Bookshop
Insightful reads written by Drug Science founder, Professor David Nutt. All proceeds contribute to the work of Drug Science.
Psychedelics
We are on the cusp of a major revolution in psychiatric medicine and neuroscience. After fifty years of prohibition, criminalisation and fear, science is finally showing us that psychedelics are not dangerous or harmful. Instead, when used according to tested, safe and ethical guidelines, they are our most powerful newest treatment of mental health conditions, from depression, PTSD, and OCD to disordered eating and even addiction and chronic pain.
Professor David Nutt, one of the world’s leading Neuropsychopharmacologists, has spent 15 years researching this field and it is his most significant body of work to date. In 2018, he co-founded the first academic psychedelic research centre – underpinned by his mission to provide evidence-based information for people everywhere. It revived interest in the understanding and use of this drug in its many forms, including MDMA, ayahuasca, magic mushrooms, LSD and ketamine. The results of this have been nothing short of ground-breaking for the future categorisation of drugs, but also for what we now know about brain mechanisms and our consciousness.
At a time where there is an enormous amount of noise around the benefits of psychedelics, this book contains the knowledge you need to know about a drug that is about to go mainstream, free from the hot air, direct from the expert.
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Drug Science and British Drug Policy: Critical Analysis of the Misuse of Drugs Act
For half a century the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 has dominated ill-conceived approaches to the prohibition of drugs and the criminalisation of many offenders. Wilful blindness to scientific facts has distorted the dispensation of justice, prevented lifesaving investigation, sidelined critics and thwarted advocates of politically inconvenient drugs law reform.
This once in an epoch review by experts from a range of disciplines, Drug Science and British Drug Policy shows how lawmakers and the media have ignored the scientific evidence to sustain badly founded rhetoric in favour of blanket bans, punishment and the marginalisation of opponents. Countless individuals (including the vulnerable, deprived, addicted and mentally ill) have therefore suffered unnecessarily.
This, the most comprehensive critique of the 1971 Act yet, rests on the combined learning of leading medical, scientific, psychiatric, academic, legal, drug safety and other specialists to provide sound reasons to re-think half a century of bad law.
A thorough examination of the 1971 Act which challenges long outmoded ideas. Demonstrating political and media distortions the book calls for fresh thinking and urgent reform. Drug Science and British Drug Policy is first-rate, in-depth and highly informed.
Cannabis
(Seeing Through the Smoke)
Underpinned by his two-year research trial in partnership with the Royal College of Psychiatrists, involving up to 20,000 patients, which will create Europe’s largest body of evidence on the plant’s medicinal qualities – Professor David Nutt and his team of scientists will break the mould on the way we use Cannabis for our health in the future.
In David’s first ground-breaking book on the subject, he will cover its impact of all areas of the body and the brain and its effective use for treatment of illness from chronic pain, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and PTSD, to anxiety and depression. This is the essential knowledge that cuts through the noise and give us evidence-based information that will change people’s lives.
Brain & Mind Made Simple
Most people know David Nutt as the UK’s sacked Drug Czare – ‘kicked out’ for speaking truth to power i.e. that UK policy on drugs and alcohol was not fit for purpose, driven by politics not science. But in a life outside politics Nutt is an acedemic, psychiatrist, and researcher who studies the brain to help understand how it goes awry in mental and neurological problems.
A few years ago, before Covid, he started giving public lectures explaining how the brain works and how alterations of the mind can occur as a result of changes in brain function. They were extremely popular with lots of questions. So he decided to write-up the lectures in this book for the general public, and anyone else with an interest in the field, especially university students of psychology, medicine, and neuroscience.
Nutt Uncut
The autobiography of Professor David Nutt describes his life, distinguished career and scientific achievements, including his research into the human brain and the effects that both lawful and criminally illegal substances (including psychedelics) have on the brain and behaviour. It also catalogues with expert precision the risks of harm to drug users and others of a range of well-known drugs.
Surveying the state of medical knowledge around various currently prohibited substances – from hard drugs to LSD, cannabis, ecstasy, magic mushrooms and poppers – Professor Nutt ranks their potential harms and benefits (e.g. in treating anxiety, depression or pain) leading him to challenge the distorted logic of a blanket ban on anything psychoactive except alcohol, tobacco and caffeine.
Nutt Uncut contains far, far more about the usually hidden world of drugs, their use, abuse and role as a political bargaining counter – making It of interest not just to the many experts and others who already support the author’s campaign for a frank, evidence-based approach to drugs but also anyone who wishes to learn about what he describes in Chapter 11 as ‘more policy madness.’
Drugs Without the Hot Air
The dangers of illegal drugs are well known and rarely disputed, but how harmful are alcohol and tobacco by comparison? What are we missing by banning medical research into magic mushrooms, LSD and cannabis? Can they be sources of valuable treatments?
The second edition of Drugs Without the Hot Air looks at the science to allow anyone to make rational decisions based on objective evidence, asking:
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What is addiction? Is there an addictive personality?
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What is the role of cannabis in treating epilepsy?
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How harmful is vaping?
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How can psychedelics treat depression?
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Where is the opioid crisis taking us?
Drink?
The New Science of Alcohol + Your Health
Alcohol – a simple molecule that can induce so much pleasure and pain at the same time… As the most harmful drug in the UK, it has a profound and wide-reaching impact on our health and on society at large. Drink? is the first book of its kind, written by a scientist and rooted in 40 years of medical research and hands-on experience treating patients. Professor David Nutt cuts through the noise to explain the long- and short-term effects of alcohol, makes complex science digestible and takes readers through its journey inside the body and brain from the very first sip.
Drink? holds the key to all the questions you want to know the answers to, covering mental health, sleep, hormones, fertility and addiction. It sheds light on what ‘responsible drinking’ truly means and equips us with the essential knowledge we all need to make rational, informed decisions about our consumption now and in the future.