The Drug Science Podcast: Recent Episodes
Drug Science
Professor David Nutt has spent a career making the argument for a rational, evidence-based approach to drug policy and drug use. The scientific evidence still challenges perceived wisdom on drugs and for that reason can appear to be contentious. In this podcast, the Professor explores the actual harms and potential benefits of various drugs, challenging myths surrounding classification and legislation, and exploring the societal impact of poorly informed drug policy. Using evidence in public policy should not be controversial. A podcast for anyone interested in understanding the scientific truth about drugs, free from political or moral concern.
In this episode, Jo Neil, and Hannah Thurger are joined by Danny Ahmed, a highly experienced Registered Mental Health Nurse and Integrated Psychotherapist with over two decades of expertise. Together, they delve into a comprehensive discussion on a variety of harm reduction techniques.
Throughout the episode, Danny shares his wealth of insights into the complex world of harm reduction. The conversation spans a broad spectrum of topics, including drug consumption rooms, the notion of ‘recovery’ and women who use drugs amongst much more. Danny offers an enlightening look into the multifaceted world of harm reduction. His expertise not only illuminates effective strategies but also underscores the importance of employing compassionate and empathetic approaches when supporting individuals on their path to well-being.
Harm reduction
Naloxone
MDMA
Heroin
Cocaine
Alcohol
Benzodiazapines
Methadone
Fentanyl
Buprenorphine
Synthetic opioids
Overdose prevention centres
RIOTT trials
Project ADDER
Alcoholics Anonymous
Polydrug use
Naloxone
Order Naloxone
Buddyup App
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In this episode, Professr Valerie Curran, discusses the psychological effects of drugs that act on the human brain.
Valerie Curren holds the position of Professorial Fellow in the Neuroscience of Addiction and Mental Health Program at ACU's Healthy Brain and Mind Research Centre. She has an esteemed background as an Emeritus Professor of Psychopharmacology at University College London (UCL), having established the UCL Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit in 1996. Furthermore, she is a founding member of the charity Drug Science and serves as an advisor to the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform.
Tune in to learn about her latest research into the short- and long-term effects of psychoactive drugs on mental health, cognition, memory and the brain as well as how CBD combined with psychological therapy may aid the treatment of cannabis use disorder.
Benzos
MDMA
Alcohol
Cannabis
CBD
THC
Ketamine
MDMA midweek blues paper – in journal Addiction (mid 90s)
Inappropriate benzodiazepine use in elderly patients and its reduction
Combined and individual effects of CBD and THC on memory
David Nutt and Psilocybin in Australia
Cannabis potency
CBD treating clinical psychosis
CBD in treating cannabis use disorder
Project 2021
Medical cannabis reducing opiate use
Jon snow takes cannabis
Endocannabinoid system
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Join us for an insightful episode featuring Dr. Carol Routledge, a distinguished senior scientist and the Chief Medical and Scientific Officer at Small Pharma Labs. Dr. Routledge takes us on a journey through her remarkable career path that ultimately led her to work at Small Pharma. With a wealth of experience in both preclinical and clinical settings, she has delved into psychiatric and neurological indications, honing her expertise in understanding and treating mental health disorders.
In this conversation, Dr. Carol Routledge draws upon her extensive clinical and psychedelic research background to shed light on the latest developments in DMT research and psychedelic integration therapy. With her profound insights, we explore the potential of these groundbreaking approaches to become formal medicines, revolutionizing the field of mental health treatment.
Tune in as Dr. Carol Routledge shares her passion for advancing mental health treatments through innovative research.
DMT
Depression
Serotonin
Nor adrenaline
Small Pharma
Chris Timmermann - Human brain effects of DMT assessed via EEG-fMRI
CMC
British technology group (BTG)
SSRI
Psychedelic experience
Alzheimers research uk
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In this episode, Peter Hunt discusses the journey which led himself and his wife co-founding Mind Medicine in Australia. Mind Medicine work to alleviate the suffering and suicides caused by mental illness in Australia through expanding the treatment options available to medical practitioners and patients, particularly through the establishment of safe and effective psychedelic-assisted therapies.
Delving into the heart of their mission, Peter Hunt explores the groundbreaking potential of psychedelic-assisted treatments in addressing a wide range of mental illnesses. Mind Medicine Australia's commitment to providing accessible and innovative therapies shines through every step of their path.
Peter delves into a comprehensive discussion of the recent developments surrounding the rescheduling of Psilocybin in Australia, shedding light on both the obstacles faced and the triumphs achieved throughout the process.
Trigger Warning: Sexual assault and rape
Mind Medicine
MDMA
Psilocybin
Depression
Alcohol
Addiction
PTSD
Childhood abuse
SSRI antidepressants
Covid-19
Anorexia
Therapeutic goods administration
Australia Psilocybin Rescheduling
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This weeks Podcast features Frédéric Destrebecq and Tadeusz Hawrot as they discuss the latest developments in research and clinical development with psychedelics in Europe.
Frédéric Destrebecq is the Executive Director of the European Brain Council (EBC), a non-profit organization based in Brussels, Belgium. The EBC is a network of organizations and individuals dedicated to promoting brain research, raising awareness about brain disorders, and advocating for better policies and funding for brain-related issues at the European level. As the Executive Director, Frédéric Destrebecq leads the organization's efforts in advocating for brain research and policy development, facilitating collaborations, and coordinating initiatives to improve brain health and well-being across Europe.
Tadeusz Hawrot is involved in the European federation of neurological associations and the founder and Executive Director of PAREA Science. The Psychedelic Access and Research European Alliance (PAREA) is a multistakeholder alliance bringing together organizations representing EU-wide patient advocacy groups, professional organizations, umbrella alliances, psychedelic foundations, and companies active in the field, advocating for implementing safe, effective and accessible psychedelic assisted therapies in Europe.
Live Drug Science Podcast Recording in London
PAREA
European Brain council
European Federation of Neurological Associations
The Value of Treatment Project
Maps MDMA phase 3 trial
Compass Pathways
Small Pharma
Politico
Lancet
Horizon
MDMA
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This weeks podcast features Rory Lamont, a former professional Rugby Union player, as he discusses his experiences discovering the transformative healing potential of plant medicines such as Iboga and Ayahuasca.
During the 2012 Six Nations tournament, while playing for Scotland, Rory suffered a severe leg break that brought his career to an end. Subsequently, he faced a debilitating health crisis that disrupted his life and vitality. As mainstream medicine failed to provide adequate assistance, Rory sought alternative healing methods. This experience marked a significant shift in his self-awareness and improvement in his overall well-being.
Six Nations: Scotland shock as Rory Lamont suffers broken leg during defeat to France
Scottish psychedelic research group
Jo Rogan and Aubrey Marcus Podcast
Benzos
Opioids
Psilocybin
Ibogaine
Iboga ceremony
Ayahuasca
Psychedelic Integration
Ayahuasca Ceremony
Link for the drug science event
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In this week's episode of the Drug Science Podcast, Prof Nutt and Dr Thurgur are joined by Dr Evan Lewis of Numinus!
Dr. Evan Lewis is a Paediatric Neurologist and Clinical Neurophysiologist with expertise in epilepsy, epilepsy surgery, electroencephalography (EEG), tele-neurology and medical cannabis for the treatment of neurologic disorders. He is the director of the Neurology Centre of Toronto (NCT) which he established in January 2017. At NCT, Dr. Lewis treats children with a variety of neurological disorders and he also treats adults for concussions, headaches and epilepsy.
In addition to this, Dr Lewis is the Vice President of Psychedelic Neurology at Numinus.
His research area of interest (and the topic of this podcast episode) is cannabis and psychedelic-related neurology, for the treatment of epilepsy & other neurological conditions and the delivery of novel virtual care models in neurology.
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In this week’s episode, join Professor David Nutt as he engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Dr Alex Wodak, an internationally renowned authority on harm reduction and the esteemed president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation. With a rich background as the former director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, Australia, Dr Wodak has been instrumental in pioneering groundbreaking initiatives such as Australia's inaugural needle exchange program and the first-ever Australian medically supervised injecting center in Kings Cross, Sydney.
While Dr Wodak's expertise is widely recognised in the realm of drug policy and harm reduction, this podcast episode takes a compelling twist as he delves into a topic of immense global significance—the harm reduction approach to one of the most pervasive and widely used substances: tobacco. With an unwavering focus on promoting public health and minimising the detrimental impact of addictive substances, Dr Wodak shares his profound insights on the subject.
Throughout the episode, listeners will have the opportunity to explore the nuances surrounding tobacco consumption. Dr Wodak's analysis sheds light on the complexities that contribute to the enduring prevalence of smoking, despite the well-documented health risks and the availability of potential alternatives. From psychological, sociocultural, and economic factors to the powerful grip of addiction, this thought-provoking conversation delves into the multifaceted reasons why individuals continue to smoke.
Alex Wodak
Harm reduction
Roger Williams
Kaposi's sarcoma
National Institutes of Health
FDA
Anthony Fauci
Harm Reduction International
Scurvy
Andre Calantzopoulos
Psychoactive podcast
Hon Lik
Heated Tobacco Products
China National Tobacco Corporation
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Dr Gillian Shorter is currently a Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at Queen’s University Belfast, with 17 years’ research experience on substance use and allied works. Her main research focus is supporting people who use drugs or alcohol who are not seeking formal treatment. She led the evaluation of the UK’s first unsanctioned drug consumption site in Glasgow, Scotland run by Peter Krykant, and has an interest in developing models for overdose prevention centres including community engagement, evaluation, understanding, and delivery in partnerships with people who have lived or living experience of substance use.
Matt Southwell is a high-level advocate, technical advisor and drug user activist. He was one of the UK’s first generation of harm reduction workers in the late 1980s founding the pioneering and award-winning Healthy Options Team (HOT). In 1999 Mat decided to come out publicly as a drug user on a BBC documentary leading to dismissal from his position in the NHS Drug Services and the loss of his successful private consulting firm. Since this time Mat has supported drug user organisations and led different drug user networks from the local to the global level. Mat is currently Project Manager for the European Network of People who Use Drugs (EuroNPUD).
Is the UK on its way to opening first official drug injection sites? How can one influence police officials and politicians to lobby for a positive change? How effective are these solutions in preventing drug related deaths?
Tune in to listen to this highly insightful and simply important episode.
EuroNPUD
Supervised Injection Facilities
Harm reduction
coAct
Overdose Prevention Centres
Needle and syringe programmes
Reducing drug-related harms in Sandwell: the need and feasibility of an overdose prevention service
Opioid agonist therapy
Methadone
Buprenorphine
Diamorphine (Heroin-assisted treatment)
Drug Science Enhanced Harm Reduction Working Group
Illicit drugs classification in the UK
Peter Krykant
CAS Baluard Barcelona
Drug consumption rooms
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Dr Gillian Shorter is currently a Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at Queen’s University Belfast, with 17 years’ research experience on substance use and allied works. Her main research focus is supporting people who use drugs or alcohol who are not seeking formal treatment. She led the evaluation of the UK’s first unsanctioned drug consumption site in Glasgow, Scotland run by Peter Krykant, and has an interest in developing models for overdose prevention centres including community engagement, evaluation, understanding, and delivery in partnerships with people who have lived or living experience of substance use.
Matt Southwell is a high-level advocate, technical advisor and drug user activist. He was one of the UK’s first generation of harm reduction workers in the late 1980s founding the pioneering and award-winning Healthy Options Team (HOT). In 1999 Mat decided to come out publicly as a drug user on a BBC documentary leading to dismissal from his position in the NHS Drug Services and the loss of his successful private consulting firm. Since this time Mat has supported drug user organisations and led different drug user networks from the local to the global level. Mat is currently Project Manager for the European Network of People who Use Drugs (EuroNPUD).
Is the UK on its way to opening first official drug injection sites? How can one influence police officials and politicians to lobby for a positive change? How effective are these solutions in preventing drug related deaths?
Tune in to listen to this highly insightful and simply important episode.
EuroNPUD
Supervised Injection Facilities
Harm reduction
coAct
Overdose Prevention Centres
Needle and syringe programmes
Reducing drug-related harms in Sandwell: the need and feasibility of an overdose prevention service
Opioid agonist therapy
Methadone
Buprenorphine
Diamorphine (Heroin-assisted treatment)
Drug Science Enhanced Harm Reduction Working Group
Illicit drugs classification in the UK
Peter Krykant
CAS Baluard Barcelona
Drug consumption rooms
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Libby and Ben are third-year students from Swansea University and the University of York, who are deeply interested in the use of psychedelics in medicine and drug policy. At their universities, they are presidents of their respective Psychedelics in Medicine societies which raise awareness on the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs among fellow students. Tune in to the episode to find out about their journeys into the world of Drug Science and how to get involved yourself!
Get in touch with the Student Society Network!
