundamental, I think it’s a learned reaction.

15:45 That is because, well, I can say it confidently, we don’t ban alcohol. So we are quite happy. Presarily, we’re quite happy to be able to take this drug which destroys their brains and their livers and turns them into crazy fighting beasts. We don’t mind that, but we are scared of drugs which might make them think differently and be differently and even be better people. So I think it’s, I mean, undoubtedly, there is a fundamentalist attitude.

16:14 There are definitely some people, and, you know, America was a good example with prohibition in the 1920s. There are some people who believe that everything that’s pleasurable should be banned. Art of a Cromwell tried to ban Christmas. That’s what got rid of him. So there are some people who believe that, it’s better to suffer on this life having no pleasure because you’ll go to heaven.

16:31 And of course that underpins a certain amount of Islamic teaching. But I think the current situation is more malicious. I think we have quite a sophisticated argument driven by the drinks industry. Drinks industry has spent a century mastering the arguments in favour of alcohol and against other drugs. You go back to the 1890s, 1880s, 1890s, in Britain, in the US.

16:58 Pretty much every drug was legal. You could buy opium, tinctures, you could buy cocaine. Okay, right. Have you seen The Nick, which is a show about the 1900s in a hospital in New York City? No, I haven’t.

17:13 You might like it. But yeah, they’re buying these things over the counter. So everything was out there. But the original drug was alcohol. Alcohol was the drug.

17:22 Alcohol goes back to pre-Christian times. And the alcohol industry is a powerful industry. It’s grown over the millennia. And it didn’t like the advent of these other drugs. So it kind of supported concerned groups.

17:36 And it gradually cut them off one by one and said, you know, opium goes and then cocaine goes. And then later on, cannabis becomes demonised after the prohibition. And the alcohol industry successfully reinvented itself as the sort of natural, tried-untested, proven recreational drug. And it’s managed to squeeze every other one out to the point now where in this country you’ve got this new act, which means even if a new one came along, which is perfectly safe, it would be illegal.

18:08 Because the Psychoactive Substances Act just bans anything that works on their brain in a recreational fashion except alcohol, which is a truly scientifically bizarre position. I mean, it’s outrageous that Parliament could actually decide that we’re not allowed even to experiment with their own brains. But that’s what’s happened. And was that act passed into combat, kind of these drugs that they didn’t know if they were illegal or not? Or how did this happen?

18:34 Yeah, well, it’s a very, yes, it’s a sloppy law. They couldn’t be bothered to work out whether something was harmful or not. They couldn’t be bothered to define it. They just said, if it’s psychoactive, it’s illegal. And it was almost an infantile response because it was based on a false premise.

18:51 Based on the premise that there was a lot of harm coming from these so-called legal highs. In fact, almost all the harmful legal highs were already illegal. But the press didn’t care about that because they just wanted to ban things. And they wanted to get rid of head shops. And even though head shops are largely selling things that are relatively mild and safe because they don’t want their customers to die, they want to come back.

19:17 So this was a hysteria built up, fueled by the media, probably at arm’s length, fueled by the drinks industry who hate competition, got into the manifestos of the parties without any consultation. The government’s own advisory, the committee I used to chair, the council, the ACMD, they opposed it, but they were just, they were rode over by the home office. And you’ll be interested to know that that lady who used to run the home office, the home secretary, is now, as of an hour ago, prime minister.

19:46 So I don’t think we’re going to see any more rational approaches to drugs in the next few years, sadly. In fact, it might even get worse. Last time you were here, we asked you about David Cameron. And I think you had said that 10 years previous, he had said things that many politicians do before they’re elected about how we need to reform. But that had all gone quiet since he was prime minister.

20:04 Now we have Theresa May in here, and you don’t see that coming. Well, she’s never said anything rational about drugs. What I’m hoping is that Cameron will now come clean and start joining us in lobbying for more rational policy. Well, I’m just curious. When you were the chairman of the advisory council on the misuse of drugs, and you walked in there, and at some point you published this scientific research about the effects of all these drugs.

20:30 And you said, now hold on a second. Let’s be rational. Let’s be scientific here. Did you know you were always going to say that, or did you realize it in 07 or 08 and just said, this is madness? So it progressed like this.

20:46 When they asked me to join and chair, the ACMD, there’s the full council, which is a mixture of scientists and police. There’s a judge, and there’s customs and excise people. There’s teachers. There’s a whole range of community experts who are the full council. But underneath that, there’s a special committee called the technical committee, and that does the science.

21:10 So they asked me nine years before if I would chair the technical committee. And I went to a meeting, and I was at the meeting, and I thought, this is weird. These people are pontificating on the harms of drugs, but there’s no systematic assessment. It’s just like, what do you think? Oh, I think this, I think this, without, it’s justified.

21:34 So I said, I’d take it on, but if I’d take it on, we would have to develop a structure to form a template for assessing the harms of drugs. It’s just like you would have a template for assessing quality of essays or anything. You’d want to know what you’re doing. And they said, sure. And for a few years, we fought this battle because the old lot didn’t want to do it.

21:53 They didn’t want to be held to account. We had developed an improved matrix for scoring the harms of drugs. And that was the first thing. And we published that in 2007. And that was in the Lancet.

22:04 And that was called a rational scale for assessing the harm. And that caused quite a bit of a stir because for the first time, we put alcohol in. And alcohol came about fourth or fifth. People said, can’t be that bad. Can’t be that bad.

22:17 And this was harm to yourself versus harm to others? This is the first one. This was a composite. OK, right. So what happened after that was interesting.

22:23 When we published that, a guy called Larry Phillips, he even helped me. He said, look, he’s done a good job, Dave. But you can do it better. We have this new technique called multi-criteria decision analysis. Never heard of it.

22:34 And I said, I could help you if you want. And one of the other authors on the first report was a guy called Colin Blakemore, who by that time become head of the Medical Research Council. So we met with Larry. And Larry explained this much more sophisticated process. And Colin said, OK, well, the MRC will chip a bit of money in the home office, chip a bit of money in them.

22:53 And then we did it. And when we did that, and that actually came up with, my original scale was nine, was actually a nine-point scale. We came up with a 16-point scale, splitting them down, harm to users, harm to others. And when we did all that, suddenly ping, alcohol came out as number one. And I wasn’t expecting that.

23:12 I wasn’t expecting that. But when you look back, of course, it’s because it’s so widely used. And 87% of British people drink. And the harms from alcohol in terms of social damage and family damage, medical damage, are so vast. And that was where the real trouble started, because then it was clear that the government doesn’t want to take on alcohol.

23:34 It can’t. The drinks industry has spent so much money getting politicians on sides. And they used to buy them. When I first started, back in about 1994, when I started working on policy, we did a survey in Parliament. And we discovered something like three-quarters of MPs actually had to direct money from the drinks industry.

23:57 And we asked them a question, do you believe alcoholism is a medical problem or a moral failing? And they almost all answered a moral failing. Now you ask them a question, and you see that less of them take money from the drinks industry. But an amazing number take it from the hospitality industry. And the drinks industry has moved one step away.

24:17 So the drinks industry feeds the hospitality industry. Hospitality industry feeds the MPs. We’ve got to have a cheap drink. Oh, no, we can’t possibly have more control over access to alcohol because the British hospitality industry was so… So they’ve got much more sophisticated in trying to keep politicians focusing on things that aren’t going to interfere with drinking.

24:38 And so your study ultimately said, alcohol and tobacco much more dangerous than heroin ecstasy. Well, no, it wasn’t quite like that. So let’s be precise. So alcohol number one, the biggest problem because of the huge social harms. And then actually it was heroin and crack and crystal.

24:56 And then I think my pictures, and then it was tobacco. So there are definitely some pretty harmful drugs out there that are illegal like heroin and crack. But the drugs that the media really hate are the safe drugs, drugs like MDMA and magic mushrooms. They were down at the other end. And cannabis was sort of in the middle.

25:17 And it’s always fascinating to me. Why do the media have such hysteria about things like mushrooms and MDMA? And you can’t get a straight answer about that. But I think, again, why should people have fun? We’re old.

25:33 We’re too scared to use them. Also, I think attacking those people is easy because they don’t vote, attacking drinkers. You write anything about alcohol control, and they call you nanny state, punishing the responsible drinker, that kind of rubbish. But you can write any rubbish about mushrooms or MDMA or LSD because they’re another class or a different sort of person. And the same is true of cannabis.

25:59 The reason there’s been such hostility to cannabis users is because most of them are black and they don’t vote. So you gain votes from the white middle class and you don’t lose any votes because the people you’re punishing and criminalizing don’t vote anyway. And that’s a huge problem in the states as well where all the criminals being composter, it’s a completely, it’s almost a race issue. It’s the same here. It’s the same.

26:22 It’s not quite as bad as in the states where it was like, I don’t know, eight to one against blacks. Here, it’s about fourfold imbalance of users to getting prosecuted. Right. And then that kind of feeds into potentially the prison complex industry and the commercialization of that, which is happening in the states in a big way. I don’t know if that’s happening.

