Nutt Uncut

David Nutt

Description

A direct challenge to politicians and others by a world expert on drugs.

Sujets

• Sciences et techniques
• Neuroscience
• Neurosciences

Informations

• Publié par: Waterside Press
• Date de parution: 20 avril 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781909976955
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Nutt Uncut
David Nutt
Foreword Ilana B Crome
Copyright and publication details
Nutt Uncut
David Nutt
ISBN 978-1-909976-85-6 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-909976-95-5 (EPUB ebook)
ISBN 978-1-909976-96-2 (PDF ebook)
Copyright © 2020 This work is the copyright of David Nutt. All intellectual property and associated rights are hereby asserted and reserved by the author in full compliance with UK, European and international law. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, including in hard copy or via the internet, without the prior written permission of the publishers to whom all such rights have been assigned worldwide.
Cover design © 2020 Waterside Press by www.gibgob.com. From an image that first appeared on the cover of The Week now owned by the author.
Main UK distributor Gardners Books, 1 Whittle Drive, Eastbourne, BN23 6QH. Tel: [phone]; [e-mail] ; www.gardners.com
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Cataloguing In-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
Published 2021 by
Waterside Press Ltd
Sherfield Gables
Sherfield on Loddon, Hook
Hampshire RG27 0JG.
Telephone [phone]
Online catalogue WatersidePress.co.uk
Email [e-mail]
All royalties from the sale of this book go to Drug Science.
Table of Contents
Publisher’s note vi
Acknowledgements vii
About the author ix
The author of the Foreword ix
Dedication xi
Foreword xiii Becoming Conscious: Politics and the Science of Breathing 17
Umbilical research 21
Pre-clinical medicine in Cambridge 23
My first knowledge of (un)consciousness 25
Mentors and mistakes 28
Medical training in London and my first psychiatric patients 31 Shocking Times: Bombs and Life Threats 37
Beyond ECT — Can we replace it? 45
Could ketamine replace ECT? 48 Revealing Anxiety Through Reframing Benzodiazepines 53
A most important accident in anxiety research 58
How inverse agonists revealed the complexities of benzodiazepine tolerance and withdrawal 60
Anxiety in the clinic — Could the benzodiazepine receptor be to blame? 64 Struggles with Serotonin 73
How anti-depressants revolutionised brain science 74
Testing serotonin in the brain 82 Alcohol — A Drug or Not a Drug? 91 Ecstasy or Not? 99
Perverse effects of precursor bans 101 Conflicts Over Cannabis 111
The Runciman Committee — Drawing the Battle Lines 111 The Scale of Harms 125
To vape or not to vape? 134 The Sacking 141
My dismissal 143 The Rise of Drug Science 149
How Drug Science works 152
The cannabis challenge 152
The conundrum of cannabis 157
Medical cannabis 158 And It Gets Worse! More Policy Madness with the Psychoactive Substances Act 161
Banning nitrous oxide — no laughing matter! 165 Resurrecting Psychedelic Research with Magic Mushrooms 171
Turn- off , not turn- on 173
Altering the ‘self’ circuit 178
Increased creativity under psychedelics? 180 Psilocybin and Depression 185
The first psilocybin depression study 190
What does psilocybin do to the depressed brain? 195 A General Theory of Psychedelic Actions — Imaging LSD and DMT 199
Is the brain an instrument of controlling the mind? 205
Finding the entities? Ayahuasca and DMT 206
From brain imaging to future therapeutics 209
Microdosing — Less is more? 210
The psychedelic treatment revolution across the globe 211 Moving MDMA back into the Clinic 215 Coda: Further Reflections and Timeline 223
1972–1975 Guy’s Hospital 227
For the Record — Times and Dates 232
Index 242
Publisher’s note
The views and opinions in this book are those of the author and not necessarily shared by the publisher. Readers should draw their own conclusions concerning the possibility of alternative views, accounts, descriptions or explanations.
Acknowledgements
I have been extremely fortunate to have been supported by many exceptional people throughout my life. Without them things would have been very different. Special thanks must go to my wife Di, and our four children, Jonathan, Stephen, Suzannah and Lydia, who have been both my fiercest critics and greatest supporters. I am especially grateful to my parents and, as I was the first child of my generation, my aunts and uncles were always hugely positive about almost everything I did. As a child I was truly in receipt of a surfeit of the uncritical positive regard so vital for developing children’s sense of their own worth. Mr Gregory my junior schoolteacher, who introduced me to science, needs a special mention, and we stayed friends for decades after I had left his school.