Find out more about the Drug Science Student Society Network
Psychedelics in Medicine Podcast
Serotonin
Neuroscientifically Challenged
Psilocybin
LSD
Ben Sessa
MDMA
MDMA and psychotherapy in alcohol dependence treatment
Brain on LSD imaging
Psycare
Drugs Harm Scale
Project Twenty21
Drug Science Student Society Network
Brain and Mind Made Simple by David Nutt
UK Patient Conference: Medical Cannabis Awareness Week 2022
Medical cannabis awareness week
Anything Can Happen
Secondary School Education Resources
Transform Drugs
Anyone’s Child
Misuse of Drugs Act 1971
Harm Reduction
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Libby and Ben are third-year students from Swansea University and the University of York, who are deeply interested in the use of psychedelics in medicine and drug policy. At their universities, they are presidents of their respective Psychedelics in Medicine societies which raise awareness on the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs among fellow students. Tune in to the episode to find out about their journeys into the world of Drug Science and how to get involved yourself!
Get in touch with the Student Society Network!
Find out more about the Drug Science Student Society Network
Psychedelics in Medicine Podcast
Serotonin
Neuroscientifically Challenged
Psilocybin
LSD
Ben Sessa
MDMA
MDMA and psychotherapy in alcohol dependence treatment
Brain on LSD imaging
Psycare
Drugs Harm Scale
Project Twenty21
Drug Science Student Society Network
Brain and Mind Made Simple by David Nutt
UK Patient Conference: Medical Cannabis Awareness Week 2022
Medical cannabis awareness week
Anything Can Happen
Secondary School Education Resources
Transform Drugs
Anyone’s Child
Misuse of Drugs Act 1971
Harm Reduction
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Mattha Busby is a freelance journalist for publications including the Guardian, Observer, London Times, Vice, Jacobin and Leafly. Based in Mexico, Mattha writes about health, drugs, nutrition, human rights, blockchain, the environment, and events in Latin America. 'Should All Drugs Be Legalized?’ reads the title of his first book, listen to this week’s episode to find out the answer!
Should All Drugs Be Legalized
Mexican drug war
Medical cannabis
Oaxaca
Awakn Life Sciences Group
Ibogaine
Ayahuasca
Psilocybin
Jamaican Psilocybin Retreats
Maria Sabina
Peyote
R. Gordon Wasson
“Seeking the Magic Mushroom” by Gordon Wasson
Mezcal
Cocaine
The Peyote Dance
Aldous Huxley
‘I’m a lighter me’: Can Mike Tyson and psychedelics help boxers with brain trauma?
Hunter S. Tompson
Mexico’s Supreme Court rules personal marijuana possession legal, again
Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán
Jalisco New Generation Cartel
Dutch Ecstasy “Shop”
MDMA
LSD could help alcoholics stop drinking, AA founder believed
Mick Lynch
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This week’s episode features Andrew Gold of the On the Edge with Andrew Gold podcast. Andrew Gold is a journalist and TV presenter who lived in 6 countries, producing documentaries on bizarre and controversial subcultures. His documentaries range from the award-winning Exorcism: The Battle for Young Minds to stories on hunted UFOs.
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Professor Badiani received his doctoral degree in Medicine and Surgery from Sapienza University of Rome and carried out post-doctoral research in Italy (CNR), Canada (CSBN), and USA (University of Michigan) to then return to Sapienza University Medical School as Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology, progressing to the rank of Full Professor in 2008. At Sapienza he also served as Associate Chief Physician in the Drug Addiction unit of the University Hospital. Additionally, he has been President of the European Behavioural Pharmacology Society (EBPS) from 2011 to 2013.
Professor Badiani conducts research in the field of drug addiction with the focus on the role of environmental factors in determining individual vulnerability to drug addiction in both humans and animals. In this episode of Drug Science podcast you’ll learn about the most recent research on the science of drug addiction from a leading expert in the field.
Jane Stewart
Dopamine
Terry Robinson
Cocaine
Amphetamine
Drug sensitization (reverse tolerance)
Psychotomimetism
Psychosis
Incentive sensitization theory of addiction
Kent C Berridge
Morphine
Heroin
Adrenal gland
Huda Akil
Striatum
Nucleus accumbens
Frontal cortex
Opiate
Psychostimulant
Naloxone precipitated withdrawal increases dopamine release in the dorsal striatum of opioid dependent men
Russell’s Circumplex Models
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Professor Allan Young is a psychopharmacologist and the Director of the Centre for Affective Disorders in the Department of Psychological Medicine in the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London. Prof Young is the clinical academic lead in the Psychological Medicine and Integrated Care Clinical Academic Group in the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust where he is also a Consultant Psychiatrist and the head of the National Affective Disorders Tertiary Clinic.
Professor Young’s research interests focus on the cause and treatments for severe psychiatric illnesses, particularly mood disorders like depression. He has received research grant funding from the UK Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, and numerous other respected funding agencies worldwide. He has published over 400 peer-reviewed publications and a number of books about psychopharmacology and affective disorders. According to the 2014 Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher list, Professor Young was recently ranked as one of the world's leading scientific minds in the field of Psychiatry and Psychology.
Depression
Bipolar disorder
Major depressive episode
Anhedonia
ICD-10
DSM-5
Atypical depression
Immuno-metabolic depression
SSRI
Rapid cycling bipolar disorder
Tricyclic antidepressants
Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs)
Dopamine receptor D2
Cognitive Remediation Therapy
Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience
CBT
Ketamine
Esketamine: Ketamine nasal spray
Bioavailability
Psilocybin: From Serendipity to Credibility?
COMPASS Pathways
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Listen in to hear Robin’s valuable perspective on matters such as assisted death, private education and the difference between a debate and a conversation.
The Demon-Haunted World
The Infinite Monkey Cage
Assisted dying
Section 28
Peter Singer
if…
Frankie Howerd
Amusing Ourselves to Death
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Coming from Canada, home to one of the most progressive drug addiction services in the world, Manisha was reporting for VICE News in their new documentary 'Beyond Fentanyl' which looks at how drugs like “benzos,” "dope” and “tranq” are ravaging North American communities and how U.S. policy affected the latest flood of synthetic street drugs.
Tune in to this week’s episode for a VICE journalist’s perspective on drug policies around the world.
Oxycodone
Heroin
Fentanyl
Benzodiazepines
Downer and upper drugs
Drug overdose
Noradrenaline
Lofexidine
Awakn clinic
“This Is Something That Changed My Life”: A Qualitative Study of Patients' Experiences in a Clinical Trial of Ketamine Treatment for Alcohol Use Disorders
ibogaine
Psilocybin
Ayahuasca
DMT
Toad venom
5-MeO-DMT
Supervised injection sites
Naloxone
Bristol drug testing
The Loop
Mephedrone
Monkey dust
Bath Salts drug
oxycontin crisis
Cannabis
Beyond Fentanyl documentary
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This week’s episode features Professor Bruce Alexander, a psychologist and professor emeritus from Vancouver, BC, Canada, author of two books about addiction: Peaceful Measures: Canada's Way Out of the War on Drugs and The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit.
Professor Alexander conducted a series of experiments into drug addiction known as the Rat Park experiments. Which brought into light the true complexity of addiction and the influence of our environment on how we use drugs and how they affect us. Listen to this episode to find out why the “demon drug myth” is extremely out of date with the scientific world and what we can do to debunk it.
Skin poppers
Heroin
Morphine
Demon drug myth
Ian Kershaw
Rat park
How permanent was Vietnam drug addiction
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This week’s episode features English television and radio presenter, and model Melanie Sykes.
Melanie is an advocate for medical cannabis use for childhood epilepsy and other chronic conditions. In 2021 she became an Ambassador in Medcan Support - a non-profit community interest company who provide free resources and educational material on medical cannabis, the endocannabinoid system and the positive outcomes cannabis treatment has had on so many people throughout the UK. With her support, she helps fight the stigma and raises other issues which are preventing access to the natural medicine.
Listen to this episode of the podcast to find out more about medical cannabis and also how an autism diagnosis at 51 can change your life!
Don’t ‘Talk to FRANK’ but do check out the Frank magazine -> The Frank Magazine
Cannabis
Autism
Harry Thompson
ADHD
Neurodivergence
Medcan support
The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum
The Frank Magazine
Hemp
Weed the People
Epilepsy
Project Twenty21
William Broke O’Shaughnessy
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This week’s episode features yet another great speaker at the ESPD55 conference Mark Plotkin, an ethnobotanist, advocate for tropical forest conservation and the host of Plants of the Gods podcast.
Following research at Harvard under Richard Evans Schultes and years of working in a close relationship with the native communities of Amazonia, Mark with his books, podcasts and talks educates the public about the wondrous world of plants, their history, medicinal and cultural significance. Accordingly, he advocates for saving tropical forests as entities inseparable from their indigenous cultures. His group Amazon Conservation Team focuses on helping the communities to survive within the modern world rather than subordinate to it.
Tune in to the episode to find out how we can help these communities grow but also how wine, magic mushrooms and other substances might have influenced our own culture.
The Plants of the Gods
Kary Mullis
Thujone
ESPD55
Dennis McKenna
Stoned Ape Hypothesis
Drunken monkey hypothesis
The Ethnobotany of Wine as Medicine in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Richard Evans Schultes
Scopolamine
Erik the red
The Shamans and Apprentices Program
Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice
Timothy Leary
Amazon Conservation Team
Ethnographic mapping
Peyote
Ayahuasca
Mescaline
Richard Spruce
Alfred Russel Wallace
DMT
Coca
Cocaine
Cannabis
Kratom
Ibogaine
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Wade Davis is a Canadian cultural anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author, and photographer. Davis came to prominence with his 1985 best-selling book The Serpent and the Rainbow about the ‘zombies of Haiti’. He is professor of anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia.
Davis has published articles in Journal of Ethnopharmacology, Outside, National Geographic, Fortune, and Condé Nast Traveler. He is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society and had produced 18 documentary films. His work has largely focused on worldwide indigenous cultures, and has taken him to, among others, East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru and Tibet.
As a honorary citizen of Colombia, Wade Davis educates about the true culture of a country known mostly for its drug cartels and cocaine scandals. Listen to this week’s episode to find out about Colombia and its sacred plant - Coca, a stimulant milder than tea and with more nutritional benefits than all the plants we know of.
ESPD55.com
Leaves of Grass
Gold Museum, Bogotá
Kogi people
Morphine
Opium
Opioids
How Coffee Fuelled Revolutions
Caffeine
Penny university
DEA Drug Scheduling
Hallucinogens
Timothy Leary
Manuel Santos
Cocaine
Coca leaves
Coca wine (Vin Mariani)
Dennis McKenna
Albert Hoffman
Peyote
Richard Evans Shultes
Alkaloid
Volstead act
Andrew Weil
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Dennis Jon McKenna is an American ethnopharmacologist, research pharmacognosist, lecturer and author. He received his doctorate in botanical sciences from the University of British Columbia and completed post-doctoral research fellowships in the National Institute of Mental Health and in the Department of Neurology at Stanford University School of Medicine.
His research has included the pharmacology, botany, and chemistry of ayahuasca and oo-koo-hé, the subjects of his master's thesis. He has also conducted extensive fieldwork in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon. Having authored numerous scientific articles and books, McKenna’s work led to the development of natural products for Aveda Corporation as well as greater awareness of natural products and medicines. Additionally, together with his brother Terence McKenna and Jeremy Bigwood, he developed a technique for cultivating psilocybin mushrooms, and published what they had learned in a book Psilocybin - Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide.
With that immense experience and knowledge of psychedelics, Dennis McKenna is a founding board member and the director of ethnopharmacology at the Heffter Research Institute, A non-profit which investigates the potential medicinal uses of these substances.
Tune in to this week’s episode to find out about the true significance of ethnopharmacology and a conference organised by Dennis that you’ll be able to stream online very soon!
ETHNOPHARMACOLOGIC SEARCH FOR PSYCHOACTIVE DRUGS
Dennis McKenna
ESPD 50
National Institute of Mental Health
Alexander Shulgin
Andrew Weil
Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs
Ethnopharmacology
Coca
Cody Swift
COMPASS psilocybin trial
Psilocybin
ESPD 55
“Sea DMT” Tryptamine in Sea Sponges
New York Times DMT toad article
How to Change your Mind by Michael Pollan
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Poison arrow frogs
Bufotenin
Serotonin receptors
Ayahuasca
Autoradiography
LSD
Salvinorin
Kappa opioid receptor
ICCERS - The International Centre for Ethnobotanical Education, Research, and Service
Iboga
Ayahuasca tourism
Mckenna’s mission
DMT: The Spirit Molecule (documentary)
ESPD55.com
Psilocybin Pulse Dosing
Microdosing
Oregon Drug Decriminalization
Set and setting
Serotonin
Dopamine
Default mode network
Robin Carhart-Harris
5-HT2a receptor
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This week we’re talking about ketamine with Professor Celia Morgan, a Professor of Psychopharmacology at the University of Exeter and the academic lead for Exeter Translational Addiction Partnership (ETAP) and Ketamine for Reduction of Alcoholic Relapse (KARE). Professor Morgan is interested in the effects of drugs and alcohol on the brain and behaviour. Her research focuses on examining both the benefits and side effects of recreational drugs on cognition, mental health and neurobiology. Through behavioural, neuroimaging studies and clinical trials, she has investigated the potentially therapeutic sides of controlled substances in clinical trials aimed at the treatment of addiction and in particularly looking at drugs such as ketamine and MDMA in combination with psychological therapies.
