Professor David Nutt

Happy Place

Fearne Cotton

Society & Culture, Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Relationships, Personal Journals

4.6 • 15.2K Ratings

🗓️ 31 July 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Psychedelics have been stigmatised and criminalised for over 50 years, but David Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology and a leading worldwide authority on drugs, feels we’re on the cusp of a major revolution in psychiatric medicine and neuroscience that could see psychedelics being used to treat mental health conditions.

In this chat with Fearne, David explains the difference between the brain and the mind, and how psychedelics switch the latter off so the former can heal and lay down new thinking patterns. They discuss the potential therapeutic purposes of these drugs for conditions including PTSD, addiction, anxiety, and eating disorders.

David’s new book, Psychedelics, has recently been published by Yellow Kite and is available as a hardback, ebook and audio book.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Happy Place with me, Fern Cotton. This is the show that's
0:06.4	constantly curious about ways to keep ourselves mentally well. Today I'm meeting
0:12.8	Professor David Nutt. An addiction is a behavior where people can't stop
0:17.5	thinking about a drug or gambling or something else. So there's a sort of
0:21.3	wanting circuit in the brain which is overactive. There's also a stress
0:25.2	circuit. So you've got these you've got two circuits which are overactive.
0:28.0	Psychedelics disrupt those circuits and they allow people to reflect on
0:33.4	themselves. Psychedelics allow you to lay down new thinking patterns. It's a
0:38.5	process we call neuroplasticity. David is a professor of neuropsychopharmacology
0:43.5	specialising in the research of alcohol and drugs. Working at Imperial College
0:49.5	London he currently leads a unit with a particular focus on brain sciences.
0:54.8	He reckons were on the cusp of a major revolution in psychiatric medicine and
1:00.7	neuroscience and I have to say after reading his brilliant book Psychedelics I
1:06.1	absolutely have to agree. After 50 years of prohibition, criminalisation and fear
1:12.5	science is showing us that psychedelics when used according to tested safe and
1:18.5	ethical guidelines could be one of our most powerful treatments for mental
1:23.6	health conditions. They're showing positive benefits for depression, PTSD and
1:29.3	OCD as well as disordered eating addiction and chronic pain. Sacked from being a
1:35.6	government advisor will hear more about that story from David later. He knew he
1:40.8	had to keep researching and talking about evidence-based drugs policy. So he
1:46.2	set up a charity called Drug Science to act as an impartial and evidence-based
1:51.4	expert group free from any political pressure. I for one I'm so pleased that
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Fearne Cotton, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Fearne Cotton and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.