26:41 They want it to happen here. They want to privatize prisons. It’s not, I mean, it’s, I just, I kind of understand how, you know, the idea that you somehow can make money out of people being incarcerated sort of doesn’t kind of, it’s a perverse incentive to put people in prison. And you had that famous stain and I just want you to talk about and clarify it. The ecstasy versus equity.

27:09 I always thought, as a scientist myself, that it was just a great point you were making in a scientific way. Can you summarize what you were saying with that? Yeah, so when we were reviewing, for 20 years, we’d not been allowed, literally, been debarred by the Home Secretaries from reviewing the harms of ecstasy. And in the end, we were told we had to, thankfully, because the Select Committee, the Science and Technology Select Committee, said to us, you’ve got to do it.

27:40 And we said, fine, we’d like to do it. Even though, at the same time, the drugs minister, Vernon Coker, said, well, I don’t care what they find, we’re not going to change anything. But anyway, at least we were allowed to do the analysis. And when we did the analysis, you know, it turned out the course of ecstasy wasn’t anything like as harmful as Class A drugs. So we were coming to the view that it should be B or even Class C.

28:01 And at about the same time as we were doing this, I’d had a patient who basically destroyed a chunk of her brain falling off a horse. And her whole personality had changed permanently from his brain damage. And I got interested in that because, of course, horse riding is a voluntary activity. You’re not forced to do it. People like it. It’s pleasurable.

28:23 But it’s harmful. And I started researching horse riding accidents and discovered, actually, horse riding is more dangerous than taking ecstasy. So I thought, well, the way to make this, you know, it’d be interesting for governments, but if you don’t care about horse riding, why would you care about ecstasy? And then I thought I’d invent, you know, as a sort of joke to make people interested, I invented this new drug, Equacy, equine addiction syndrome. And it turned out to be a very elegant name because I published this paper, Equacy, a new drug of abuse, a new addiction with implications for drug policy or something.

29:00 And some friends of mine in Europe said, it wasn’t until they got to the second page, they realized it was a satire. But it was, you know, but it was a satire that was meant to illustrate some of the paradoxes in our policy because, you know, if you were rash, if you wanted to save lives, you’d stop people horse riding. But the world went ape because horse riding is a divine right of the middle class living in the countryside. Whereas ecstasy is some evil thing that young people in cities do.

29:29 It went absolutely… I even got letters from horse and hound saying, did I not know that horse riding cures diabetes? To which I have to say, I didn’t know that because it doesn’t. Again, I think it has something to do with our own versions of ourselves and what we’re allowed to experience as pleasure too. And when there’s a drug-related piece, we have so many hang-ups about it.

29:51 It’s interesting, isn’t it? And it’s because, I think, yeah, well, it’s because people are trained, people are brought up to be scared of drugs apart from alcohol from a very early age. But there’s also this sort of puritanical thing that nothing should be pleasurable unless you work hard at it. And it actually, I guess, to get pleasure from horse riding probably takes quite a lot of effort because it starts off being terrifying. You start sitting out there looking down, frightened you’re going to fall off, and if you do, you’re in shock.

30:21 Have you ever had any statements about drugs that you’ve ever regretted saying? Where you said something, it was taken the wrong way, about any drug over the years. I mean, people do, you know, they do misinterpret. I mean, they do, they want me to say that alcohol is the most harmful drug to the user. It’s not.

30:43 It’s not, because if you looked at the graph, it is the most harmful drug to our society. Right. It’s certainly not the most harmful drug to the user. And it’s still pretty harmful to users, but it’s just, it’s so worthy of use. Have I really heard of anything I regret?

30:56 No. I certainly don’t regret saying, obviously, I mean, it was the beginning of my downfall, but it was an important, and it was an important discussion. It was probably my most popular paper, by the way. I think there’s been 8,000 people have downloaded it and probably read it, so that’s quite a lot of reads. Most scientific papers get about 10 reads.

31:14 Was, your sacking now is almost a badge of honor, I think. It’s almost something you’re almost famous for and respected for. I think I am, that’s right. But the time, was it devastating at all? Oh, it made me very angry.

31:26 It made me extremely angry because it was, in retrospect, once I’d actually published those first of those papers, people were out to get me, the press were out to get me. And I have a serious sort of anti-fang club. There are people who collect everything I write. There’s a guy who wanders around with three or four files. I’ve got everything in that sort of reduce.

31:54 I got him sacked. So they were continually looking. In fact, they knew, it’s amazing, they knew that the horse riding paper was published before I did. Because as a scientist, you write papers and then they get peer reviewed and you get comments and you change the paper. They go back, the editor says, yep, it’s accepted.

32:15 And then you wait and you have no idea of the author when it’s going to come out. And then one day, I remember vividly, it obviously had come out that morning because at ten o’clock, there’s this guy from the telegraph. Did you stand by what you said about horse riding? And I said, what are you talking about? He said, the Equisie paper?

32:33 I said, oh, does that come out? Yeah, it’s just come out this morning. Who paid you to write it? I’m picking it right up, that’s what I do. I’m a scientist, I write papers.

32:42 Why would I pay? Do you stand by it? Of course I stand. But they knew that. And then the people tracking me, sort of trolling me, they went into the press and the press, then went and got onto me, and then there was this call for me to resign.

32:56 And the same thing happened. When the actual, the sacking occurred because we then published the comparative on paper. And I had done a lecture criticizing the policy based on the fact it wasn’t evidence-based. Did it interview on the radio? You know, ask the question, you know, which is more dangerous, LSD or alcohol.

33:20 So of course, alcohol is. The word goes mad. Calls for our resignation. I get sacked. So yes, there’s a lot of people out there that kind of, who were very, were pleased to see me go because they saw me as sort of challenging this belief system of everything about alcohol bad.

33:42 And then you kept going. And you really started making the inroads to study a lot of these drugs. And psilocybin was on the list, and now LSD. And for the past eight years, you’ve been toiling away at this sometimes with help from the Beckley Foundation, others. A bit of MRC help for the technical trial, yeah.

34:03 Yeah, exactly. And you published quite a few studies. We have done that. And you have quite a team. I have quite a team, yeah.

34:10 He’s very impressive. He is a real pioneer in this field. Very much so. Why go after the psilocybin and the LSD? And what’s been some of the reactions to your recent study?

34:23 Well, our research has come together because we’ve had this nice triangulation. We’ve had Robin Kahara Harris, who came to me 10, or maybe more now, maybe 12 years ago, saying, I want to see whether LSD mimics dreaming. Great, that’s a good question, Robin. But what experience have you got? Well, I’ve just done a master’s in psychology.

34:53 Okay, well, what’s a drug? Oh, I don’t know about that. So anyway, we had to train him. We got him a PhD doing some science, so he got trained to do the science. And then the Beckley Foundation came along, Amanda Fielding, saying she wanted to start putting, see if we could do some research to really swing the pendulum back from being so far away from these drugs being useful.

35:18 And I’m a psychopharmacologist, and I’d seen this history, and obviously through the ACMD, I’d been looking at the harms of these drugs and realizing there’s a mismatch between the harms and where they are. And you were fascinated with LSD when you were a young man, 15 years older. Oh, well, that’s right. I can remember reading about Hoffman and his story about how, when he accidentally took it, time stretched. I remember thinking that is an interesting phenomenon.

35:45 And that was probably about 67, so that was the beginnings of the Haight-Ashbury. And you could see, I mean, it was obvious to a 16, 17-year-old, you could see that this drug was changing Americans. It wasn’t just changing their politics. It was changing music. It was changing art.

36:02 And it was potentially changing health. It was obvious that this was a cultural phenomenon the like of which we hadn’t seen. In fact, I’m going to put a plug in here. On the 4th of November, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the V&A Museum, are starting, they’re having a conference to celebrate their new, they’re going to have a new exhibition on the 60s and the 60s legacy for the present day. And I’m going to give a talk on psychedelics and how psychedelics has changed.

36:36 There’s almost no aspect of life it really didn’t change, but certainly art, music, science. Did you understand why it was happening then? Or even late after, did you ever think, why is it happening? Yeah, because I think we really, I mean, I think the Vietnam War, I mean, even, I mean, I can remember, I can, one of my first images, I mean, we didn’t have a TV when I was a kid at home. Not until I got into university, but I remember being somewhere, and I remember watching the draw, watching the first draw of American kids going to fight.

37:09 I remember it being pulled out. Was it going to be odd days or even days? And I remember thinking those poor sods, because, you know, we knew, you know, even though the press didn’t want us to know, we kind of, you know, you didn’t have to be a genius to realize that the Vietnam War wasn’t really a winnable war. You know, even, I mean, in the early 1960s, it was clearly, this was not, there was no, it didn’t make a lot of sense, frankly. You know, it wasn’t as if the Russians were going to suddenly walk through and go down into Australia.

37:40 You know, this was a, this was a war fought on a principle. It wasn’t being fought on any, for any real politic kind of. And we all thought, you know, I mean, thank God I’m not one of them. Thank God, you know, I wouldn’t want to be one of them. So I remember that, I do remember that, that the conscription, American conscription, I thought, you know, that’s what horrible things have to do.