Tune into this week's episode to find out all about ketamine and how cycling around squats in North London can be part of scientific research...
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Dr Watts is a clinical psychologist, a mother, and a nature lover. Her work as the Clinical Lead for Imperial College London’s psilocybin trial, and subsequent role as the Clinical Director at Synthesis Institute, have made her one of the most prominent voices and minds in the field of psychedelic research. Dr Watts builds tools and structures to foster connectedness after psychedelic experiences, finding inspiration for their design from nature. The most recent of which is the integration community she’s created - ACER Integration.
While working in clinical practice Rosalind has developed a psychedelic therapy model she coined ACE, which stands for, ‘Accept, Connect, Embody’. Based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and the ‘Psychological Flexibility Model’, she mapped the journey that individuals under the influence of a psychedelic go through when they dive into their experience, extract the meaningful lessons to heal, and then integrate and embody them afterwards. Her qualitative research, exploring the perspectives of participants in several psychedelic research studies, gave rise to her interest in the common theme of ‘connectedness to Self, others, and the world’ as an essential aspect of psychedelic treatment. With that patient-centred attitude, she gives insightful talks focusing on the patients’ perspective on the psychedelic journey as a part of the healing process.
Listen to the podcast to learn about the beauty and the nuances of psychedelic experience and healing.
Join Dr Watts for the inaugural launch of ACER Integration here -> https://dandelion.earth/events/622233b3025fc50011891f2e
Learn more about ACER Integration -> https://www.drrosalindwatts.com/
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
Psychedelic therapy
Forensic psychology
The Portman Clinic
Psychoanalysis
Psychedelic use and recidivism
Ayahuasca
Michael Pollan
Robin Carhart-Harris
MDMA
Mendel Kaelen
Kintsugi
Psilocybin
Bad trip
William A. Richards (Bill)
Abraham Maslow
Carl Jung
Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT)
Dialectical behaviour therapy
Psychological flexibility
Synthesis Institute
Island (Huxley novel)
Journal of Humanistic Psychology
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Professor Dame Carol Black studied history at Bristol University, then worked as a schoolteacher, however, in 1965 Black enrolled as a mature student to study medicine which she graduated from at the age of 30.
During her career, she’s been an advisor for the government on issues such as the relationship between work and health. She’d issue reports regarding sick leaves due to physical and mental health, including drug addictions.
In 2019 Professor Dame Carol Black was appointed to lead a major 2-part review that looked into the relationship between drugs and violence but also treatment, recovery and prevention of drug addictions.
Listen to this week’s episode to hear the perspective of a dedicated physician but also a government advisor on the approach to both treatment and social implications of drug addictions.
Cicely Saunders
Scleroderma
Royal College of Physicians
Newnham College
Review of drugs: phase two report
Methadone
Individual placement and support
Sajid Javid
Matt Hancock
National Treatment Agency of Substance Misuse (NTA)
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Ethan Nadelmann studied at Harvard University and London School of Economics and was a lecturer at Princeton University. While at Princeton, Nadelmann’s work focused on drug policy, attracting considerable attention with his articles in Science, Foreign Affairs, National Review and many others. He also formed the Princeton Working Group on the Future of Drug Use and Alternatives to Drug Prohibition.
In mid-90s Nadelmann founded the Lindesmith Center, a drug policy institute that six years later became the Drug Policy Alliance, a group for drug policies "grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.” As the Executive Director of the organisation, Nadelmann advocates for the application of harm reduction principles to minimize the public health effects of the War on Drugs.
In 2021 he launched Psychoactive, a podcast on drug policy, drug use, and drugs research featuring Nadelmann interviewing leading figures in current debates on drugs such as head of the US National Institute of Drug Abuse Nora Volkow, authors Michael Pollan and Andrew Weil.
What’s the future of drug policies? Will tobacco become the next substance politicians will go to war against? Be sure to tune in to find out!
McGill University
Cannabis
Hash
Magic Mushrooms (Psilocybin)
Cops Across Borders
DEA
Andrew Weil
Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin
Lester Grinspoon
Harry Levine
Jeffrey Fagan
Tobacco (Nicotine)
Kenneth Warner
Sylvia Law
Arnold Trebach
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
Kevin Zeese
War on Drugs
George Soros
Foreign Policy magazine
Open Society Foundations
Lindesmith center
Alfred Lindesmith
Drug Policy Alliance
International Harm Reduction Development Program (IHRD)
Ballot initiative
Brompton cocktail
The Heroin Solution by Arnold S. Trebach
Misuse of Drugs Act 1971
Marjorie “Mo” Mowlam
Keith Hellawell
Heroin-assisted treatment
Partnership for a Drug-Free America
Jesse Jackson
Charles Rangel
Chuck Schumer
The Beckley Foundation
Fentanyl
Tobacco Harm Reduction
Smoking Cessation and Psilocybin
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James Fadiman is a true man of many talents. Wikipedia calls him an ‘American writer’, but actually, he’s worked in multiple fields, from psychology, through to IT and, finally, to psychedelic research.
He studied Psychology at Harvard University and obtained a PhD from Stanford University. As a graduate student at Stanford, Fadiman was Stewart Brand's LSD guide on Brand's first LSD trip, at Myron Stolaroff's International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park, California.
He was also part of the team in the psychedelics in problem-solving experiment at the International Foundation for Advanced Study, which was abruptly halted in 1966 together with all the remarkable psychedelic research that was happening in the US.
Additionally, Fadiman worked at Stanford's Augmentation Research Center, a division that did research on networked computing. What did the technological research group need a psychologist in their team for? How are psychedelics and technological advances interconnected? And finally, what happens when you give psychedelics to a group of scientists? Listen to this week’s episode to find out!
Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Dass)
Psilocybin
Timothy Leary
Aldous Huxley
International Foundation for Advanced Study
Myron Stolaroff
LSD
Brandeis University
Willis Harman
PTSD
Set and setting
Mescaline
Doug Engelbart
The Mother of All Demos
Nixon’s War on drugs
Abraham Maslow
Microdosing
microdosingpsychedelics.com
FDA
Double-blind studies
Lupus
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If you were told you had months, weeks or even days left to live...would you care what the law said about consuming psychoactive substances? This week’s episode features Spencer Hawkswell the CEO of TheraPsil - a non-profit coalition dedicated to helping Canadians in medical need access legal, psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy to treat end-of-life distress.
Spencer believes that responsible drug policy requires effective organization and leadership and is dedicated to bringing together the experts and advocates, to facilitate change that results in increased access to compassionate care, harm reduction, and treatment options for those in need.
Tune in to this week’s episode to hear how the Land of Maple Leaf implements its patient-centred approach in healthcare. What happened in the UK? Are there lessons to be learnt from Canada?
Psilocybin
Cannabis
Trigeminal neuralgia
Patty Hajdu
Jean-Yves Duclos
Health Canada
Fentanyl
Clonazepam
Section 56 Exemption
Roland R. Griffiths
Mathew W. Johnson
Robin Carhart-Harris
Anthony P. Bossis
Ketamine
Holotropic breathwork
Cluster headache
ADHD
Acid (LSD)
Medical assistance in dying
Letter to Minister Duclos
Re: Proposed Regulations for Medical Access to Psilocybin
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This week’s episode features Paul Glue, professor of Psychiatry at the Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, New Zealand.
With a vast experience in both academia and pharmaceutical industry, Paul Glue's research focuses on clinical and basic science to investigate the pharmacology of drug treatments in psychiatry and the disease mechanisms of neurological and psychiatric disorders. He is also interested in psychopharmacology and the development of novel therapeutics for affective disorders. One of these novel substances that have dominated his career is ketamine for treatment-resistant depression.
Tune in to this episode to listen to a fascinating conversation between two great scientists about, well… Drug Science.
Ketamine
Ibogaine
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
Microdialysis
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)
NMDA glutamate receptor
Overexcitement and disinhibition
Dynamic Neurotransmitter Interactions in Alcohol Withdrawal by Paul Glue and David Nutt
Methamphetamine
John Krystal
Treatment-resistant depression
Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy
Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale
Douglas Pharmaceuticals
Plasma brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and response to ketamine in treatment-resistant depression
Mechanisms of ketamine action as an antidepressant - P Zanos, T D Gould
Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
Good manufacturing practice (GMP)
Paroxetine
QT interval
The Anti-Addiction Drug Ibogaine and the Heart: A Delicate Relation
Noribogaine
Prozac
Psychedelics Promote Structural and Functional Neural Plasticity - Ly et al.
Serotonin 2a receptor
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Cory Doctorow is a Canadian-British citizen of Eastern European Jewish descent and, frankly, it is no less difficult to grasp his vast interests and points of expertise than his family roots. After attending four universities without obtaining a degree, Cory’s career started with co-founding free software P2P company called OpenCola and selling it to the Open Text Corporation after four years. Later Doctorow relocated to London and worked as European Affairs Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation helping to establish the Open Rights Group, before leaving the EFF to pursue both fiction and non-fiction writing full-time.
He is also an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.
Academically, he was named the 2006–2007 Canadian Fulbright Chair for Public Diplomacy at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, and in 2009, Doctorow became the first Independent Studies Scholar in Virtual Residence at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. Doctorow is also a Visiting Professor at the Open University in the United Kingdom. In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from The Open University.
If you want to find out how data surveillance, AI, and monopolization can be connected to drug policy, be sure to tune in to this episode!
Blog: www.pluralistic.net
Books: www.craphound.com/shop
Podcast: www.craphound.com/podcast
Newsletter: https://mail.flarn.com/mailman/listinfo/plura-list/
Medium: https://doctorow.medium.com/
RSS: https://pluralistic.net/feed/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/doctorow
Drugs without the hot air: Making Sense of Legal and Illegal Drugs - without the hot air
“Nutsack”
Harm reduction
Selective enforcement
Electronic frontier foundation
Association for Computing Machinery
Statement on principles for the development and deployment of equitable, private, and secure remote test administration systems.
Bruce Alexander
Danah Boyd
Network effect
Switching Costs
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Niamh Eastwood is the executive director of Release, the national centre offering legal services for drug users.
She started at Release as a legal advisor. Now, having worked in drug policy for the last fifteen years she’s co-authored many of Release’s advice booklets and drug policy related papers including ’The Colour of Injustice: 'Race', Drugs and Law Enforcement in England and Wales’. One of the aspects of drug laws she’s most passionate about is how disproportionately they affect the most vulnerable in society.
Accordingly, she’s advocating for drug policy reform in the UK by giving talks and lectures, contributing to drug policy journals and publications as well as drafting many of Release's briefings for parliamentarians and policy makers.
Release
The Numbers in Black and White: Ethnic Disparities in the Policing and Prosecution of Drug Offences in England and Wales
MDMA (Ecstasy)
Cannabis
Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis
Heroin
Police told not to use smell of cannabis in stop and search amid racism allegations
Amber Marks
Drug Detection Dogs and the Growth of Olfactory Surveillance: Beyond the Rule of Law?
Cocaine
Psychedelics
Drug Action Against Drugs
Release’s playing cards
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In this week’s episode we'll meet Dr Mendel Kaelen, CEO of Wavepaths, a London-based company researching and developing methods for music-assisted psychotherapy.
Prior to Wavepaths, Dr Kaelen worked as a PhD student and post-doctoral neuroscientist at Imperial College London with a special focus of the role of music in psychedelic therapy. Combining his passion to both music and neuroscience he advocates for the therapeutic use of music in talks and publications that has been featured in Nature News, San Francisco Chronicles, Vice Motherboard, Rolling Stone, TEDx and others.
Tune in to this week’s episode to gain some insight on how music actually affects our brains and hence ourselves.
Ketamine
Psychedelics
Out of body experience
Magic mushrooms
Robin Carhart-Harris
Beckley Foundation
Amanda Feilding
Ayahuasca
LSD
Peyote
Helen Bonny
Insight (psychology)
Peak experience
Parahippocampus
Visual cortex
Brocas area (inferior frontal gyrus)
Planum temporale
Timbre
Default mode network
The entropic brain
Hyper-connectivity in the brain under specific drugs
Precuneus
Serotonin 2a receptor
Pyramidal neurons
Predictive coding
Wavepaths
Michael Pollan
Brian Eno
Grateful Dead
Acid Test
Buchla synthesizers
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Dan Carden is a British Labour Party politician serving as the MP for Liverpool Walton since 2017.
A self-proclaimed “proud Scouser”, Carden highlights his close relationship with Liverpool’s working class and recalls his father being the shop steward during the Liverpool dockers’ dispute. From his early years he cared deeply for his community, standing on picket lines as a young boy and then going into politics.
He studied International Relations at the London School of Economics where he also took the position of Chair of the University Labour Club. In his 20s however, while clearly being on a path to a brilliant career in politics, Carden developed a drinking problem. Now, he talks openly about this difficult experience as it brought into light the gaps in support for alcohol users in the UK. Carden therefore, advocates for changes in the logistics behind treating alcohol addiction as well as for ending the stigma affecting its sufferers.
In this week’s episode Dan Carden and Professor, David Nutt will be discussing how we can change the way we deal with problematic alcohol use for the better.