My research career wouldn’t have happened if not for the opening given to me by David Grahame-Smith at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Clinical Pharmacology Unit. And, particular thanks are due to his deputy, Richard Green who supervised my thesis and put up with my arrogance and occasional rudeness with remarkable patience. Michael Gelder the Professor of Psychiatry at Oxford facilitated fast-tracking my clinical psychiatry training to allow me more time for research which then resulted in me obtaining my Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellowship. My two-year spell at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States of America (US) was made possible by Markku Linnoila and Boris Tabakoff, who headed the Alcohol Institute there. I am especially grateful to John Lewis, the Head of Research for Reckitt and Colman for funding me to return from the US to set up my own Psychopharmacology Unit at Bristol University in 1988. I would also like to thank Professors Jimmy Mitchell and Gethin Morgan for welcoming me to their university.
Also, thanks are due to the Edmond J Safra charity who funded my professorship at Imperial College London. My charity Drug Science would not have existed without the vision and financial support of Toby Jackson, plus Richard Garside who hosted us at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London.
Finally, I want to thank all those who worked with me as colleagues and students and without whom I would have achieved nothing. Many I have mentioned in the text and the students are listed at the end of Chapter 16 .
It is important to mention that this book doesn’t cover all my research and clinical work, just topics and events that I felt are most interesting to the general reader. So, there are some colleagues and research themes that I have left out despite their having played a huge part in my career. Specifically, I would like to mention Alan Hudson and Robin Tyacke for their pioneering work on imidazoline receptors and their ligands, and Anne Lingford-Hughes for her leadership of our addiction imaging research team that included Jan Melichar, Fergus Law, Mark Daglish, Louise Paterson, Liam Nestor and Judy Myles.
David Nutt
October 2020
About the author
David Nutt is the founder of Drug Science and Chair of its Scientific Committee. He is the Edmund J Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and Head of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Centre for Academic Psychiatry in the Division of Brain Sciences, Department of Medicine, Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College London.
He is also Visiting Professor at the Open University and Maastricht University in The Netherlands. His leadership positions include (or have included) the presidencies of the European Brain Council, British Neuroscience Association, British Association of Psychopharmacology and the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, as well as Chair of the UK’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He is a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians, Psychiatrists and the Academy of Medical Sciences; UK Director of the European Certificate and Masters in Affective Disorders courses; and a member of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy.
David Nutt has edited the Journal of Psychopharmacology for over 25 years and acts as the psychiatry drugs advisor to the British National Formulary. He has published over 500 original research papers and a similar number of reviews and book chapters, eight government reports on drugs and 31 books, including Drugs Without the Hot Air , which won the Transmission Book Prize in 2014 for Communication of Ideas. His full CV appears in the Timeline at the end of Chapter 16 of this book.
The author of the Foreword
Ilana B Crome is Professor Emerita of Addiction Psychiatry at Keele University. She is Chair of the Board of Trustees of Drug Science; Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist, Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, St George’s Hospital, Stafford, Staffordshire; and Honorary Professor, St George’s University of London.
Dedication
To all three generations of my family for their total and uncritical support and for putting up with my many irritating traits and behaviours.
Foreword
Ilana B Crome
I was thrilled to read the autobiography of Professor David Nutt. He once told me: ‘I just love my job!’. This is reflected in the sheer enthusiasm with which he recounts an in-depth picture of his professional and personal journey: the choices he made, the outcomes achieved, and their nuanced interrelationships.
Looking back, very early on, David Nutt already displayed many of the characteristics which propelled him along the trajectory he depicts. Even as a young child, as his values were forming, he was troubled by injustice and inequality. At the same time he questioned and was inspired by teachers and peers. A prestigious scholarship to Cambridge set him on the route to discovery and achievement which culminated in accolades throughout his career. As he progressed through clinical medical and psychiatric training in the most esteemed centres in the UK and abroad, he continuously availed himself of opportunities to extend h