37:58 Because we thought, you know, that war was over then, you know, the last war we’d really thought was, was Korea. And, and we didn’t, you know, we didn’t want to fight any more wars. And, you know, thankfully, most of us haven’t. Hmm. And, LSD, what did you learn on this study?

38:15 And what did you think that was going to be true, that turned out not to be true? Yeah, so the LSD study was, we did it for two reasons, really. One was, we did it because having done psilocybin before, we’d come up with some very interesting theories as to how these bugs worked. And we’d actually kind of turn the whole theory of psychedelics on its head, which I’ll come back to. So that was the first thing.

38:40 But the second reason for doing it is because it had to be done. It was, you know, it was, it was, you know, someone had to do it. It’s like, you know, you’ve got to be the first person on the moon, you’ve got to be the first person to study LSD using modern imaging. Because it had, you know, and no one was doing it. Because it was too difficult and expensive and politically, you know, challenging and maybe career ending for people who started it.

39:03 So it had to be done. You know, like Everest, we had to do it. So those were the two reasons, you know. And I’m glad, really glad we did. I mean, it’s an amazing study.

39:12 I mean, it was a truly awesome, it was like a moon landing. You know, we had, it took us over a year of planning. We had to do it in Cardiff because it was the only place where we could do the two kinds of scanning. We did MRI scanning and we did Meg scanning, electro and kefloguri, and the same people one after the other. So it was an amazing exercise.

39:33 It was like, you know, we had to get it all set up here and then translate it and we had to go down to Cardiff on a regular basis. It was truly a monumental study and credit to Robin because he basically bled it all, did it all. And the results, you know, well, they were, as we put it, the psilocybin when we first started, we had no idea. We thought we were going to find lots of excitement in the brain when people had these images, vivid images of coloured lights and things.

40:02 In fact, we didn’t. We found the opposite. We found the brain was switching off. With LSD, we found very similar things, but we found, because of study, it was a bigger study, a better study. We were able to look in much more detail at different effects of different parts of the brain.

40:16 And we kind of confirmed what the psilocybin data had shown but we also expanded it considerably to make sense of things which we hadn’t been able to understand, I think. I remember one of the analogies in your psilocybin study was it was almost like the conductor in the orchestra being removed and the orchestra was playing its instruments in a way that, and that was kind of the way you described that experience as opposed to more happening in the brain. It was almost less.

40:44 It was less control and therefore more flexibility, more syncopation. And that’s the same under LSD. In fact, one of those remarkable things under LSD was we were able to show the nature of how people get these complex hallucinations seen with your eyes closed. And what we showed in the LSD study is that that occurs, that phenomenon occurs because the normal way the brain works is the visual cortex, as I’m looking at you now, this little bit of brain back here, a visual cortex, that’s processing you and I’m thinking, I know who this guy is and I know where I am, and it’s all kind of happening here.

41:24 There’s a little bit of crosstalk, so there’ll be a bit of a brain which says, you know, why am I here? And a bit of the brain where I was here last, but mostly it’s all in the visual. Under LSD, the visual cortex becomes connected across the whole of the brain. So you can see, it can link images which created 5, 10, 15 years ago, but it can also create completely new images with bits of the brain which previously had never talked to the visual cortex, can now engage the visual cortex.

41:53 And that’s why, you know, people can see sounds or kind of feel numbers and things. The brain becomes much more interconnected, much less disciplined in a way, much more flexible. And that’s why it’s interesting, and we think that’s why people can change the way they think under LSD. That’s why people actually didn’t want to fight because they realized there were alternative strategies. You know, you can actually solve problems by talking with people rather than fighting or blowing them up.

42:23 You know, it’s kind of interesting. I mean, it’s obvious, but a lot of people don’t think outside the box. They’re brought up to believe there’s one way and the right way of doing it. And in other states you can see things that the brain would never allow you to see. Right, and it connects us more and introduces that as part of the conversation.

42:42 Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, some people become completely connected with the universe. They kind of float out of the scanner and wander through, you know, see God and become very much more attuned with the fact that there’s more to life than just this little rumination. Yeah, you gave a really passionate speech at the end of that night, and we were there, of course, and recorded the whole thing. And you said a few things, and I’m just going to say them back to you, because they were very powerful, and you said those that cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

43:14 And you went on to say, Orthodoxy is the die-hard of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it beget, and an awful lot of science and an awful lot of politics are Orthodox. And you were really firing some big shots out there and to the audience and to politicians and to the world saying, you know, this is an example of humanity gone wrong for the last 50 years. And while this is a small step forward, if we go with it, we can make some real progress, and if we choose to ignore it, we could go the other way.

43:50 Did I interpret that? Absolutely. I mean, yes. So George Bonasour said, if you cannot change your mind, you cannot change anything, and that is such a absolutely perfect statement. And of course, one of the reasons I show that slide now, is because we’ve had terrible trouble with people who can change their mind.

44:13 I mean, the reason that we haven’t had any research in this field for 50 years is not that successive politicians didn’t know they were wrong. They all knew they were wrong in a way, but they wouldn’t change their mind about, they would rather be wrong and lie and keep the law as it was than face up to the reality that they were doing a disservice. So the sort of political establishment wouldn’t change its mind. And in fact, we were attacked repeatedly by a politician who was a pharmacist called Jim Dobbin, and he used to attack us for studying drugs, and he criticized us for studying drugs just because they were illegal.

44:54 I mean, what kind of mindset is that? Why does it matter whether it’s legal or not in terms of science? It makes no sense at all. So that kind of rigid mindset, which it pervades politics, and it would be great if people could think, well, I think outside the box, see a bigger picture. So that’s one aspect.

45:18 And then the other quote, the Orthodoxy quote, is a quote by Arthur Sexty. And I think he was talking about politics or economics, but it is so apposite because when in trying to get scientists to engage with us on this, it’s not as if these psychedelic research, I would say, I’ve said, I think this is in terms of brain science, the equivalent of the Higgs boson for particle physics. The Higgs boson is big news everywhere. I mean, people kind of, almost no one knows what it means, but people wanted to find it, and they found it.

46:05 A lot of people, probably you and probably many of the people watching this program, are very interested in what psychedelics do in the brain. But the scientific establishment isn’t lauding us. We had trouble getting that published. Yeah, your peers. They’re not saying, this is a wonderful breakthrough.

46:22 They’re sort of saying, let’s not talk about it and let’s hope he goes away. Let’s hope we don’t have to work in this field. Let’s hope we can get back to our rather single, simplistic view of consciousness. So it’s kind of a bit disappointing that the scientific community hasn’t really kind of supported us in the way that I hoped. Right, and that was a comment on them.

46:43 Two thoughts on that. The late Howard Marks, I know you spent time with him. We had him on the show. And when he was here, he said, Brian, I have a lot of friends that won’t do drugs simply because they’re illegal. Yes.

46:55 And these are friends of Howard Marks. And so, you know, they’re obviously probably had conversations with a man who thought completely different. But again, a lot of people won’t change their minds because it’s been prescripted in a certain way. And like you said, you know, the politicians saying we shouldn’t say these things because they’re illegal is a fascinating circular piece of logic. Yeah, and it is like, you know, what the DEA was saying to Bobby Kennedy about banning them.

47:19 I mean, I mean, it’s, there is just some, well, maybe they’re right. If you ban everything for long enough, people will forget about it. You know, there are certain religions that kind of, you know, I suppose eventually you could destroy all the literature. You know, you can, you could theoretically, North Korea, I suppose is an example, you can actually eliminate people’s knowledge to a point where there isn’t any. But what is the point of that?

47:43 When these drugs could actually do enormously good things to help people improve their way and improve the control of their moods or their alcoholism or whatever. Second thought I had, we had a gentleman by the name of Kevin Kelly here about two weeks ago. He’s the founder of Wired magazine, writes a lot of books on the future in AI. And he told me at the end of the show, he said, you’re only as old as the last time you changed your mind. Now, that is a great quote.

48:08 I thought you might like that. That is a great quote. I do like that. We’ll have to remember that one. You once reckoned drug laws being the worst censorship of research since the ban on the telescope.

48:21 And a lot of times you make that analogy. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that. Yes, I’d be delighted to. So in 1616, the Catholic Church decided to ban the scientific study of the planets because they discovered a few years before a guy called Copernicus, who was a Czech, he was a Polish Czech astronomer. And he discovered this amazing phenomenon that the earth went around the sun, not the other way around.

48:58 Because you sit here and you see the sun, but he worked it out. And I can’t remember exactly how he worked it out, but he did. He worked out with it one way around. The sun was the center of the universe. We went around it.

49:08 And that really conflicted with Biblical teaching. And the Catholic Church did not like that. And in fact, there was a priest astronomer called Carlo Bruni who they actually burnt at the stake to punish him for basically agreeing with Copernicus. And then this guy called Galileo, who’s famous, of course, came along. And Galileo was looking at how the moons of Jupiter went around Jupiter.

49:35 He obviously knew that the earth went around the sun. And they didn’t like that. And so they said, up to you, Galileo, do you want to be burnt at the stake or are you going to tell us you were wrong? And he said, all right, I’m recanting. I was wrong.