Why is alcohol consumption so normalised despite being far more dangerous than multiple illegal drugs? Why don’t we talk more openly about the harms from alcohol?
Tune in to the episode to find out!
'Choose to live': Dan Carden's emotional speech about alcohol addiction
Unite
Liverpool dockers’ dispute
Binge drinking
Insight (psychiatry)
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Professor Mike Barnes is a consultant neurologist and an expert cannabis physician. He dedicated his career to the development of neurological rehabilitation as well as medical cannabis awareness and education.
After holding multiple senior NHS management positions, chairing Neurological Rehabilitation in the UK and years of clinical practice, professor Barnes brings his expertise to educate clinicians and patients about the benefits of medicinal cannabis and CBD wellness. He also is an advocate for a sensible and robust approach to medical cannabis prescribing and industry growth in the UK.
In his recent discussion paper entitled “Ten Recommendations for Government” he explores what Government can do to address what is currently a great missed opportunity for the country to secure the economic and patient benefits of a new approach to medical cannabis and CBD well-being products.
Professor Nutt and professor Barnes will be talking about medical cannabis. Should our future doctors obtain proper education on how to use botanical medicines? Should we change the way we think about drugs and treatments?
Tune into this week’s episode to find out!
Interested in learning more about Project Twenty21? Find out more about the project here
How to prescribe medical cannabis?
Learn more about medical cannabis
Download medical cannabis resources
Professor David Nutt, live in London
Ten Recommendations for Government - Discussion Paper - UK Medical Cannabis and CBD Market
Cannabis
Multiple sclerosis
Hypobaric oxygen therapy
Neurological rehabilitation
World Federation for NeuroRehabilitation
Botox
Spasticity
Motor neurone disease
Cannabidiol (CBD)
Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)
GW pharmaceuticals
Sativex
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)
PCDH19 Epilepsy
Schedule 1 drugs
Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society
Maple Tree Consultants
Subarachnoid hemorrhage
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Norman Baker, described by our host, professor Nutt, as “the first and last truly honest politician” is a Liberal Democrat and former MP for Lewes in East Sussex. Following three years as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department of Transport he was promoted to Minister of State at the Home Office in 2013. However, rejection of many of his progressive suggestions including ones on drug policy e.g. legal use of medical cannabis for pain relief in cancer and multiple sclerosis patients, lead to his resignation from this position in 2014. Now, he advises the campaign for better transport in the UK and makes his voice heard by having authored multiple books including his autobiography “Against the Grain”. Tune in to this week’s episode to learn more about his interesting insights to UK politics and especially to UK’s drug policies.
Professor David Nutt, live in London
Against the grain
Drug decriminalization in Portugal
Drug consumption rooms in Denmark
Safe injection facilities
Cannabis
Home office
Jeremy Hunt
SpAD - Special adviser
Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill
Green industrial revolution
David Kelly
… And What Do You Do?
Misuse of Drugs Act 1971
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Dr Margaret Ross is a Senior Clinical Psychologist and Psychotherapist from Melbourne, Australia and the Chief Principal Investigator for Australia’s first psilocybin assisted psychotherapy study.
Throughout her career, her main focus has been youth mental health and more recently cancer and palliative care. Following working as a research psychologist and clinical trial coordinator for The University of Melbourne and Orygen Youth Health, Margaret decided to move into researching alternatives for her oncology patients who were terrified of dying and experiencing existential distress in the face of their diagnosis.
After seeing the compelling results of US-based research into the use of psilocybin assisted therapy for patients with existential distress in the face of terminal cancer, she decided to set on a fight so that similar treatments would soon become an option within Australia.
Have a listen to this week’s episode in which professor Nutt and Dr Ross talk about the land of Golden Wattle - a DMT-rich plant - fighting for its Drug policies being based on Science.
Recent Australian TGA Independent Expert Panel on MDMA and psilocybin consultation
Psilocybin
Randomized controlled trial (RCT)
Open label dose
Trial of Psilocybin versus Escitalopram for Depression
Drug Scheduling in the UK
Standard for the Uniform Scheduling of Medicines and Poisons (Australia)
National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)
Entheogens
Golden Wattle
DMT
Dr Ben Sessa
Ketamine
Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)
Pitjantjatjara
LSD
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Theresa Marteau is a British health psychologist, professor, and director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge. Her initial research concerned communicating risk information and found out that people usually don’t change their behaviours despite receiving any form of information about preventable diseases like type 2 diabetes or certain types of cancer. Hence, she decided to redirect her focus on the non-conscious rather than conscious processes that could improve people’s health behaviours e.g. reducing glass size to reduce alcohol consumption. Through that research, she’s demonstrated that it is the change in government policies or population-level interventions - putting nudge theory into practice - that present a potential for the improvement in our population’s health. For these notable findings and contributions she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours List.
Nudge theory
Social psychology
Milgram experiment
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View by Stanley Milgram
Spatial, temporal, and demographic patterns in prevalence of smoking tobacco use and attributable disease burden in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019
Impact of bottle size on in-home consumption of wine: feasibility and acceptability randomised cross-over study
Shopper lab
Impact of minimum unit pricing on alcohol purchases in Scotland and Wales: controlled interrupted time series analyses
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Today’s episode features Dr Peter Gasser, the president of the Swiss Medical Society for Psycholytic Therapy.
Professor Nutt and Dr Gasser talk about the rather unusual and innovative attitude to psychedelic research in Switzerland.
How can Britain learn from the Swiss? What are the drug policies in the Albert Hofmann’s - the discoverer of LSD - country?
Dr Peter Gasser is a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist and the President of the Swiss Medical Society for Psycholytic Therapy since 1997. After LSD was criminalized worldwide he was the first person to conduct research on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Additionally, he holds a permission for and provides treatment using MDMA and LSD.
MDMA
LSD
Swiss Medical Society for Psycholytic Therapy
International Symposium on the Occasion of the 100th Birthday of Albert Hofmann
Albert Hofmann
Psilocybin
Post-traumatic stress disorder
MAPS - Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
War on drugs - US political campaign
The Psychedelic Renaissance
Pilot study on LSD-Assisted Psychotherapy for Anxiety Associated With Life-threatening Diseases
End of life anxiety
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Cluster headache
Psycholytic therapy with MDMA and LSD in Switzerland - MAPS article
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This week on the Drug Science podcast, Professor Deborah Mash tells us about Ibogaine. A hallucinogenic compound derived from the roots of a West African shrub, sometimes used as a treatment for heroin or cocaine addiction.
Professor Mash found herself trying to reverse the damage that cocaine had caused on the streets of Miami, Florida. To explore new and novel therapies, she took a flight to Amsterdam to examine whether a West African shrub could be cure to cocaine and heroin dependency. Since that fateful trip, she’s been at the forefront of Ibogaine and Noribogaine research in the US. Now, she’s bringing that research to the UK for a landmark Ibogaine study in Manchester, England. Could Ibogaine be one of the most clinically significant advances in addiction medicine of the 21st century?
Deborah Mash is one of the world's foremost experts on the hallucinogenic drug ibogaine. She is the CEO and Founder of DemeRx Inc., a clinical-stage drug development company advancing ibogaine and its active metabolite noribogaine for the treatment of opioid use disorder. DemeRx has partnered with ATAI Life Sciences -- a global biotech platform with a special focus on psychedelic medicine -- to develop ibogaine for those suffering from opioid use disorder. Building on the extensive human data available around ibogaine, DemeRx and ATAI will submit Clinical Trial Applications for a Phase II study in opioid-dependent patients. This joint venture will also develop screening procedures, dosing guidelines, and best practices for opioid withdrawal management to ensure patient safety.
Enrol to the MAC Ibogaine Clinical trial
DemeRx
Miami’s drug war
Brain Endowment Bank
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Cocaethylene
Drug Free America
Howard Lotsof
Noribogaine
Rick Doblin
Cerebellar Toxicity
Buprenorphine
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Psilocybin
MAC Manchester
Alexander Shulgin
Allopregnanolone (Brexanolone)
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In this episode of the Drug Science Podcast, world-renowned author Michael Pollan and Prof David Nutt discuss gardening.
Of course, this being the Drug Science podcast, there’s no mention of sunflowers or strawberries. Instead, these two icons of psychopharmacology discuss the cultivation and everything else you might want to know about psychoactive plants with a particular focus on Opium, Caffeine and Mescaline.
Michael Pollan, a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine since 1987, Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and Director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism, is one of the nation’s most influential writers and scientific and environmental investigative journalists. His many award-winning, best-selling books include: The Botany of Desire; The Omnivore’s Dilemma; In Defense of Food; and, most recently, How to Change Your Mind.
Who is Michael Pollan?
Michael Pollan, a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine since 1987, Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and Director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism, is one of the nation’s most influential writers and scientific and environmental investigative journalists. His many award-winning, best-selling books include: The Botany of Desire; The Omnivore’s Dilemma; In Defense of Food; and, most recently, How to Change Your Mind.
Michael Pollan’s latest book -> This is your mind on plants
How to change your mind
Opium
Caffeine
Mescaline
Jim Hogshire
Papaver Somniferum
Harper’s magazine
John ‘Rick’ MacArthur
Purdue Pharma Oxycontin
Bentley compounds
Bees and Caffeine
Roland Griffiths Caffeine research
The enlightenment coffeehouses
Voltaire
Denis Diderot
Honoré de Balzac
Roland Griffiths
Peyote
Aldous Huxley The Doors of Perception
American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978
San Pedro
Muscimol
Ibotenic Acid
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This week’s episode features Doctor Sheila Vakharia and Professor Alex Stevens, together with Professor Nutt they will be talking about decriminalization and drug policies in the US and the UK. Has both countries’ drug policies arisen from colonialism and social class hierarchy? What are the consequences of the policies that can be witnessed today? Are there any reasons for drug criminalisation?
Sheila P Vakharia, PhD is Deputy Director of the Department of Research and Academic Engagement for the Drug Policy Alliance, a US organisation advocating for decriminalisation of drug use. Prior to joining DPA, Dr. Vakharia was an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Long Island University, and had also worked as a clinical social worker in both abstinence-only and harm reduction settings. Her research interests include harm reduction therapy, drug policy reform, drug user stigma, overdose prevention, and social work education. She is currently on the Board of Directors of HAMS Harm Reduction Network and Filter magazine. She has written op-eds for the Philadelphia Inquirer on the overdose crisis and NY Daily News on drug-induced homicide laws and stimulants.
Professor Alex Stevens has worked on issues of drugs, crime and health in the voluntary sector, as an academic researcher and as an adviser to the UK government. He has published extensively on these issues, with a focus on the sociology of drugs and crime, on risk behaviours by young people, on the use of evidence in policy and on quasi-compulsory drug treatment. His published works include a book on ‘Drugs, Crime and Public Health‘, studies of decriminalisation of drugs in Portugal, of the right to use drugs, on gangs and on the ethnography of policy making.
Professor Stevens’ interest in drugs and crime dates back to his time working with UK charity Prisoners Abroad, which provides advice and information to British prisoners held in foreign prisons, and as European project manager and coordinator of the European Network of Drug and HIV/AIDS Services in Prison for Cranstoun Drugs Services.
Drug Policy Alliance
War on drugs
Cannabis
Harm reduction
Decriminalization in Oregon
Crack house statute legal definition
An article about what this statute actually means
HIV crisis in the 1980s
Opium Wars
Pharmacy Act 1868
Opioids
Doctor shopping
Heroin
Metamphetamine
Fentanyl
Methadone
Buprenorphine
Uprooting the Drug War
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Michael Mithoefer, MD is a Clinical Investigator and acting Medical Director of MAPS Public Benefit Corporation. Together with his wife Annie, they completed the first phase 2 clinical trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD in 2009 and a subsequent study of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD in military veterans, firefighters and police officers. They are now supervising therapists in the ongoing MAPS Phase 3 trials of MDMA-assisted Psychotheapy for PTSD, leading training in MDMA- assisted psychotherapy for therapists interested in working on clinical trials, and providing FDA-approved MDMA sessions for research therapists.
Michael is Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina, is a Grof certified Holotropic Breathwork Practitioner, has been a Certified Internal Family Systems Therapist, and has been board certified in Psychiatry, Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine.
Annie is a registered nurse as well as a Grof-certified Holotropic Breathwork Practitioner, is trained in Hakomi Therapy, and has 25 years experience working with trauma patients, with an emphasis on experiential approaches to therapy.
Tune in to this episode to find out about their pioneer work with MDMA and their most recent research!
MDMA-assisted psychotherapy
MDMA
Psychedelics
Stanislav Grof
Breathwork
EMDR
Neurofeedback
Francine Shapiro
FDA
Rick Doblin
MAPS
IRB
DEA
CAPS-5 - Clinician Administered PTSD Scale
Exposure therapy
Cognitive-behavioral conjoint therapy
Candice Monson
Amygdala
Relax beliefs under psychedelics (REBUS)
PTSD
EMA - European Medicines Agency
Psilocybin
Ayahuasca
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Today’s episode features Ollie Ollerton, a former UK Special Forces soldier and directing staff (DS) of Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins. Mr Ollerton has always been involved in the social cause, serving in the army as well as supporting multiple charities. Thanks to the publicity from SAS: Who Dares Wins he has been, among others, raising awareness of the mental health of soldiers. By the means of supporting Heroic Hearts charity he also advocates for the use of psychedelics such as ayahuasca for the treatment of PTSD which often affects his serving colleagues. Ollie also authored multiple books in which he tells the story of his career and mental journey of overcoming PTSD himself.
