Professor David Nutt, on the science behind hangovers and how new trends in the drinks market could help eradicate them for good.

Alcohol is very much on the agenda as we approach the end of the year and look forward to a new one.

Typically, in December we drink too much and in January, many of us think about cutting back.

In this episode of the Table Talk podcast, Stefan Gates is joined by a very special guest who can offer some real insights into our relationship with alcohol, and specifically hangovers.

Professor David Nutt is a former UK Government adviser and is currently employed at Imperial College London.

He reveals the cost to the economy of people being hungover, why he thinks hangovers should be considered a form of illness, and how he believes synthetic alternatives to alcohol could eradicate some of its least desirable effects.

David Nutt, DM, FRCP, FRCPsych, FBPhS FMedSci DLaws

David Nutt is currently the Edmund J Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology, Head of the Centre for Neuropsychopharmacology, and Director of the Centre for Psychedelic Research in the Division of Brain Science at Imperial College London. 

He is also visiting professor at the Open University in the UK and Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

Professor Nutt was the UK Government’s drug adviser in the late 2000s. 

He was removed from the position in 2009 for claiming that alcohol is more dangerous than ecstasy or LSD. 

The following year, he published a study that showed that alcohol is more harmful to society than heroin or crack cocaine.

Professor Nutt has held a number of significant scientific leadership positions including Presidencies of the European Brain Council, the British Neuroscience Association, the British Association of Psychopharmacology and the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology as well as Chair of the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. 

He has published over 500 original research papers, a similar number of reviews and books chapters, eight government reports on drugs and 35 books, including one for the general public; ‘Drugs Without the Hot Air’, which won the Transmission book prize in 2014 for Communication of Ideas. 

The second edition of this has just been released as has his autobiography ‘Nutt Uncut’.