49:53 And then they banned. They banned the writings of Copernicus from 1616 to about 1750. So that’s 150 years when you couldn’t read the scientific literature about the orbits of the planets. And just as an aside, the term revolutionary comes from those people. The first revolutionaries were not the people marching to liberate France from the rule of the Bourbons.

50:23 The first revolutionaries were the astronomers who discovered that the earth revolved around the sun. It’s nice. So they were banned. So they were banned. Now, that ban lasted 150 years and only really worked in the Catholic countries.

50:38 So in northern Europe, particularly in Denmark, Karl O’Brien, they were able to, because they were Protestant by that point, they were able to carry on. Now, the drug laws, the drug laws, the UN conventions on banning pretty much everything. There were two big ones, 61 and the 71 acts. They exist in 197 countries. And so that’s everywhere in the world.

51:02 And they have been now effectively banning research for, well, 50 to 60 years. Now, when you think of how much research capacity we have now compared, I mean, then in 1616, there might have been 200 astronomers in the world. Now we’ve got 2 million neuroscientists. Think of how much work could have been done if those drugs hadn’t been banned. So I think it’s actually comparable.

51:28 It’s actually worse than the banning of the telescope in terms of the amount of research that’s been impeded. And it’s not gone yet. I mean, just because we’ve done these studies, it doesn’t get any easier. It doesn’t get easier for us. We’ve still got all the rules.

51:41 The costs are enormous. So, yeah, we’ve made progress, but we certainly haven’t overturned it. So until we overturn it, it’s going to continue being very, very bad censorship. Freshman, you were always constantly on message. You are constantly always pushing these things, new studies.

51:58 How do you stay focused day after day after day? You always seem fresh, ready to go after this piece with the language at that talk that night. It was also the strongest language I’ve heard from you, and it was really empowering. What motivates you to keep fighting this? Oh, justice.

52:17 I mean, a mixture of justice. I mean, so I’ve always been a strong believer in justice. I was collecting money for Save the Children Fund when I was 10, running, we call them jumble sales. I don’t know what you call them in the States, but when you collect stuff that people don’t want and you sell it. And I was collecting money for Save the Children Fund for the, I think probably, the Biafran War when I was 10.

52:43 I’ve always wanted to make the world a better place, and I’ve wanted to use science to do that. So I don’t know if you heard, I did the BBC programme recently called A Good Read. I don’t know if you heard about it. Unfortunately, the second, they usually broadcast it twice, but the second night it was going to be broadcast was a night of Brexit, so it didn’t get broadcast. But anyway, you write about your favourite, you talk about your favourite book, and my favourite book was Island by Arthur Suxley.

53:12 This afternoon I was at a meeting where parliamentarians of both houses meet with people in, it’s called the Drug Interest Group. They meet with people who do drug therapy, who run services. And a guy there attacked me, really attacked me. He said, I heard your talk about this. You seriously believe then that you can use drugs to improve humanity.

53:36 He was really hostile to the fact that I was a supporter of policy. I thought, isn’t that interesting? You know, I’d say I obviously had to justify. Why would someone be angry about the fact that I’m actually, I read a book actually by one of the greatest minds in humanity, I mean, that’s clearly a genius. A book which actually talks about a rational approach to using science to improve humanity.

54:01 He talks about psychotherapy, he talks about organising society in a less hierarchical way. He talks about principles of dealing with stress. And he also talks about occasionally using something called Moxia, which is probably ayahuasca or psilocybin, you know. To make a better world, and it works. Why would anyone be hostile to that concept?

54:25 It was bizarre. But, you know, this idea that drugs somehow is a sort of false solution, I find completely bizarre. So as I said to him, well, you know, if you had schizophrenia, I’d treat you with drugs. You have depression. What is the difference between kind of healing people with drugs and, you know, why wouldn’t you want to heal society with drugs, if it works?

54:46 And, you know, that’s the point. You know, there’s a logic, if it’s logical, it’s sensible, if it’s useful, we should be using them. We shouldn’t be saying some things are outside the payoff. You mentioned Brexit. You tweeted out, before I support Remain, for scientific and drug policy reasons, EU law leads the UK in this area, and is using drug science’s scale of harms, the graph you described earlier.

55:13 Twenty-fourth, sad day for UK young scientists, you tweeted out, an uncertain future forced by the older generations, shameful vote for isolationism, we let you down. Can you explain? Okay, so let’s start with the second one, for sure, the older generation. When you look at the demographics of the state, the Leave versus Remain vote, 76% of young people voted to stay, about 40% of vote. So with the older people voted to leave, it’s bizarre in my mind.

55:46 Actually, I mean, it’s bizarre because those are the people that are nearest to the war, you know. These are people that actually presumably had seen, you know, the benefits more than anyone else had been. They would have seen a divided Europe, they came from it, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I’m 65, you know, I mean, in the 50s when I was growing up, we still had alarms every, tested every six months, in case there was going to be a nuclear war. You know, we still lived under the threat of war, which I don’t think we do now.

56:15 But anyway, for whatever reason, the older generation are the people that voted us to pull out of Europe. And I personally, actually, I was, I’m not sure old people should be allowed to vote. I don’t see why my vote should destroy my children and my grandchildren’s futures. I mean, I kind of feel that perhaps when people get over 65, they should not be allowed to vote because they’ve kind of, they’ve had their say. It’s not, you know, they don’t deserve to have the influence of future.

56:48 So I think we did let them down. I think we have let them down. I think, you know, if it was just young people, they would have voted to stay in. And then the science, well, the truth is, so one of my other jobs is I’m president of the thing called the European Brain Council. That’s a committee, a European committee, that represents all brain science.

57:05 It represents scientists. It represents psychiatrists and neurologists, patient organizations, the industry working this, in a huge constellation of people, hundreds of thousands of people all over Europe doing brain research. And we represent them. We represent them in the European Commission, in the European Parliament, et cetera. That’s all done in English.

57:27 English is the language of science in Europe. British scientists are the leading winners of European grants. British scientists’ expertise is what, European science is a kind of, it’s sort of a line to British science. Why would, you know, we have this enormous reach, this enormous influence and benefit. And now, you know, look, I got in my group, you know, I have two Dutch people, I have an Israeli, I have a Chilean, I have a Portuguese, at least I’ve probably got, these people are terrified now.

58:03 You know, can they stay doing the research in Britain? Well, probably not. They’ll probably have to go back to their own countries. So the talent that I’ve brought in and trained up. So, you know, we really have, we’ve really made life difficult for ourselves in terms of, we will unquestionably have less influence in science and be less good at science as a result of this.

58:22 So this hurts what you’re doing? Yeah, and it hurts, not just my science, it hurts all science. Yeah. You know, science is trans-border, science is, and this is, well, we are building, you know, if I lose my Dutch staff because they’re not allowed to work here, because, I mean, well, it’s crazy, because there aren’t British people trained. Let me ask you a question.

58:45 If the British public was taking more LSD, do you think they wouldn’t have made that vote? Oh, I think if the British public had had more open minds, they wouldn’t have. Yeah, you’re right. Last time you were here, we talked about Amy Winehouse and her death from alcohol, which I would guess, if you asked the average American, they would say, no, she died of drug overdose. Yes, yes.

59:07 And we talked about the misinformation when it comes to alcohol, and recently we saw the death of the musician Prince, and Prince was known as a man who never touched alcohol or drugs, didn’t allow it on his tours by his staff, and yet we find him dead in an elevator, and it turns out, I believe it’s pretty much confirmed that he’d overdosed on fentanyl, which is an opioid, which, if that’s not a big explanation point as to a problem we already knew was in America with opioid addiction, this says a lot to someone who had no civil history of that. Talk to me about when it comes to these issues of, I guess it’s more of education and awareness of both of these different drugs and some of the effects. Well, yes, there’s a lot in your question, and the answer isn’t just education, but education’s a very important element in the answer, so let’s deal with that first.

1:00:11 I mean, a lot of people think that because a drug is legal, it’s safe. Actually, fentanyl is interesting, because fentanyl is both legal and illegal. You know, it’s a legal painkiller, but to use it recreationally is illegal. And actually, fentanyl is quite an interesting example, because fentanyl is a dangerous drug, as Prince has shown and as many other people who’ve used fentanyl recreation in your family. Whenever there have been thefts of fentanyl that have gone into the heroin market, because it’s more potent than heroin.

1:00:49 It’s very potent, isn’t it? A couple hundred times more potent. So heroin addicts who’ve found they’ve got a bit tolerant to the heroin, they will, if there’s a… I mean, the most amazing example must be 20 years ago now when there was an outbreak of fentanyl deaths in New York, because someone’s stolen a load. It was a new drug.

1:01:08 People were taking it. Didn’t know how much to take it. They were dying there. Now, you might think people dying would be something that would actually turn off at its note. All over America, people hunted and went to New York because they wanted to try these new, strong stuff because they were sick of the old smack they were getting back home.