Upon Ollie’s return to the UK in 2014 after 13 years overseas he started developing a concept to allow his training and experience to benefit others. BREAK-POINT provides leadership and development courses to the public and corporate sector also supporting veterans suffering the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD.
Ollie is a trained PRISM practitioner, a character assessment tool based on neuroscience that assists him and his team to provide the most engaging and rewarding corporate events focusing on mindset, teamwork and leadership. Along with another member of the SAS team, Ollie and Foxy have launched an app called the BATTLE READY 360 programme that focuses on mindset, nutrition and exercise. Ollie’s second book BATTLE READY launched in April 2020 straight into The Times Best Seller Top Ten, following the amazing success of BREAK-POINT in May 2019 which was a Times Number One Best Seller.
Heroic Hearts retreat for veterans
Heroic hearts
Ollie Instagram
United Kingdom Special Forces
SAS: Who Dares Wins
Battlebox
PTSD
Ayahuasca
Break point
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Friederike Meckel is a German psychotherapist who also trained as a medical doctor. Her career involved multiple techniques in psychotherapy including Holotropic Breathwork, hypnotherapy and family constellation work.
Most notably however, regarding the subject of our podcasts, by the means of setting a private underground practice in Zurich, Switzerland she developed her own way of psychotherapy using psychoactive substances. In this week’s episode, she describes the very innovative approaches to her work focusing on patient’s deeper understanding of themselves. Make sure to listen in if you want to find out more!
Underground MDMA-, LSD- and 2-CB-assisted individual and group psychotherapy in Zurich: Outcomes, implications and commentary - Article by Friederike Meckel Fischer and Ben Sessa
Depth psychology
Holotropic breathwork
Hypnotherapy
Systemic therapy
Transpersonal therapy
Behaviour therapy
Family constellations
MDMA
LSD
Psilocybin
2C-B
DMT
Dr Joe Dispenza
Mindfulness
Therapy with Substance: Psycholytic Psychotherapy in the Twenty-First Century - book by Friederike Meckel Fischer
Stanislav Grof
Peter Gasser
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Julia Buxton is British Academy Global Professor. Her research focuses on illicit drug markets and the impact of counter narcotics policies on development, gender equality and security. In her career she’s led projects and worked with multiple universities around the world including the Central European University in Budapest. Outside of Europe, she has geographical expertise on Latin America and is a specialist on Venezuela.
Now, back in England, she’s working on The Global Drug Survey project, inquiring about the drug policy preferences of drug users themselves. With this innovative approach she’s joining the conversation on drugs on the political scene in the UK.
Tune into this week’s episode to find out about how drug policies that are older than the Internet, Thatcherism and HIV treatmentcontribute to inequalities arising between different countries and genders.
Shownotes:
Opioids
Cannabis
Open Society Foundations
Jonathan Soros
UN Sustainable Development Goals
Viktor Orban
Populism
Syrian refugee crisis in Hungary
Nativism
The Impact of Global Drug Policy on Women: Shifting the Needle - book by Julia Buxton
Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD)
Ingrid Walker
Judith Aldridge
Darknet
“Do Darknet Drug Markets Make the Bad Guys Less Bad?” Aldridge Asks
Keir Starmer
Nicola Sturgeon
Heroin
Cocaine
Greenwich biosciences
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Richard ‘Rick’ Doblin is the founder and director of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) - a non-profit research organisation established in 1986.
Somewhere between getting an undergraduate degree in psychology and a doctorate in public policy, Rick, having had discovered psychedelics, began his fight against unjustified criminalisation of psychedelic drugs.
Rick’s main goal has been making MDMA a FDA-approved medicine, tune in to this week’s episode to find out about his progress!
MAPS latest MDMA study in Nature Medicine
Drug Science live podcast recording with Professor David Nutt!
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)
MDMA
Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War
Carl Jung
LSD
Mescaline
John Lilly
Programming & Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer: Theory & Experiments
Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research by Stanislav Grof
Isolation tank
Stanislav Grof
Primal therapy
New Genesis: Shaping a global spirituality by Robert Muller
Laura Huxley
Island by Aldous Huxley
DMT
Psilocybin
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Ayahuasca
Spinal tap
Dissociative identity disorder
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Together with Professor David Nutt they will be talking about the beauty behind psychoactive substances as well as the, equally interesting, stories from Lady Feilding’s life journey.
Drug Science live podcast recording with Professor David Nutt!
If you want to find out how to travel to Ceylon for 25 pounds do have a listen!
Amanda Feilding is the Founder and Executive Director of the Beckley Foundation, and is widely recognised as a leading force behind the current Psychedelic Renaissance. By establishing key Research Programmes at some of the world’s most prestigious institutions (including Imperial College London, Maastricht University, Sant Pau in Barcelona, IDOR and UFRN in Brazil), she has propelled the field forward over the last 20+ years, conducting landmark studies, such as the world’s first psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression study (on which Compass Pathways based their business), the world’s first LSD, MDMA and DMT brain imaging studies, plus the initiation and collaboration with Johns Hopkins on the first study using psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy to overcome nicotine addiction. She has also co-authored over 80 research papers.
Since its inception in 1998, the Beckley Foundation has been at the forefront of exploratory research into psychedelics and cannabis, and evidence-based global drug policies. Through a series of pivotal international seminars at the House of Lords (starting in 2000) with leading figures from around the world in different fields, from science to politics, plus over 60 much-cited books, reports and papers, and numerous meetings with thought-leaders, academics, and policy-makers at the UN and governments around the world, Amanda has ensured that the Beckley Foundation has been at the forefront of global drug policy reform, particularly in the field of cannabis and the psychedelics.
Through her work with the Beckley Foundation, Amanda is bridging the gap between science and policy, creating a positive feedback loop, with the aim of building and harnessing our knowledge of the benefits of currently prohibited compounds to optimise human health, wellbeing and potential.
Drug Science live podcast recording with Professor David Nutt!
Cannabis
LSD
Timothy Leary
Bart Hughes
Psychedelic Microdosing
LSD’s impact on brain interconnectivity
Beckley Foundation
Mdma
Joseph “Joey” Mellen
Albert Hofmann
Sir Colin Blakemore
Psilocybin
The Beckley/Imperial Psychedelic Research Programme
The effects of psilocybin and MDMA on between-network resting state functional connectivity in healthy volunteers
Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin
Ayahuasca
Default mode network
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)
Neuroplasticity
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This week’s episode features Carl Hart, professor of neuroscience and psychology at Columbia University in New York.
Professor Nutt and Professor Hart discuss drug addiction and its political context in the US. Are drug policies racist? Were they made to help or to harm? What does the declaration of independence has to do with drug criminalization?
Coming from an impoverished area in Miami, Florida professor Hart used to believe drugs are the reason for problems he observed in his neighbourhood and hence gained specific interest for addictions in his scientific career. Now, however he is debunking drug addiction himself and acknowledging structural injustices both in drug policies as well as the jurisdictional system in the US as a whole. Besides being featured in the movie “The House I Live In” on the War on Drugs campaign, he’s given talks for TEDMED, Talks@Google, The Reason Foundation, The Nobel Conference and many others.
Professor Hart has also authored books in which he criticizes the criminalization of drugs and advocates the positive effect of recreational drug use. In this week’s episode we’re going to find out about his most recent one - “Drug use for grownups - chasing liberty in the land of fear.”
Shownotes:
Cocaine self-administration study in rats
Nicotine self-administration in rats study
The dopamine theory of addiction review
Dopamine
Serotonin
Norepinephrine
Julis Axelrod
Nicotine
Extinction burst
High Price - book by professor Carl Hart
House I live in
Crack cocaine
Ecstasy
Drug use for grown-ups: chasing liberty in the land of fear - book by professor Carl Hart
Oregon drug decriminalization
Peyote
Opioids
Psychedelics
Marihuana/ Cannabis
Map of US states which legalised the use of marihuana
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Robin Heads the Psychedelic Research Group within the Centre for Psychiatry at Imperial College London, where he has designed several functional brain imaging studies with psilocybin, LSD, MDMA and DMT, plus a clinical trial of psilocybin for treatment resistant depression. He has over 50 published papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals; two of which were ranked in the top 100 most impactful academic articles of 2016. Robin’s research has featured in major national and international media and he has given a popular TEDx talk.
Does MDMA impact sleep?
What does the brain look like under the influence of LSD?
How do psychedelics change the quality of brain activity?
Can psilocybin be used to treat depression?
Psilocybin vs Escitalopram for Major Depressive Disorder
Stanislav Grof LSD Psychotherapy
Robin’s first paper – Waves of the Unconscious
Amanda Feilding
Robin’s PhD
Drugs live – Channel 4
Psilocybin
LSD
MDMA
DMT
Psychedelic resting states
The entropic brain
Homological scaffolds of brain functional networks
The Stoned Ape theory
DMT Neural Correlates of the DMT experience
Psilocybin for Treatment-Resistant Depression
Serotonin and brain function: a tale of two receptors
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This week’s episode features Dr Gabor Maté, a Hungarian-Canadian physician who’s main interests include childhood development and trauma, and their impact on lifelong physical and mental health.
Professor Nutt and Dr Maté talk about the inseparable nature of our body and mind.
How do they affect each other?
How can psychedelics offer therapeutic potential to both mental and physical conditions?
Dr Gabor Maté was born in Hungary and emigrated to Canada as a young child. Following years of clinical practice, now retired, he travels around the world to speak about how life experiences shape our physical and mental health.
In his books including the most recent “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction” he explores the relationship between “early adversity” i.e. stress, childhood neglect or abuse and susceptibility to addictions, autoimmune diseases, cancer and many others. He is also widely recognised for his perspectives on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Additionally, after being a part of an Ayahuasca retreat program Dr Gabor Maté advocates the therapeutic potential of this and other psychedelic substances in the treatment of a variety of mental and physical conditions.
Gabor Mate’s website
In the Realm of Hungry Ghost
The six realms of Buddhist cosmology
Vancouver harm reduction program
Ayahuasca
Psilocybin
Psilocybin and depression: Psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression: fMRI-measured brain mechanisms by Robin Carhart-Harris et al., 2017
Ayahuasca retreat with Dr. Gabor Maté and Richard Condon
Scleroderma patient article:Ayahuasca Let Me Walk Again
United Nation’s Convention on Psychotropic Substances, 1971
When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress
Stress and the risk of multiple sclerosis
Childhood Trauma in Multiple Sclerosis
Psychedelics for psychological and existential distress in palliative and cancer care
Become a Drug Science Community member
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Peter Krykant previously used intravenous drugs whilst living homeless in Birmingham. His lived experience has shown him the benefits of drug consumption rooms; to prevent the spread of bloodborne diseases and protect people who use drugs from accidental overdose.
Seven weeks ago, Peter set up the first UK drug consumption room which attracted the attention of the BBC and the local police force. Scotland's Lord Advocate and the Chief Constable of Police Scotland has made it clear that such activities violate national law. However, the local police force has not intervened with Peter’s operation.
Peter is advocating to expand these services to multiple localities with the inclusion of trained medical professionals at each site. This intervention offers a unique insight to gather observational data on UK intravenous drug use. It could be the stepping stone needed to tackle the increasing number of UK drug-related deaths.
Peter Krykant twitter
Birmingham rough sleepers’ team
Methadone
Diazepam
Drug Death summit 27th Feb Scotland 2020
Copenhagen Drug Consumption Room
Naloxone
CrowdFunder page
Site 2 – Gazebo
Scotland's Lord Advocate and the Chief Constable of Police Scotland
Heroin assisted-treatment
Methadone programmes
Ronnie Cowan
Alison Thewliss
ChangeGrowLive
Safe Consumption Glasgow
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
A Fascinate Productions podcast for Drug Science
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After discovering that there was very little literature review regarding the impact of psychedelics on the philosophy of the mind, philosopher Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes started to research how these drugs have impacted western philosophy. On this episode of the podcast, Peter examines the cultural history of the philosophy of psychedelics and how they’ve shaped philosophers’ perceptions of consciousness and reality.
Dr Peter Sjöstedt-H is an Anglo-Scandinavian philosopher of mind who specializes in the thought of Whitehead, Nietzsche, and Spinoza, and in fields pertaining to panpsychism and altered states of mind. Following his degree in Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick, he became a Philosophy lecturer in London for six years and after which he pursued his PhD (on ‘Pansentient Monism’, examined by Galen Strawson and Joel Krueger) at the University of Exeter – where he is now a research fellow and associate lecturer. Peter is the author of Noumenautics, the TEDx Talker on ‘psychedelics and consciousness‘.
Are altered states of consciousness mere hallucinations or indicative of fundamental truths of reality?