1:01:25 So there’s an allure to power, to the very strong opiates. So that’s an education that won’t necessarily deal with that one. But at the very least, education will tell you how much fentanyl not to take. So I think people should know. I really find it…

1:01:44 One of the saddest things are people who died who wouldn’t have died if they’d just known how much to take, and if they’d known not to take more than this and that. So that’s the education. But the other side, the other side of the coin is a really interesting one, and that’s the whole… Why was Prince on fentanyl? Presumably because he’d previously been on morphine and hydromorphone, probably, I don’t know, and maybe OxyContin for pain.

1:02:15 Okay. Millions of people are on painkillers, and opiate painkillers are good. I mean, everyone’s taken them. Codeine is the weakest one. But, you know, they’re all of that family.

1:02:26 Opiate painkillers have a lot of value, but they’re also dangerous. Why don’t we have alternatives? What we do, we have paracetamol, but that’s not very strong. What’s in between? Well, there’s very little in between.

1:02:39 And what we do have in some American states is now we have cannabis. So if we were using cannabis for pain control, we would reduce the dependence on opioids. In fact, we know in Colorado where cannabis is much more easily available than it was, people are switching. Deaths from prescription opiates are falling because actually, opiates are not very pleasant. Most people who are using these drugs, they’re not addicts.

1:03:09 They, in the sense that they’re not taking them for fun. They start off with pain. They go on them. They get tolerant. They take more.

1:03:17 And in the end, they’re kind of dependent on them without enjoying them, and then they could die. And if they don’t work, if the pain starts coming back. Because there’s also this other paradox, which people don’t talk much about. It’s not understood. But after a while, these drugs can start sensitizing your pain system.

1:03:34 So in the end, you get tolerant to the drug effects and your pain system becomes super sensitive. So then you’re pushing in the harder drugs or the more potent drugs like fentanyl. So we could massively reduce the use of opiate painkillers by making cannabis available, medicinally. And then, of course, there’s another angle. This is something I haven’t talked about to you or anyone before.

1:03:59 But psychedelics also have a very interesting potential role in pain. Because, well, there are some pain syndromes which we know psychedelics are great for. There’s one of them called cluster headaches. It’s terrible side unilateral pain. We have 15% of people with this commit suicide.

1:04:18 It’s that bad. Psychedelics get rid of it like that. And I know people go to places like Mexico where they can get the mushrooms for their cluster headaches or they can’t get them in the state. So we could use psychedelics rationally to get rid of those pain syndromes. But beyond that, and this is an area I’m really interested in exploring in the next few years, chronic pain has some similarities with chronic depression.

1:04:48 In the sense that both of them are disorders where people get locked in to a brain pattern. In depression, it’s negative thinking. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve been a failure. I’m useless.

1:05:00 People don’t like me, et cetera. And in pain, they get locked into this thinking. They just focus on the pain. They can’t detach themselves. The pain, the pain, the pain, the pain.

1:05:08 We’ve shown that you can use side-by-side to disrupt the thinking about depression. And I’m very interested. I think we could use psychedelics to disrupt the thinking about pain. And I’ll tell you why I thought about this. I had a patient a few years ago who told me I was treating him in my psychiatric clinic, not for pain, but he was in pain because he had his leg severely crushed when he was very young in an accident.

1:05:41 And we were talking about how he dealt with the pain and how he was still having operations on it. And he said, I lost six years of my life from 12 to 18. I was in such agony, I couldn’t do anything. I could hardly walk. And he said, one day, when I was 18, I went to an 1830 party and someone gave me LSD.

1:06:03 And he said, the pain went. And for the first time in six years, I could walk. I thought, isn’t that amazing? That is amazing, isn’t it? And he’s still in pain, but that was a liberation, which I think may have used LSD subsequently to deal with it.

1:06:23 And actually, I did some research and I’ve actually given a lecture to this, to the Royal College of Physicians. Chronic pain is a brain syndrome. Pain’s not from here or here or here. It’s in here. And we could potentially unlock that behavior pattern in the brain with these drugs.

1:06:41 It’s an enormous potential, which we should be studying. But we can study it, because if I want to do that study, I’ve got to raise the money. That’s going to take a year, if I ever get it. And then it’s going to take me another year to get through all the regulations. I mean, it’s just everything is so difficult in this field because of they’re all illegal.

1:07:03 And what is your road for the future when it comes to psychedelic research? Right. So we are doing, we’ve got three things underway at present. We’ve decided we’re going to do a DMT study. DMT is the active ingredient in ayahuasca.

1:07:17 And we have got another PhD student called Chris Timmermans from Chile, who’s interested in, obviously ayahuasca is very big in South America. He’s interested. We can’t study ayahuasca because you can never be sure exactly what you’re getting, so we decide. Dosages tricky. Okay.

1:07:37 So we decided it would be interesting. It’s better science to do DMT, but it’s not easy. So anyway, we’ve got ethics, we’ve got the DMT, we’re going to do a brain imaging study. So then we will have done three. We’ve done psilocybin, LSD, DMT, and then if they’re all the same, we’ll know that is what, we’ll know the brain signature of psychedelics.

1:07:57 So that’ll happen over the next year. We’re writing a grant to try to do a much more sophisticated, properly controlled psilocybin depression study because the one we just published in Lancet Psychiatry, that was actually more of, that was a sort of open label safety as well as efficacy study because they wouldn’t let us, they wouldn’t let us do a controlled trial until we’d shown that depressed people, whom we gave psilocybin to, would still be alive at six months because there was this idea that somehow they were going to drive them mad. So they made us do a six month safety study.

1:08:37 Never in my life have I ever heard of any study having to have six months follow up from a single dose. But that’s what they made us do. We did it. We showed that there were effects on the mood, good effects on the mood. No one died, no one got ill.

1:08:50 You know what I mean? So now we’re in a position to go back and get money hopefully to do the controlled trial, placebo, because that’s the really, that’s the kind of the hardest test of efficacy because you’ve got a placebo drug. They all get the psychotherapy and we see what happens. So we’re writing a grant for that. And then we’re interested, I’ve got another MRC funded PhD student called Taylor Lyons and she’s interested in this idea that you can, the brain can be more flexible, more plastic, more creative under psychedelics.

1:09:27 These drugs can, so one of the questions is why are these receptors, these psychedelics work on these receptors in the brain called the 5-8-2-A receptor. And those are highly evolved in the human brain. The human brain has got the highest density of any species and they’re in the brain regions where you do your thinking and feeling and the clever stuff that makes you human. And why are they there? What are they there for?

1:09:50 I mean, are they there so you can eat mushrooms? I mean, I don’t know. Some people, you know, McKenna would say, yeah, they’re there because mushrooms put them there, you know. I’m interested in kind of from the more biological perspective rather than the mushroom perspective and I think they’re there because they’re important in making the brain work properly. And I’m interested in this idea that at some point, when important things happen to you, these receptors might get stimulated and then your brain might change in a positive way.

1:10:20 And that’s why probably people like Steve Jobs said, you know, Alice D., one of the five most important events in my life because his brain changed and he could see the world in a different way and then that’s why we got these Apple computers because he could see a different way. And I think that change in the sort of setting, the orchestration of the brain through these receptors is really interesting. We’d like to show that. And so what she’s doing is she’s working with a really very clever guy who’s called Thomas Knopfel who’s a professor at Imperial who’s developed the ability to visualize neuronal activity through making the cells give out light.

1:11:05 As they fire, they give out light signals. It’s beautiful. So she’s going to be looking to see in the animals how these psychedelics change the profiling of firing through the brain and if that changes over time when you do a stimulus and make them learn something. And then we’re hoping to do the same thing in humans. We’re trying to give them naive people but this time we think side to side and see whether we can show changes in positive changes in brain function.

1:11:36 Do you think in your lifetime you’ll see the UK in a state where I can take a trip to a spa in the country and have a psychedelic experience in a room, in a quiet place and then that will be my vacation and then I can come and rejoin the society. Do you think it’ll be in a state where something like that’s legal? Depends on how long I live, doesn’t it? That’s my ambition. So that’s one of my motives for staying alive.

1:12:08 So if I disappear… What is that utopian world you want to see? It’s not utopia, but I’m looking to empower people. A lot of people have hang-ups from life, from bad parenting, from stresses. I think if these drugs can help people make sense of that and come out of that and just have a different perspective, have a stronger view of themselves, why shouldn’t we do that?

1:12:38 And why do we care if people use a recreation if they don’t come to any harm because most people don’t. In fact, he looks as if from these epidemiological studies we’re seeing that even recreational use is good, in the sense that people who use psychedelics, there’s less crime, there’s less use of other drugs. They do seem to, in what we would say in population terms, they seem to have benefit, but certainly in individual therapy. It’s got to be reasonable that people who want to try this should try it.

1:13:08 We’re not going to force that on everyone, but why would you not want people to potentially improve their well-being? To me, it’s a complete no-brainer. Yeah, and instead you’re forced, as I’ve had to over the past four or five years, try to find a shaman. Make sure that they have ayahuasca, that it’s the good ayahuasca. Is that DMT you’re buying real DMT?