William James
Philosophy of psychedelics conference
Exploring Frameworks for Exceptional Experience
Humphry Davy
Nitrous Oxide
Arthur Heffter
Thomas De Quincey
Outsight project
Epiphonemalism
René Descartes
Psychedelics heightened appreciation of nature
Eliminative materialism
David Luke podcast
Andrew Gallimore - Alien Information Theory
Carl Hart – psychedelic exceptionalism
Albert Hoffman
Bertrand Russell - Mysticism and logic
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
A Fascinate Productions podcast for Drug Science
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Psychologist Dr David Luke, is a Senior Lecturer studying states of transpersonal consciousness. It is well known that psychedelic drugs can induce altered states of consciousness but is this approach too heavy handed to derive benefit from a transpersonal experience? Activities such as yoga, meditation and sensory deprivation can induce this altered state of consciousness but how can we apply what we have learnt from psychedelic neuropsychopharmacology to evaluate these non-drug induced states? Can religious or spiritual experiences influence an individual’s perception of reality?
Dr David Luke is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Greenwich. His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including ten books, most recently Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine (2019). When he is not running clinical drug trials with LSD, doing DMT field experiments or observing apparent weather control with Mexican shamans he directs the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon and is a co-founder and director and the current chair of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness.
William James
James Fadiman
Stanislav Grof
Anechoic chamber
Holotropic Breathwork
Carbogen Inhalation Therapy
Synesthesia
Breaking Convention
Extinction Rebellion
Global Drug Survey
Aphantasia
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
A Fascinate Productions podcast for Drug Science
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In 1971, the war on drugs went international when the UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances was signed into international law. This Convention broadened the scope of previous UN drug legislation, facilitating the prohibition of almost any drug imaginable at the time.
However, in the past 50 years, various countries across the world have been rejecting this narrative and even the UN itself has agreed that the war on drugs has been a failure. Drugs are here to stay and it was foolish to think that they could be removed from society. An influential cog in this new approach to drug policy are a group called - Transform. Transform take a pragmatic and evidence-based approach to drug policy. Lobbying for harm reduction and alternatives to prohibition.
Steve Rolles is Senior Policy Analyst for Transform Drug Policy Foundation, a UK based think tank and charity focused on drug policy and law reform. Lead author on a range of Transform publications including 2009’s ‘After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation’, Steve has been a regular contributor to the public debate on drug policy and law for over 15 years; in the media, at UK and international events, and at various UN and Government forums around the world. Steve was recently an adviser for the Uruguayan Government in developing their new cannabis regulation model, and was also lead drafter and technical coordinator for the recent ‘Taking control: Pathways to Drug Polices that Work’ report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Previously Steve worked for Oxfam and the Medical Research Council, having studied for his Geography BSc at Bristol University and Development Studies MSc at Manchester University.
Transform
Danny Kushlick
Mexico Unido Contra Delincuencia
Portugal decriminalisation
Cannabis legalisation in Canada
Cannabis legalisation in Uruguay
Altered States report
William Hague advocating for cannabis reform
Global Commission on Drug Policy
Lib Dem cannabis report
UN common position on drugs
UN task team report on the past 10 years of drug policy
Latin America cocaine war
Luxembourg cannabis reform
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
A Fascinate Productions podcast for Drug Science
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Mobeen Azhar has been a journalist for 17 years investigating the societal harms related to the ‘war on drugs’. Upon returning to his hometown of Huddersfield, Mobeen started to uncover grizzly story behind the roadside execution of Yassar Yaqub.
Described in court as a 28-year-old office clerk, Yassar Yaqub was shot dead by police on an M62 slip road on a cold and wet January evening in 2017. Celebrated by his family as a loving son and beloved father, his death lead to protests on the streets of West Yorkshire and in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement a ‘Justice 4 Yassar’ campaign was born. But with rumours of drug empires, money laundering and high-performance cars, just days into his reporting of the case, Mobeen realises that there is a much bigger story in town. With violence on the streets and a town that is terrified to talk, Mobeen attempts to find out where the truth really lies in a journey that forces him to face some ugly truths about his community and hometown.
Hometown
Justice for Yassar
Neil Woods
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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A special treat this week as the two titans of psychopharmacology discuss the medicinal chemistry of psychedelics. Dr Nichols is the Founding President of the Heffter Research Institute, an organisation designed to promote research of the highest scientific quality with psychedelics in order to contribute to a greater understanding of the mind leading to the improvement of the human condition, and to alleviate suffering.
Professor Nutt and Dr Nichols answer some burning questions of psychedelic science such as:
What will come to market first, LSD, Psilocybin or MDMA?
Could microdosing be dangerous?
Is there such a thing as DMT tolerance?
David E. Nichols, is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Purdue University College of Pharmacy, and was the Robert C. and Charlotte P. Anderson Chair in Pharmacology, where he carried out teaching and research for 38 years prior to his retirement in 2012. A major focus of his research was on substances known as hallucinogens, known more popularly as psychedelics. Widely published in the scientific literature and internationally recognized for his research on centrally active drugs, he has studied all of the major classes of psychedelic agents, including LSD and other lysergic acid derivatives, psilocybin and the tryptamines, and phenethylamines related to mescaline. Among scientists, he is recognized as one of the foremost international experts on the medicinal chemistry of psychedelics.
Shulgin
Mescaline
MDMA
LSD
Psilocybin
Entactogen vs Empathogen
Drugs Enforcement Agency
Salvia
Heffter Research Institute
Arthur Heffter
Psilocybin for depression trial
Psilocybin for OCD Yale study
Psilocybin-assisted Group Therapy for Demoralization in Long-term AIDS Survivors
N,N-dimethyltryptamine and the pineal gland: Separating fact from myth
A Model for the Application of Target-Controlled Intravenous Infusion for a Prolonged Immersive DMT Psychedelic Experience
Fen-phen Weightloss drug
Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of Tryptamines Found in Hallucinogenic Mushrooms: Norbaeocystin, Baeocystin, Norpsilocin, and Aeruginascin
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
A Fascinate Productions podcast for Drug Science
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The US opioid crisis is a result of a fractured and fragmented healthcare service. Federal and state policy created a system whereby doctors were rewarded for prescribing highly addictive substances. This epidemic was compounded when the same federal and state government suddenly restrained these prescriptions, forcing people into the black market. Now underground drug dealers control this oversaturated demand, from Mexican smugglers to Chinese clandestine chemists…the harms of opiates are rising every day.
Bryce Pardo is an associate policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. His work focuses on drug policy with a particular interest in the areas of cannabis regulation, opioid control, and new psychoactive substance markets. Recently, he has provided Congressional testimony about his research on illicit supply of fentanyl to several subcommittees within the U.S. House of Representatives. Prior to joining RAND, he served five years as a legislative and policy analyst at the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD) within the Organization of American States (OAS) where he worked directly with policymakers and practitioners. He has independently consulted with multi-lateral institutions, including the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Pardo also served as lead analyst with BOTEC Analysis Corporation to support the Government of Jamaica in drafting medical cannabis regulations.
The Future of Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Opioids
RAND Corporation
RAND Drug Policy Research Centre
Heroin
Oxycodone
Oxycontin
2010 additive added to prescription opiates so they couldn’t be crushed or snorted
Golden triangle
Fentanyl
Buprenorphine
Methadone
Vivitrol
Heroin Assisted Treatment
Supervised consumption facility
Isotonitazene
Carfentanil
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
A Fascinate Productions podcast for Drug Science
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Tobacco and alcohol are the largest sources of preventable death in the world. Our current treatments are only 15% effective at best. However, psilocybin-assisted therapy has achieved an astonishing 80% success rate in clinical trials. Professor Matthew Johnson is paving the way for this new an innovative treatment to address one of the most damaging social burdens of modern society, drug addiction. It is important to note that Professor Johnson’s research is not looking at casual habitual smokers, but instead, long-term, treatment resistant tobacco users.
Matthew W. Johnson, Ph.D., Professor at Johns Hopkins, has worked with psychedelics since 2004. He published psychedelic safety guidelines in 2008, the first psychedelic treatment of tobacco addiction in 2014, and with colleagues published the largest study of psilocybin in cancer distress in 2016. His 2018 psilocybin review recommended Schedule IV upon medical approval. He is Principal Investigator on upcoming psilocybin studies treating opioid addiction and PTSD, and LSD research treating chronic pain.
Matt and the Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Unit are examining the long-term behavioural changes resulting from a single psilocybin session and cognitive behavioural therapy.
Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Unit
Professor Matthew Johnson
Smoking cessation study
Smoking cessation research
Roland Griffiths Episode
Healthy normals research
Smoking cessation behaviours three months following acute insular damage from stroke
Ibogaine
Breathwork for treating PTSD
Twitter - @Drug_Researcher
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
A Fascinate Productions podcast for Drug Science
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This week, Professor Nutt speaks to journalist Johann Hari @johannhari101 about the ‘war on drugs’. It is now widely accepted that the ‘war on drugs’ has failed, with many people believing it can never succeed. Despite this, politicians from around the world continue to follow this mantra as an effective strategy to reduce drug-related harms. The reason why… politics.
Currently, it is politically damaging to support the legalisation of drugs because public discourse has been led to believe that legalisation will cause anarchy and chaos. Contrarily, what we have now is a complete lack of control. Legally regulating the supply of drugs is the only way to bring order to this chaos.
Johann Hari is the author of two New York Times best-selling books. His first, ‘Chasing the Scream: the First and Last Days of the War on Drugs’, is currently being adapted into a major Hollywood film by Oscar-winning director Lee Daniels, and into a non-fiction documentary series. His first TED talk, ‘Everything You Think You Know About Addiction is Wrong’, has been viewed more than 40 million times across all platforms. He has written over the past decade for some of the world’s leading newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, the Spectator, Le Monde Diplomatique, the Melbourne Age, and Politico. He is a regular panellist on HBO’s Realtime With Bill Maher.
Chasing the Scream
Lost Connections
Professor Nutt fired
Portugal decriminalisation
Bud Osborn
Safe injection facilities
Philip Owen – coffin
Billie Holiday
Strange Fruit
Ruth Dreifuss
Neil Woods episode
Swiss experiment
Crispin Blunt episode
Harry Anslinger
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
A Fascinate Productions podcast for Drug Science
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The tables have been turned in this one-off special of the Drug Science podcast. In this episode, Professor David Nutt is interviewed by renowned singer-songwriter – Joss Stone. Professor Nutt is the Chair of the Drug Science Scientific Committee and currently the Edmund J Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and Head of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit at Imperial College London. Professor Nutt has steered the psychedelic renaissance toward legitimate research in the UK enabling the next generation of researchers to expand our understanding of these substances.
In this week’s episode, Professor Nutt is interviewed by singer-songwriter Joss Stone. Joss became a friend of the show after appearing in our first season of the podcast to talk about Medical Cannabis. Now she’s back to ask the Professor some burning questions about cannabis, psychedelics, SSRI’s, Adderall, addiction and pain.
A Cuppa Happy podcast
United Patients Alliance
Medical cannabis slides
Cannabis
Prescribed CBD could help people quit cannabis
Twenty21
NICE guideline
Harry Anslinger
Medical Psychedelics Working Group
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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On July 14th 2020, the UK’s leading independent scientific body on drugs has launched the Drug Science Medical Psychedelics Working Group. Building off the success of the Medical Cannabis Working Group, the Medical Psychedelics Working Group is a consortium of Drug Science experts, leading academics, researchers and policy specialists, supported by industry partners. The group’s aim is to create a rational and enlightened approach to psychedelic research and clinical treatment. The group will explore innovation within the psychedelic space with a specific focus on how psychedelics can be integrated into primary and secondary healthcare. Evidence-based science, sharing data, and strong partnerships are keys to success for the psychedelic community. The purpose of this group is to break down the barriers of 50 years of medical censorship by creating a rational and enlightened approach to psychedelic research and clinical treatment, ensuring the UK is a world leader in psychedelic medicine.
Jo Neill is Professor of Psychopharmacology at the University of Manchester (Division of Pharmacy & Optometry). She is Chair of the Medical Psychedelics Working Group for Drug Science and a committee member, a scientific advisor for Heroic Hearts UK and the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group. She is co-founder of b-neuro, a University based Contract Research Organisation developing new treatments for mental illness through animal models. Jo is past President of the British Association for Psychopharmacology (President 2016-2018). She served on the Research Excellence Framework panel for Unit of Assessment 3 (Allied Health Professions, Dentistry, Nursing and Pharmacy) in 2014. Jo is working with Policy at Manchester to educate the public about the urgent need for drug law reform and suspension of Schedule 1 restrictions to enable research into the medicinal properties of currently illegal drugs.
Medical Psychedelics Working Group
B-Neuro
Neil Woods episode
Psilocybin for depression episode
Veterans and psychedelics part 1
Veterans and psychedelics part 2
Veterans and psychedelics part 3
Psilocybin slides
MDMA slides
Judith Aldridge
Fiona Measham
James Morgan
DMT episode
Neil Woods MP letter
Denver decriminalisation
Oakland decriminalisation
Psilocybin in The Telegraph
Magic Medicine Film
US Expanded Access Programme
From Shock to Awe
Anorexia trial at Imperial College
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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In this episode of the Drug Science podcast, Professor Nutt is joined by an old friend who he has known for 35 years. Professor Roland Griffiths is a researcher who has examined a wide range of psychotropic substances through the years. He has studied, the abuse potential of a number of different substances; caffeine dependence and withdrawal, and the relative prices people are willing to pay for access to common street drugs.