1:13:32 Are those mushrooms psilocybin? Are they real? Is that powdered mushroom too high of a dose? And all those mistakes that can happen in order to have an experience that hopefully allows me to contribute to society better. It makes no sense at all, does it?

1:13:46 It puts you at risk. Let’s say that’s what I’m working towards and it would be good if people could see that this isn’t sort of a fanciful, kind of leery-esque dream of making the world a different place. It’s going to be very difficult, but what we can do is we can make people better and we can give them opportunities, and why would anyone not want to do that? You were recently at Glastonbury with your wellies on, speaking in front of a whole group of, call them kids.

1:14:20 They’re probably in their early 20s, late teens, and you were talking to them about your research, about your journey. I’m always curious, what happens when the stage is done and some 18-year-old comes up and says, Professor Nutt, Professor Nutt, tell me about your experiences with LSD. What do you tell them? I tell them that I don’t talk about that because whatever I say is wrong, it’s like, that’s a question. When did you start beating your wife question?

1:14:51 There is no right answer to that question. And also, it would get in the way of the science because when I wrote my book, Drugs Without the Hot Air, some guy wrote a terrible review on Amazon saying, what he wrote about psychedelics is actually bollocks. He’s obviously never taken it. Whatever I say, people are going to just say, I’m either a pro or I’m anti, so I’m a scientist. I’m writing about this from the scientific perspective only.

1:15:18 But they’re very sweet, and I always let them take selfies with me. You are really the personality that I most associate with at the front of this kind of war against the war on drugs or opening up the ideas about psychedelics in the UK. Where is the Professor David Nutt in America? Have you ever thought about relocating there and fighting this war where potentially there’s more at stake? Yes. Well, that’s a really interesting question.

1:15:48 I don’t think you could communicate for a while from Guantanamo, can you? I always get a little bit worried that I might suddenly be flown off when I land in Washington and just suddenly emerge in Cuba. Howard Marks couldn’t go back to the States or he would have sent straight back to federal prisons. Exactly. Let’s face it, the way they got Leary was not because he used LSD, it was because it was legal.

1:16:14 They got him through having a small amount of cannabis. Right when he crossed the border. And they put him in prison for 40 years. The US penal system can be quite challenging, which is another reason why I couldn’t possibly talk about any use of drugs because look at what they did to Nigella Lawson. They wouldn’t even let her fly because she said that she had to use cocaine.

1:16:39 So anyway, there are some interesting challenges in the States. But yeah, I’m happy to support them. I would like to do my drug harm analysis in America. I never managed to raise any money. America is interestingly polarized.

1:16:54 The scientific community is very controlled by the Senate because the Senate gives them all the money in the NIH. So it’s very difficult for the American scientists to challenge, as the States is currently wearing. Here, I’m old and I can get by without necessarily having to have government money. In the US, it’s much tougher. So US scientists are not so keen.

1:17:23 But then on the other hand, you’ve got maps, you’ve got two big organizations which are dedicated to at least developing maps in the case of MDMA and heft in the case of psilocybin, the mistreatments. And also, I mean, they are fighting the war on drugs. I mean, you know, maps and Adelman. Maps is doing good research with MDMA. They’re doing MDMA.

1:17:42 But they’re also championing in the… They are opposing the war on drugs in a big way. It’d be a bit presumptuous to me to go over there and tell them what to do. But I’m very happy to provide it with ammunition. Yeah, we’ve had Rick Dublin here twice and we’re very aware of what they’re doing.

1:17:57 And they’re doing a lot of very interesting things, what they do over there, the way they go to Burning Man and they consult with people who are having kind of multiple drug reactions. And at the same time, educating their people on how to deal with those kind of things for the future. So it’s an interesting strategy. It’s very important because there isn’t a kind of medical science around this because it’s not been properly studied. So there will undoubtedly, whatever you’re using as a medicine, some people have reactions.

1:18:30 And we should forewarn and forearm ourselves for the odd person that’s going to have a bad reaction to something like psychedelics or MDMA and then be prepared to optimize the way of helping them. Are you familiar with a gentleman by the name of Dr. Carl Hart? He had a TED Talk saying, let’s stop abusing drug users. That was his TED Talk.

1:18:50 We had him here. What do you think of… Carl’s brilliant. I think Carl’s history is… Carl is a remarkable guy, a man who has come from being a drug user in a community where his brother died as a result of some drug event.

1:19:06 And he’s gone to one of the top universities and he’s doing research and his research is challenging this concept that somehow… He’s challenging the war on drugs and the punitive approach. But he’s also making people think about the fact that a lot of people use drugs, people from his social and ethnic background, because that’s all they can do. There’s nothing else. That is their life.

1:19:34 The only way you can earn a living in many of these ghettos is to be a drug dealer. There is no other work. In the sense that society, if not forces people into that particular behavior, it makes it very hard for them to do anything else. I’m a great fan of Carl’s. Yeah, me too. I like how he’s just introducing this conversation about…

1:19:57 Again, he’s a scientist like you and about having these real conversations, not these massive media biases when it comes to these drugs like… The hard drugs, even cocaine and heroin and crack. And we had this, especially in America, we really big up the dangers and the addictive powers of some of these drugs that the science doesn’t back up, that we make incorrect decisions, we educate our children incorrectly, and then they just don’t make intelligent decisions.

1:20:20 It’s an interesting concept, because very few people talk about that. When you lie to your kids, your kids are clearer than you are, and especially about things like drugs, and they can shut the evidence, and if you know you’re lying, then that’s it. You’ve lost credibility. Some of the science, and this is why Carl is a very supportive… A lot of scientists, most scientists don’t engage in the debate, even though they know what’s being said is wrong.

1:20:53 And there are some scientists who actually support the government’s position in the face of all the evidence, and the most outrageous was actually in the US. When scientists said crack cocaine was like 100 times more dangerous than powder cocaine, therefore the penalty should be proportionately greater. I mean, that’s outrageous. It’s completely untrue. It was essentially a racist policy because blacks used crack and whites used powder.

1:21:28 And scientists knew it was wrong, and Carl knows it was wrong, and yet the scientific community isn’t saying, we’ve got to change. No, most scientists just say, well, that’s politics. And I think that’s wrong, and that’s why, because I said to you earlier, I think I’m a great believer in justice, is unjust. A drug policy that is not based on evidence is unjust, and therefore miscarriages of justice occur as they’ve occurred in the States hundreds of thousands of times over things like, is that racist?

1:21:58 Do you know the other thing they did? I mean, you may not know this. And we were quite influential in beginning to change the law because we did some work with the American Civil Liberties Union a few years ago because there was a guy in New York who got 17 years in prison for having 60 exes of this. And they asked us to comment on the size of the sentence. And it turns out, in America, MDMA is treated as a stimulant and a psychedelic.

1:22:28 So you get punished for having the stimulant amount and the psychedelic amount. So if you’ve got 60 MDMA tablets, that’s like having a thousand LSD tablets. So they put this guy in prison for 17 years, and we gave evidence, and one of my colleagues, some of our current, gave evidence. And the judge was outraged when he read this. He said, this is outrageous.

1:22:50 These drugs, you know, I mean, they’re not psychedelic at all. And this law is complete. And he said, I’ve got to get rid of it. And he reduced the sentence in 17 years to four years. And then there was an appeal, and he went back to seven or something.

1:23:03 But the fact is, you know, scientists can change policy because judges rely on us. And if the scientists don’t speak up and tell the truth, then the law will continue to be inaccurate and biased. Do you ever worry about your safety? I mean, I would guess if I was an alcohol company that there would be a nice price on your head that would probably, you know, set up my revenues quite nicely, probably even in the tens of millions, I would say, to maybe quiet you down a little bit. Do you worry about that?

1:23:33 So I’m chipped. So when I disappear, they can find me. Well, I don’t worry, but I’m sure… I’m hoping that it will be too obvious. Yeah, I think they’re sure there are companies that would like me to shut up.

1:23:53 But I think, well, let’s hope that they just want me to shut up. They won’t make me shut up. I’ve never been offered a lot of money to shut up, but I wouldn’t take it. I’ve given up a lot by speaking my mind in government. So I’ve lost honours and things.

1:24:07 So I’m not going to give my soul away for the money at this stage. Have you ever been followed or photographed? Have you ever felt like you were being watched? Well, I mean, you know, clearly everything I write is being monitored. This guy today would say, and I heard you talk about this.

1:24:23 So yeah, I mean, there’s definitely an anti-nut group out there, but they’re anti any kind of common sense, I think. Right. To the people that are watching us right now that are in that camp, that, you know, drugs are wrong. Everyone knows that. That’s why they’re illegal.

1:24:41 They’re going to hurt my kids. They can live a great life if they just stay away from these things and just do everything normal. You know, what is your gateway drug for them for just opening their mind a little bit? Is there one thing you say, consider this one thing? Or is it talking about historical pieces like a Pernicus and things like that?

1:24:58 Or is it, do you ask them to educate themselves in any way? Yeah, my answer to that is very straightforward. There’s a book called Drugs Without the Hot Air by David Nut. And there’s the chapter in that about what to tell your kids. The reality is that drug prohibition is going to do your kids more harm than a rational drugs policy.