Roland Griffiths, is a Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and founding Director of the Johns Hopkins Center on Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. His principal research focus in both clinical and preclinical laboratories has been on the behavioral and subjective effects of mood-altering drugs.
He has conducted extensive research with sedative-hypnotics, caffeine, and novel mood-altering drugs. In 1999 he initiated a research program investigating the effects of the classic psychedelic psilocybin that includes studies in healthy volunteers, in beginning and long-term meditators, and in religious leaders. Therapeutic studies with psilocybin include treatment of psychological distress in cancer patients, treatment of cigarette smoking cessation, and psilocybin treatment of major depression. Other studies have examined the effects of salvinorin A, dextromethorphan, and ketamine which produce altered states of consciousness having some similarities to psilocybin. Drug interaction studies and brain imaging studies (fMRI and PET) are examining pharmacological and neural mechanisms of action. The Hopkins laboratory has also conducted a series of internet survey studies characterizing various psychedelic experiences including those associated with acute and enduring adverse effects, mystical-type effects, entity and God-encounter experiences, and alleged positive changes in mental health, including decreases in depression and anxiety, decreases in substance abuse, and reductions in death anxiety.
Caffeine
Psilocybin
Benzodiazepines
Psilocybin occasioning mystical-type experiences
+14 month follow up
Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research
Journal of Psychopharmacology
William James Religious Experience
Psilocybin for religious clergy
Matt Johnson tobacco addiction study
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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In this episode of the Drug Science podcast, Professor David Nutt is joined by two pharmacosexuality experts to discuss chemsex, drug fuelled sex parties and sexual psychonauts. From the peak sexual experience to sober sex, our relationship with sex and drugs is complicated but intrinsically personal. Find out who chooses to mix sex and drugs, the risks associated with doing so, and what pleasure this provides people who combine the two.
Dr Alex Dymock (@alexdymock) is Lecturer in Law at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research is concerned with the regulation of sexuality, sexual subcultures, pornography, criminal law, and the history of drugs and drug policy. She co-led the Wellcome Trust funded Pharmacosexuality project (@pharmacosex) from 2018-2019, which examined the relationship between drug use and sexuality.
Dr Leah Moyle (@leah_moyle) is Lecturer in Criminology at Royal Holloway, University of London. Leah’s research focuses primarily on understanding illicit drug markets, cultures of drug use, and ‘non-commercial’ supply. She co-led the Wellcome Trust funded Pharmacosexuality project (@pharmacosex) from 2018-2019, which examined the relationship between drug use and sexuality.
Project website
Article for Wellcome Trust with Dr Ben Mechen
GBH/GBL
MDMA
Alcohol
Vice documentary on chemsex
BlueLight
Shulgin – MDMA for relationship work
Erowid
Stephen Port case
ACMD call for reclassification of GHB
Reynhard Sinaga case
Poppers
Testo-junkie
Vylessi
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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DMT is a drug that’s relatively novel in western neuropsychopharmacology. Not much research has been done on this substance to date and many intoxicants are unable to recount their psychedelic experience. For the first time, this substance is being studied in an fMRI and EEG to elucidate why and how this drug elucidates vivid dreams and near-death experiences.
Chris Timmerman recently completed his PhD in neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, investigating the effects of psychedelic drugs in the human brain with Robin Carhart-Harris and David Nutt. He is developing his research with a focus on the effects of psychedelics in consciousness and brain connectivity. Chris recently lead a study involving the effects of DMT in the human brain and experience, while also understanding its potential use for mental health conditions.
Having gained a BSc in neuroscience, Dr Chloe Sakal went on to study medicine and gain membership with the Royal College of Psychiatrist. She has a keen interest in the psychopharmacology and the potential for the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs in treating a wide range of psychiatric disorders. She is a study doctor for the UKs first MDMA-assisted psychotherapy trial looking at the safety and tolerability of its use in the treatment of alcoholism. She is an assistant-therapist on a phase two study looking at the treatment of psilocybin-assisted therapy for the treatment of depression. Alongside this, Chloe was a study participant in Chris Timmerman’s DMT research.
DMT Brain imaging study (Coming soon)
DMT
Augusto Pinochet
MDMA alcoholism
Rick Strassman
LSD brain imaging studies
Life After Life – Raymond Moody
5-MeO-DMT
Psychiachix
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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Crispin was elected MP for Reigate in 1997 having formerly served as an army officer. In Parliament, Crispin has served in the Shadow Cabinet with briefs including trade and energy and security and counter-terrorism. He has served as both Minister for Prisons and as Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He is currently the co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform. In January 2019, Crispin set up and launched the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group (CDPRG) whose objective is to promote evidence-based drug policy reform on the centre right. He is currently the Group’s unremunerated Chair and Chief Executive Officer.
Crispin takes a conservative look at the lack of regulation in the drugs market, questioning why the UK fails to tackle criminal gangs through prohibition, how the UK economy is damaged by turning a blind eye to the billions made in the cannabis industry and what can be done to win this war. Furthermore, Crispin Blunt and Professor Nutt discuss the racist beginnings of the ‘War on Drugs’ and how those sentiments have continued until present day. The killing of George Floyd antithesis’s the need to challenge this racist war through the Black Lives Matter movement.
Free Drug Science event
Medical Psychedelic Working Group Event <<< register here <<<
From the best & brightest minds working in psychedelics
Jeff Smith
Good Cop Bad War
Drug Wars
Transform
CDPRG
CDPRG report on the cannabis market
Mike Barton
PSA 2016
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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From an early age, Mitch Schultz's curiosity of the unknown universe forged his path in storytelling. His work as a transmedia producer, UX designer, and educator explores the inherent connections among consciousness, nature, culture, and the evolving human mythology.
The Documentary ‘From Shock to Awe’ asks, “how do we heal our deepest wounds?”. This film offers an intimate and raw look at the transformational journey of two combat veterans suffering from severe trauma as they abandon pharmaceuticals to seek relief through the mind-expanding world of psychedelics. Recent scientific research coupled with a psychedelic renaissance reveals that these substances can be used to heal PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) for individuals and their families. Beyond the personal stories, From Shock to Awe also raises fundamental questions about war, the pharmaceutical industry, and the US legal system.
Free Drug Science event
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From the best & brightest minds working in psychedelics
Rick Strassman
DMT: The Spirit Molecule
From Shock to Awe
Florida Church using Ayahuasca
Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal
Ayahuasca/DMT
What is PTSD?
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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War continues to hurt people long after the fighting has stopped. Veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress often self-medicate with alcohol or they are prescribed a cocktail of anti-depressants and opioids. This story is far too common for Nathan Pohl, A US veteran who served 2000 days of deployment in multiple combat zones. Nathan was not given the support he needed when he returned home, but luckily, he was introduced to the healing power of plant-based medicines before it was too late.
Dr. Kate Pate is a neurophysiologist from a military family and has always been passionate about finding ways to help military service members and veterans. This passion, coupled with her interest in plant-based medicines and her journey to find ways to heal from her own traumas, led her to cross paths with Heroic Hearts Project. Kate joined HHP as the Director of Research in early 2019 and has been working closely with the team to investigate the ways in which ayahuasca can benefit veterans suffering from PTSD and other mental health issues, and how changes in the gut microbiome following ayahuasca consumption may be correlated with long-term behavioural changes. Dr. Pate has been conducting research for nearly 15 years in a variety of different areas.
Free Drug Science event
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From the best & brightest minds working in psychedelics
Heroic Hearts
Ayahuasca
Entheogen
Psychedelic integration
MAPS MDMA trials
Ketamine Clinics
Dr Christopher Lowry
Colorado Decriminalisation
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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This episode of the Drug Science podcast offers a unique insight into the personal accounts of veterans Jesse Gould and Keith Abrahams. From the Afghan war zone to the Peruvian Jungle, these two have dedicated themselves to helping support their fellow brothers and sisters in arms.
After being deployed in Afghanistan three times, Jesse Gould founded the Heroic Hearts Project in 2017 to spearhead the acceptance and use of ayahuasca therapy as a means of addressing the current mental health crisis among veterans. This project offers veterans who are interested in pursuing psychedelic treatment options, a chance to treat their PTSD.
Keith Abraham served 9 years as a member of The Parachute Regiment, fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Throughout the latter years of his military service and during this time working for an investment bank, Keith began experiencing severe symptoms of anxiety and depression. After exhausting the majority of services and options offered by the NHS and military charities without much success, Keith realised a new approach was needed.
Free Drug Science event
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From the best & brightest minds working in psychedelics
Heroic Hearts
Heroic Hearts UK
Ayahuasca
Psilocybin
Iquitos Peru
PTSD
Depression
Veterans Affairs recommendations for treating PTSD
Psilocybin retreats in the Netherlands
Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research
Crispin Blunt
Ollie Ollerton
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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Mescaline is one of the lesser used psychedelics of the 21st century, however, its use may be older than any other psychedelic drug we know of. In this episode of the Drug Science podcast, Mike Jay recounts the definitive history of mescaline, exploring its mind-altering effects across cultures, from ancient America to western modernity.
Mike Jay is a writer and curator who has written widely on the history of drugs. He is the author of High Society: mind-altering drugs in history and culture, which accompanied the exhibition he curated at Welcome Collection in London on 2010, and most recently of Mescaline: a global history of the first psychedelic.
Professor Nutt and Mike Jay also discuss:
The stigmatisation of people who use drugs
The lexicology of the word ‘drug’
The cultural revolution of the 1960s
Mescaline tourism
High Society
Mescaline
Wellcome Collection exhibition
Mike Jay
Humphry Davy
Psychoactive Substances Act 2016
Ayahuasca
Peyote ceremonies
Ghost Dance
Wounded Knee
San Pedro ancient art
Alexander Shulgin
A Different Medicine
From Shock to Awe
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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The emergence of vaping and e-cigarettes is a relatively new and novel form of harm reduction. The UK has taken a scientific approach to the regulation of vaporisers and has been rewarded with great reductions of new and existing tobacco smokers. However, internationally vaporisers have been met with great distain and in some cases prohibition. In the past few years, we have seen a deliberate attempt to mislead the public over the harms of vaping nicotine and other cigarette substitute products.
Professor Gerry Stimson is a sociologist who has been promoting a harm reduction approach to public health since 1987. This began with harm reduction messaging for drug use to minimise HIV infection rates. This later expanded to other harm reduction tactics such as alcohol and tobacco control. In 2004, Gerry was appointed Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London. In 2017, he was appointed Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Together, Professor Nutt and Professor Stimson will unravel facts from fiction and answer:
Why are UK regulations so effective?
Should we fear ‘big tobacco’ involvement with vaporisers?
Abstinence vs harm reduction
Why is vaping stigmatised?
How does vaping change user’s relationship with nicotine?
Should we ban flavours?
Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction
Tobacco harm reduction and the right to health
GSHR twitter
Needle exchange
What is harm reduction?
Snus
Nicotine replacement therapy
Nicotine
Drug Harm analysis
Nicotine MCDA
Public Health England e-cigarette report
US flavour ban
WHO stance on vaping
COVID and vaping
Vaping by Clive Bates
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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Over the last few years, Dr Simon Ruffell has worked closely with indigenous communities in the Amazon basin. He is particularly interested in the tradition surrounding the use of plant medicine in the Shipibo tribe. Simon has been looking at the psychological effects of plant medicine and the role that ceremony and spirit play in healing.
In this episode, Simon talks about his research into ayahuasca, the dangers of drug tourism and the ayahuasca diet. Dr Ruffell also explores the cultural history of DMT from a shaman’s pocket to Vogue magazine.
Simon graduated with a degree in medicine from the University of Sheffield before specialising in psychiatry. He has an interest in transcultural psychiatry, working overseas in Northern Uganda. He has a special interest in psychedelic research, namely ayahuasca and has spent the last four years conducting research into the use of ayahuasca in an adapted traditional setting in the Peruvian Amazon. Simon is currently based at The Maudsley Hospital in South London, as well as working as a Senior Research Associate at King's College London looking at the use of psilocybin in treatment resistant depression.
Santo Daime church
Ayahuasca tourism
Ayahuasca foundation
Ayahuasca diet
Shaman’s pouch containing DMT
Kings college
Imperial college psychedelic research group
Brazil Ayahuasca RCT
Barcelona brain imaging trials
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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Neil Woods is a former Undercover Drugs Detective Sergeant whose brief was to infiltrate Britain's most dangerous drug gangs, befriending the foot soldiers before taking on their gangster bosses. Neil risked his life to infiltrate some of the UK's most vicious gangs, by doing so he came to realise the terrifying reality of the drug war in Britain.
During this time, what Neil discovered is that (like most wars) the war on drugs was futile at best and corrupt at worst. He’s now a board member of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP) in the USA and the U.K. LEAP is a U.N. accredited NGO campaigning for an end to the war on drugs. He’s written two books, a memoir Good Cop Bad War, and Drug Wars, with JS Rafaeli.