1:25:25 And it’s going to do them harm in a number of different ways. It’s going to push them to using alcohol, which is one of the more dangerous drugs. It’s going to put them in the way of dealers who might sell them things which you don’t know the safety or the quality, et cetera. So current policy is actually more dangerous to your children than a more rational policy. So tell your kids the truth, get them to read the book, think sensitive about it, follow drug science, follow me, and learn.

1:25:54 Sure, if you never take any drug, then, you know, then no drug harm could ever come to you. But since, for GNO1, less than 1% of the population never take a drug, you’ll be slightly unusual. So if you’re going to, you know, then, if you’re going to use drugs, use drugs safely and use drugs for a purpose rather than simply to waste, you know, waste yourself. I think Carl Hart said, not only is a drug free America unrealistic, you wouldn’t want one. And it’s just not even necessarily feasible and possible.

1:26:31 And humans have always played with their own consciousness, you know, for thousands of years. And so it’s looking at that in the wrong way. It is. It’s a false premise, absolutely. I mean, I’ve often said that there are kind of three things which distinguish humans from other primates, other species, taking drugs, playing music, and speech.

1:26:55 And, you know, we should celebrate each of those. We didn’t talk about cannabis. Just curious about, will you be doing any cannabis research where you see cannabis policy going here in the UK, and are you encouraged by what’s happening in the States, or do you see it differently? Well, I’m very encouraged by what’s happening in the States. I’m encouraged by it for two reasons.

1:27:20 The first is, it’s a kind of measure of real democracy, isn’t it? States have decided that the federal law on cannabis was ridiculous, and you at least are empowered to change. We’re not. I’m sure every county in this country would vote for medical cannabis, but we don’t have that flexibility. So we’re still stuck in a war on drugs mode on cannabis.

1:27:43 So I’m very encouraged. Personally, I’m slightly hesitant about the Colorado, the sort of absolute free market model. I think that’s possibly going a little bit too far. I like the Washington State model where it’s kind of grow your own. Colorado is the sodas and popcorns and everywhere.

1:28:03 Yummy bears, that’s right. So I’m concerned about that, because I think marketing drugs, particularly to children, is going to lead to more use. But so far, anyway, it doesn’t look as though the world has ended in Colorado, and it’s certainly reducing alcohol consumption. So yeah, I think it’s great, and I think it’s outrageous that no Britons don’t have access to medicinal cannabis in any sensible fashion. I’m hoping it’s going to change.

1:28:29 I’m frightened, though, that our new prime minister, she has always been particularly anti-drugs other than alcohol in a way which comes from, I think, a religious rather than a scientific background. So I’m not so hopeful, but we do have this campaign, Ease Our Pain, and trying to get medicinal cannabis. There’s 200,000 signatures. There will be a debate in Parliament in September on it. So I think eventually we will win, because one of the things you need to remember is that really until the American states moved on cannabis, medical cannabis legalization, Britain had always followed American policy on drugs.

1:29:17 We’d never not complied. Sometimes we delayed complying, like when I was in the ACMD. We delayed quite a long time making cat illegal despite American pressure. But in the end, when I was gone, eventually we caved in. So we’ve always done what Americans have told us.

1:29:37 Now America is no longer pursuing this kind of vision of, we know all the answers, you’ve got to do what we say. Because if you can’t control Colorado, then how can you possibly legitimately say you can control the rest of the world? So the American hegemony of drug control has definitely disappeared, and Obama is not trying to tell everyone else what to do. So if we want to, we could. And the question is whether you’ve got the courage to.

1:30:06 Or the bandwidth for you, because you’re already doing the psychedelic studies. Yeah, well, so my ambition is that we will get, I think cannabis should be made schedule two for medicinal use, and that should happen today. I think my ambition will be in the next five years to make psilocybin and MDMA also, medicines. That’s my ambition. In the next five years, I hope you’re right.

1:30:32 Can I ask you a couple questions about your own success and how you set your own life up to where you can just do the work output you do? Is there something you figured out 10 years ago, a routine, or something that kind of resets you and allows you to kind of keep going after things every day? Anything that you changed up in your routine? Do you meditate? Do you do anything to kind of remain calm?

1:30:56 These success secrets are only available on the London Real Academy. Become a member and get access to live shows, exclusive courses, my webinars, bonus content, meet-ups, live events, an amazing community, and much, much more. Now back to the rest of the show. When you think of the word successful, besides Aldous Huxley, who comes to mind? It could be someone current or someone historical.

1:31:30 Is there someone in your mind where that was success? Yeah, so, well, I’m a great fan of William James, the great American philosopher. So he’s a brother of Henry James. Henry James was a novelist who traveled around Europe and wrote these, you know, the excellent, excellent novels. But William was his brother.

1:31:53 He was a psychologist. He was a psychopharmacologist, experimented with masculine, he experimented with nitrous oxide in order to understand how the brain works. And he wrote this, he said this wonderful thing. He said, after using psychedelics and nitrous oxide, he said, no account of the universe at its entirety can be complete that leaves these disregarded. So here’s a man 120 years ago telling us that if you want to understand how the brain works, you’ve got to understand the psychedelic state.

1:32:32 And he was so far ahead of his time that no one, you know, kind of understood what he was talking about because, of course, he didn’t have any tools to do that. Now, you know, 100 years later, we have the tools. We can ask the question, what is going on in the brain? And so, yeah, in a way, he’s the person I think I’d most like to, I see as, you know, my sort of, I don’t know what the right word is. But as an inspiration, you know, I think in terms of, I think I’m fulfilling his legacy more than probably anyone else.

1:33:08 When we read your obituary sometime very, very far in the future, and we’re going to say, Professor David Nutt, he is known for X. What will that be? It’ll be, it’ll be accuracy, horse riding. Could be worse things. It could be indeed.

1:33:24 Well, it certainly got people, it got people talking. It actually got people thinking about what we mean when we talk about drug harms. It really did get people thinking. And the nice thing about it was it’s one of Britain’s top statisticians, David Spiegelhalter. You know, people say, it’s not right, it’s not right.

1:33:44 And Spiegelhalter went away. Yeah, he’s right. Because I mean, the mind was a peer review. The mind was a thought piece. He did the sums.

1:33:51 Right. And it was agreed upon. Yeah. But I think you will be remembered for something else. And if…

1:33:57 Well, hopefully the man, yeah, all right. Yeah, it won’t be. Sorry, it depends by who’s writing the obituary. So the male will say the man whose career was destroyed by writing about horse riding. The son will say the nutty professor.

1:34:12 The guardian might well say the man, you know, the man that actually put psychedelics back into science. That’s what I’d like them to say. The man who legalized psychedelics. Well, yeah, certainly put them back into medicine. Whether they’re…

1:34:28 I don’t know that they would ever… I’m not sure they’ll be in the sort of… In the legal recreational arena before then, but probably not. But maybe, not in this country, other countries perhaps. Well, they are.

1:34:41 I mean, they are in the Netherlands, for instance. Yeah. That’s funny. Dutch society seems to benefit from having all these tourists that want to go over there and open their minds and come to terms with it. You know, it’s kind of weird that we’re driving everyone away.

1:34:53 Yeah. They seem to be doing okay over there. What’s something you believe that others think is crazy? I believe that others think is crazy. Yeah, of course.

1:35:06 Well, it’s the fact we can use rationality to change politics. Right. Well said. Last one is, what keeps you awake at night? What’s something that bothers you?

1:35:19 Yes. Keeping, raising money to keep my team going. I mean, that is… Raising funds to run a research team is a seriously challenging exercise. And it’s a treadmill.

1:35:40 You know, every step up it keeps going. You know, so you’ve got to… There’s no end to it. You’ve got to keep doing it. And there’s a sort of arbitrageous and randomness to it.

1:35:49 Some of your best grants don’t get funded. Some things aren’t so good. You know, you can’t predict. So you have to be at least doubling up everything you do. You know, because the hit rates are less than 50%.

1:36:01 So, yes, it’s trying to make sure that the people I’ve brought on and trained and they were doing all the work for me have as good a life as I have. Is it possible to, you know, crowdfund these studies or get donations from the public, or in theory that might work, but in reality does that not happen? Or are you optimistic that that could be the way of the future? Well, we did crowdfund. We were successful in raising money to finish off the NSD study.

1:36:26 Right. Yeah, we’re certainly thinking about it. It’s… I don’t quite… The tradition up to now seems to be that when you crowdfund, you have to give people something.

1:36:37 And actually, it proved quite tricky when we’re giving people the images of the brain under NSD. But just the logistics of that actually was much more difficult. I mean, I wasn’t doing it, but the company that were doing it found it more difficult than they thought. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I’m open-minded.

1:36:56 But I can’t… You know, if I was to write, I’d say, would you crowdfund… I mean, what would you give someone found fund to study of the image? Would you give them another brain image? So I don’t quite know what the reward would be.

1:37:10 What the… You know, it just… I kind of feel… I don’t know whether we could just ask people for charitable donations. Would people do that?