Gabor Maté’s book on addiction and trauma - https://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/
Burger bar boys - https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/birmingham-burger-bar-boys-gang-11796968
Chief Constable Mike Barton - https://www.durham.police.uk/news-and-events/Pages/News%20Articles/Chief-Constable-Mike-Barton-announces-retirement-.aspx
Ron Hogg - https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/a-man-people-tributes-ron-17526538
HAT/Heroin Assisted Treatment - http://www.sdf.org.uk/heroin-assisted-treatment-provided-glasgow/
Police and Crime commissioner David Jameson - https://www.westmidlands-pcc.gov.uk/your-commissioner/police-and-crime-commissioner/
Drug Consumption Room - https://www.avert.org/news/world%E2%80%99s-largest-drug-consumption-facility-opens-denmark
Good cop bad war - https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1110612/good-cop--bad-war/9781785032707
Drug Wars - https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1114855/drug-wars/9781785037467
LEAP UK - http://ukleap.org/
LEAP - https://lawenforcementactionpartnership.org/
The Stop and Search podcast - https://play.acast.com/s/stopandsearch
LEAP UK - @UKLEAP
LEAP US - @policeforreform
Neil Woods - @wudzee0
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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Dr Ben Sessa was the first doctor to administer MDMA assisted therapy in the 21st century and Christopher Trudgian was one of his very first patients. They both join Professor David Nutt to answer the question… can MDMA be used therapeutically to treat addiction and/or PTSD?
The links between childhood trauma/PTSD and adult addiction are very apparent. It is now well documented that MDMA has a therapeutic potential to treat PTSD could that mean that patients suffering with PTSD-related addiction could benefit from this type of therapy? To do this, Dr. Sessa had to examine the childhood trauma, sexual abuse and the selectively impaired fear response.
Dr Sessa is a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist working in adult addiction services and with custodial detained young people in a secure adolescent setting. Dr Sessa is currently a senior research fellow at Bristol, Cardiff and Imperial College London Universities, where he is conducting the UK’s first clinical studies with MDMA-assisted therapy for the treatment of PTSD and alcohol dependence syndrome. In the last ten years he has worked on several UK-based human pharmacology trials as study doctor or as a healthy subject administering and receiving test doses of LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and ketamine.
Ben Sessa - www.drsessa.com
Why MDMA Therapy for Alcohol Use Disorder and Why Now? Neuropharmacology (2017) - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29126911
Addaction/WeAreWithYou - https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/
MDMA - https://drugscience.org.uk/drug-information/mdma/
MAPS MDMA - https://maps.org/research/mdma
MDMA Assisted-therapy training - https://maps.org/training
Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 - http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1971/38/contents
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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Adam Winstock joins Professor David Nutt to discuss how drug use has changed in the past 20 years and the data that he has collected as a part of the Global Drug Survey (GDS).
Using anonymous online research methods Global Drug Survey runs an annual survey collecting information on people’s drug use. Using this data, the Global Drug Survey creates digital health applications delivering screening and brief interventions for drugs. Survey findings are frank, honest, and revealing. GDS explores the positives and negatives of drug use and detects new drugs trends as soon as they appear. GDS has a unique insight into personal decision-making about drug use. Their international networks of researchers and specialists have extensive experience in data analysis and report writing.
Professor Winstock is a Consultant Addiction Psychiatrist based in London where is he looks after the care of people who use drugs in prison. He is also an honorary clinical professor at University College London, he was previously Consultant Psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital and Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London. Adam has published over 100 research papers and has developed particular clinical and research expertise in the areas of cannabis, new drugs and chemsex. He is also founder and director of Global Drug Survey, the world’s biggest annual survey of drug use trends, the architect of online and smart phone apps drugs meter and Drinks Meter, and the ultra-brief feedback and assessment tool for cannabis use.
Mixmag - https://mixmag.net/
GDS Corona - https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/covid19/
GHB / GBL - https://drugscience.org.uk/drug-information/ghb-gbl/
GDS highway code - https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/brand/the-highway-code/
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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Lucy Stafford is a medical cannabis patient and advocate. Having spent most of her teenage years in severe pain, dependent on opiates and a feeding tube, discovering medical cannabis has transformed her health and quality of life. She is passionate about working towards a healthcare system that integrates the use of medical cannabis in the UK. Lucy is a Director at Patient Led Engagement for Access (PLEA) and patient access consultant for Project Twenty21.
Lucy and Kate Stafford (mother) join the professor to recount their difficulties obtaining a medical cannabis prescription in the UK. From reluctant doctors to Amsterdam coffeeshops, Lucy and Kate have first hand experience of navigating this difficult system.
Ehlers Danlos Syndrome - https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ehlers-danlos-syndromes/
Volcano Vaporizer - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16637053
Cannabis - https://drugscience.org.uk/drug-information/cannabis/
PLEA - https://www.pleacommunity.org.uk
PLEA Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/pleacommunity/
PLEA Community Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/3199307166781022/
Twenty21 - https://drugscience.org.uk/project-twenty21/
Medical Cannabis education - https://drugscience.org.uk/medical-cannabis-educational-slides/
Wheelchair accessible coffee shop in Amsterdam - https://kooi.business.site/
Lucy’s vaporizer - https://www.storz-bickel.com/en/catalog/product/view/id/139
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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Professor David Nutt begins season 2 by taking a deep dive into entheogenic plants with a legend of the psychedelic renaissance - Dennis McKenna. Dennis deliberates on his life’s work, ethnobotany, innovation within psychedelic industry, the therapeutic potential of DMT and the indigenous use of ayahuasca.
Dennis McKenna's research has focused on the interdisciplinary study of Amazonian ethnopharmacology and plant hallucinogens. He has conducted extensive ethnobotanical fieldwork in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon.
Mckenna Academy of Natural Philosophy - https://mckenna.academy/
The Shaman and the Scientist - https://vimeo.com/ondemand/tsats
Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs: 50 Years of Research book https://www.synergeticpress.com/shop/dennis-mckenna/
Symposium launching this book^^^ - www.ESPD50.com
and finally - https://vimeo.com/showcase/4766647 all of the lectures from this symposium on Vimeo
Heffter Research - https://www.heffter.org/
LSD - https://drugscience.org.uk/drug-information/lsd/
Psilocybin - https://drugscience.org.uk/drug-information/psilocybin/
Salvia - https://drugscience.org.uk/drug-information/salvia/
Twitter: @DennisMcKenna4
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Twitter: @ProfDavidNutt @Drug_Science
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How can psychedelics be used to help healthy people? In our last episode we heard about how psychedelics can be used to help the sick, but what about the healthy?
Wellbeing is becoming an increasingly studied element of everyday living. Those that maintain and take active steps to better their own wellbeing are happier people, who are more content with their own existence.
One way in which people are doing this is through the process of microdosing psychedelics. However, we have very little evidence of its effect. Professor David Nutt is joined by Dr David Erritzøe, who is conducting research in neurobiology and the ground-breaking trials into microdosing LSD, asking the all-important question, is microdosing real or placebo? To find out more about Dr Erritzøe's & Dr Szigeti's self-blinded microdosing trial please visit - https://selfblinding-microdose.org/
Furthermore, an individual’s connection with their surrounding natural environment is a strong indicator of that person’s overall wellbeing. Humankind’s apathy for nature has dwindled over the years and a substantial cognitive shift is needed to save us from ecological destruction. Dr Sam Gandy joins Professor Nutt, his research focusses on how psychedelics could save the planet from ecological collapse by remedying our disconnection from nature. For more information regarding psychedelics role in humans connection to nature, please see Dr Gandy's recently released paper with Imperial College London - https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/24/5147
Drug Science is the leading independent scientific body on drugs in the UK. We work to provide clear, evidence-based information without political or commercial interference. @Drug_Science @ProfDavidNutt
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What is the role of psychedelics in medicine? The question professor David Nutt, Michelle Baker Jones and Matt Jackson will be discussing, in the first EVER live Drug Science podcast recording!
The world is entering a new phase of psychiatric treatments. Traditional pharmacology is currently unable to address the decline of mental health and wellbeing. Professor Nutt has assembled some of the best and brightest minds in psychedelic science and wellbeing to address the question- Do Psychedelics have a role to play in mental health and wellbeing?
Guests Include:
Michelle Baker Jones
Michelle is an integrative psycho-therapeutic counsellor. She is a member of the Imperial Colleges Psychedelic Research Team exploring the therapeutic potential of psilocybin. She also offers individual integration sessions for people who are struggling to process Psychedelic experiences.
Special Guest – Matt Jackson
A participant from the Psilocybin for Treatment-Resistant Depression study. Matt, a self-confessed sceptic, sheds some light on what it is like to be given psilocybin in a clinical setting.
To find out more about the film Magic Medicine, visit https://magicmedicine.net/
Drug Science is the leading independent scientific body on drugs in the UK. We work to provide clear, evidence-based information without political or commercial interference.
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Professor David Nutt sits down with Mark Johnson and Ian Miller to
discuss the science, and challenge the concept, of addiction.
• Why do some people become ‘addicted’ to drugs and others do not?
• Is addiction physical or psychological?
• Should drug and alcohol services focus on the drug or the individual?
• How do we as a society treat the cause of addiction?
To answer these questions, Professor Nutt and his guests examine; the Portuguese model, talking to teenagers about drug use, the use of drugs within prisons and the revolving door that this creates.
Mark Johnson is the author of the book ‘Wasted’ and founder of ‘User Voice’. At the beginning of the 21st century, Mark spiralled into addiction and homelessness. He used drugs to replace the lack of love and support he had been deprived of as a child. Now, he is 19 years clean and tackling his addiction head-on.
Conversely, Ian Miller has used drugs all of his adult life but has not developed a dependency. As a rebel in his teens, he used drugs out of curiosity, not as a coping mechanism.
Drug Science is the leading independent scientific body on drugs in the UK. We work to provide clear, evidence-based information without political or commercial interference.
@Drug_Science @ProfDavidNutt
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Professor David Nutt sits down with Joss Stone, Suzi Gage & Hannah Deacon to discuss the recent progress and biggest issues relating to medicinal cannabis. Many people up and down the country have turned to cannabis to alleviate pain & reduce symptoms of a wide range of ailments. Despite this, the drug still carries hefty penalties of up to 5 years in prison, an unlimited fine or both for possession.
Joss Stone is a singer songwriter from Devon. She gained international acclaim for her first album The Soul Sessions and has more recently been on a mission to ‘bring loveliness’ to the world, through music with her total world tour. Find out more about what she is up to at https://www.jossstone.com/
Dr Suzi Gage is a lecturer at Liverpool University & hosts the podcast Say Why To Drugs. She specialises in Drugs and mental health research with a particular interest in the link between cannabis & mental health problems. Follow her @soozaphone on twitter
Hannah Deacon has been fighting for years for her son Alfie to be able to receive cannabis based medication on the NHS to treat his epilepsy. She explains her tumultuous journey at the start of this podcast.
Drug Science is the leading independent scientific body on drugs in the UK. We work to provide clear, evidence-based information without political or commercial interference. @Drug_Science @ProfDavidNutt
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Professor David Nutt sits down with Fiona Measham, Anna Wade & Janine Milburn for an in depth look into why drug testing is so vital at festivals and beyond. Topics discussed include; Janine's views following her daughters accidental overdose, how drug testing works at The Loop's facilities, tackling the idea that the practice sends 'mixed messages', what happens in other countries & the results The Loop are seeing from their work.
Fiona Measham is a Professor of criminology at Durham University. She has also founded the drug testing facility The Loop with the aim of educating and therefor reducing the harms of drugs in festivals and city centres. https://wearetheloop.org/
Anna Wade is the PR manager for Boomtown Fair and has been working there for the past 9 years. She has worked alongside The Loop since 2017. https://www.boomtownfair.co.uk/
Janine Milburn's daughter was one of two people who died from ‘2 high dose’ pills of ecstasy at Mutiny Festival in 2018. She has since been outspoken about her views on harm reduction, and advocates for front of house drug testing at festivals. Georgia Jones – Don’t Go With The Flo
Drug Science is the leading independent scientific body on drugs in the UK. We work to provide clear, evidence-based information without political or commercial interference. @Drug_Science @ProfDavidNutt
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Professor David Nutt, Doctor Christian Jessen and Adrian Chiles in a wide-ranging, frank and open conversation on the topic of alcohol - exploring such topics as their own relationship with alcohol, a ‘healthy’ amount of units a week, binge vs regular drinking, self-medication, health and social ‘benefits’ and harms, the hypocrisy of current regulation, David’s invention of a calorie free, non-toxic synthetic alcohol, and whether or not any of us would want to live in a world where no one drank.
Dr Christian is and award winning TV presenter and medical doctor. His main aim is to help raise medical awareness and simplify, demystify de-stigmatise and explain the sometimes complicated and inaccessible world of medicine to the public. @DoctorChristian
Adrian Chiles is a radio & TV presenter. In his 2018 BBC documentary 'Drinkers like me' Adrian takes a long hard look at his own love of boozing.
Drug Science is the leading independent scientific body on drugs in the UK. We work to provide clear, evidence-based information without political or commercial interference.
@Drug_Science @ProfDavidNutt
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