1:37:17 I don’t know. I mean, it’s a tricky one. And it’s also quite tricky in the context. British universities haven’t quite worked out what to do with crowdfunding. You know, it’s…

1:37:26 I think it’s… If I thought it would be very effective, I would definitely do it. So it’s still on my mind, but I’m not sure yet whether it’s… And I don’t want to kind of bore people. I don’t want it to be, you know, oh, God, not…

1:37:40 I’m asking for another crowdfunding for another study. You know, I’d like it to always to be something that really captures our imagination. Right, and very relevant. And finding donors, I guess, is probably a hard thing to do. Well, you know, it’s interesting.

1:37:52 There’s all these people that say they’re billionaires, but they don’t seem to want to dip into their pockets. So I don’t know why. Maybe they get… Maybe they have very expensive lifestyles as well. I’m sure you’ve had a few wild goose chases there.

1:38:04 Yes. I always ask everyone here one question at the end. I’m sure I asked you last time. I’ll ask you again. If you could make a phone call to that 20-year-old David Nutt and give that young man a bit of advice, what were you then?

1:38:18 That’s a really interesting question. But what would you tell him? Be more humble. That’s right. Try to keep people on the side more, you know.

1:38:39 Don’t be such a bulldozer. Try to learn it. There isn’t charm. Well, you’re not always as charming as this? I think I’ve matured better than people might have hoped or expected perhaps, yeah.

1:38:54 On that same note, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received, you know, in your life? Maybe a professor you learned from, your father, anything else, is there a piece that kind of sticks in your mind? Oh, yes, yes. You know, my father… And I said I was going to be a scientist, my father, who was a very wise man.

1:39:15 He said, okay, he said, David, but remember this. If you go into business, they stab you in the chest. If you go into science, they stab you in the back. And he’s dead right. But I still did it anyway.

1:39:33 Your dad said that. My dad said that. And he knew a little bit about this. Yeah, he’s an interesting man, because he wasn’t really a scientist, but he was a very wise man. So it’s a tricky community to maneuver in.

1:39:45 Yes, peer review is an opaque mystery and grant review the same. Yeah. The vindictiveness, you know, a lot of people are fighting over small funding amounts. There’s quite a lot of vicious competition in science because the resources are relatively limited. I think the public…

1:40:11 It’s very Darwinian. Yeah, I think it’s completely misconstrued to the public. I think we just assume it’s this certain type of individual and the white coats and all collaborating and doing this great work. And there’s no politics. And, you know, it’s unreasonable to think that, you know, that there’s a purist environment there.

1:40:28 I think it may be getting better, because science is becoming so complicated that I think some of us are… You know, you have to… You know, if you want some machines, you know, like the CERN Excel, you have to collaborate with those. You can’t get into the building. And I think brain science is beginning to come a little…

1:40:45 But we are still a long way off physics in terms of really pooling all our internet and resources. And that’s… You know, we could do better if we did. Last part of that question. You know, to that 20-year-old that’s watching us now live, or that 20-year-old that you bumped into at Glastonbury who just wants some advice from you about what kind of decisions to make, how to better educate themselves.

1:41:11 You know, what do you tell them? Well, I tell them to read my book and follow me on Twitter. That’s a good start. I tell them to do what they really… You’ve got to be motivated.

1:41:23 The reality is what I’d say to my 20-year-old self was, well, my 20-year-old self would be like this. But do what… You know, you’ve got to… It’s very hard. So you’ve got to do it because you want to do it.

1:41:35 Don’t do it because you think it’s right or because it’s a fashion. Do it… Science is a killer. And if you’re not… If you can’t put up with all the slings and arrows of misfortune, then don’t do it.

1:41:51 The only way that what will keep you going is your desire to learn things. So you stay inquisitive. Stay enraptured. Don’t do it as a job. Do it as a vocation.

1:42:04 And when it comes to drugs, it’s hard to trust your parents. It’s hard to trust the politicians. Sometimes it’s hard to know what your peers say is right. What’s the thing they should do? Should they trust their gut sometimes?

1:42:15 What’s the best way to move forward with that? Trust drugscience.org.uk. Go on the website. It’s the only truly dispassionate and biased website about drugs. Do that.

1:42:30 And think carefully about what you do. Don’t take anything on trust. Learn. Yeah. Yeah.

1:42:42 Find out. Thanks to being able to spend time with you Amanda Fielding, Robin, over the years, Brick Doblin, Carl Hart. You know, my thoughts have changed. And I have a 12-year-old now. And so I try to have an unemotional conversation about drugs.

1:42:59 And I try to say to her, I don’t ever say, don’t ever touch cocaine. Because I think it gives the wrong message and the opposite message. And I say, look, these are substances you’re going to be seen throughout your life. Friends are going to tell you about them. You’re going to see people that use them and don’t use them.

1:43:15 And you’re going to have to make a choice. And I want you to make an educated choice. And know what these things are. Don’t be scared about what they’re not. No, absolutely.

1:43:25 And just also know that, you know, they’re part of life in a weird way. And trying to explain to a 12-year-old the difference between a drug and alcohol is it’s mind-boggling. Because they ask the most innocent questions back. But wait a second. I saw our neighbor fall over and hit his head when he was drunk.

1:43:44 Exactly. And why is that? And what about this drug? And it’s really hard to give coherent answers. But the other thing I would say to anyone is if you are going to use drugs, illegal drugs, don’t get caught.

1:44:05 Because getting a criminal record will do you a lot more harm than the drugs. So just whatever you do, be very cognizant of the fact that the law is irrational. But when it goes to work on you, it’s unforgiving. And so, you know, think through what you do. And the other thing I always say to people is don’t ever experiment with a new drug when you’re drunk.

1:44:31 Never do that. Because your judgment will be gone. And depending on what you’re taking, there could be a nasty additive effect. So never do drugs and drink. I mean, that’s just too risky.

1:44:44 Right. And with things like we see with fentanyl and Prince, like not understanding dosages and all that is just highly, highly dangerous. Yeah. I mean, you know, the reality is dangerous. Recreation is of anything is potentially dangerous.

1:44:59 So, you know, if you’re going to recreate, recreate very carefully. Yes. We talk a lot openly about psychedelics, our experience with them over the years. We’ve done episodes on ayahuasca. We did a before and after episode about four years ago.

1:45:14 I was told by all my former bankers and everyone around on the internet not to do that. We did it anyways. We also did a before and after DMT episode and just tried to just talk realistically and intelligently about experiences we had. But again, I never want that to be misconstrued. You know, as Terrence McKenna said, when it comes to psychedelics, you know, we have to choose, you know, infrequent use at higher dosages and try to understand what’s happening.

1:45:39 But that’s a choice we made. But it’s something we always wanted to talk about along the way, just to have that conversation. Rick Doblin always said, the one thing you can do is come out of the psychedelic closet to a lot of people and talk about these things, like Steve Jobs did, and just have these conversations to where it’s being talked about as opposed to not. Professor Nut, thank you so much for coming. It’s always an honor to have you here.

1:46:04 I’m sure you hear that a lot, but for me, it’s just everything you’re doing is so important. You know, I’m trained as a scientist, and when I see those graphs that you put up where you can really see it, and I can show that to my grandma, I can show that to my very religious uncle, I can show it to my 12-year-old, and I can say, look here, this is the science. And you can pick these drugs out, and now you can look at the story you’ve been told in your brain, and everyone has a different version that you can engage in there, country and demographic, and then you can look at what is most likely considered as correct science, and you can kind of see the story that you know and the reality and all the decisions you’ve based upon that, and so I agree, the things you’ve put out are highly effective, and that Equacy piece is probably one of the greatest pieces of media that you ever put out, because it’s very powerful, high dose, very powerful, because it makes a point in such a satirical way that it just gets everyone to say, oh, hmm, wow.

1:47:03 Exactly, hopefully that’s the plan, the plan was to make people think, didn’t get the home secretary thinking, but maybe that’s impossible. Yeah, and so I just want to acknowledge you for all the work you’ve done, I wish there was a professor nut in America, I think it could really make a big difference, there’s great work being done, don’t get me wrong, but we miss that kind of former government guy, very charismatic, not afraid to say what he’s talking about, respected person, and I just hope someone like that emerges. Well, I’m happy to coach them.

1:47:35 Excellent. Thanks so much, please come back and see us, hopefully not in three years. Very exciting, it’s been a real pleasure, thank you. Yeah, all the best to your studies, the Beckley Foundation, Amanda, Robin, I love seeing your team, one thing I noticed that the LSD revealed is that you have such a diverse team of just great energy people that are so passionate about what they do, and there’s no egos on that stage, when Amanda gets up, she speaks, when you get up, you speak, when Robin gets up, and you’re empowering this young man from Chile, the woman doing the music, it’s just very interesting to see, and I asked Robin about that afterwards, I said, the people that study these compounds almost reflect the compounds themselves, as in the ego drops, the collective knowledge is pooled for a greater good.

1:48:18 That is true, absolutely, they have sought me out rather than the other way around, because they believe this is a really important science, and they’re right. Powerful stuff, as we say in London Real, it’s about the journey, wish you well on yours, thank you so much for being here. All right, thank you.