David Nutt

Nutt completed his secondary education at Bristol Grammar School and then studied medicine at Downing College, Cambridge, graduating in 1972. In 1975, he completed his clinical training at Guy's Hospital.

He worked as a clinical scientist at the Radcliffe Infirmary from 1978 to 1982 where he carried out basic research into the function of the benzodiazepine receptor/GABA ionophore complex, the long-term effects of BZ agonist treatment and kindling with BZ partial inverse agonists. This work culminated in a ground-breaking paper in Nature in 1982 which described the concept of inverse agonism (using his preferred term, "contragonism") for the first time. From 1983 to 1985, he lectured in psychiatry at the University of Oxford. In 1986, he was the Fogarty visiting scientist at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, MD, outside Washington, D.C. Returning to the UK in 1988, he joined the University of Bristol as director of the Psychopharmacology Unit. In 2009, he then established the Department of Neuropsychopharmacology and Molecular Imaging at Imperial College, London, taking a new chair endowed by the Edmond J Safra Philanthropic Foundation. He is an editor of the Journal of Psychopharmacology, and in 2014 was elected president of the European Brain Council.

In 2007 Nutt published a study on the harms of drug use in The Lancet. Eventually, this led to his dismissal from his position in the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD; see government positions below). Subsequently, Nutt and a number of his colleagues who had resigned from the ACMD founded the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, later renamed as Drug Science.

Nutt has since produced numerous prominent reports on drug policy through Drug Science, while launching campaigns of support for evidence-based drug policy; including Project Twenty21, Medical Cannabis Working Group, and the Medical Psychedelics Working Group. In 2013, Drug Science launched a peer-reviewed journal - Journal of Drug Science, Policy and Law - for which Nutt was appointed Editor. Nutt also hosts the Drug Science Podcast, in which he engages drug policy experts, policy-makers, and scientists on the topics of drugs and drug policy.

Nutt is the deputy head of the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London. …

Building on his extensive research on the role of GABA in the brain, and the psychopharmacology of alcohol, since 2014 Nutt has spoken publicly about his desire to bringing-to-market a compound which could act as a "safer" replacement to alcohol and mimic some of its effects – namely, "conviviality" – by affecting the GABA receptor without the negative health impacts of alcohol. Nutt has named the compound "Alcarelle", but has not yet disclosed the exact chemical composition; preliminary tests employed a benzodiazepine derivative, with later adaptations aimed at improving efficacy and reducing abuse potential.

In 2018 Nutt's company GABALabs (previously called "Alcarelle") lodged patents branded as "Alcarelle," for several new compounds proposing to more closely mimic the desired "conviviality" of alcohol. As of October 2019, no research has been published regarding the efficacy, safety, or long-term health impacts of these compounds, nor have they been made publicly available to consumers.

In January 2021, the science team at GABA Labs released-to-market a plant-based functional alcohol alternative, under the brand "Sentia," and advertised as a "botanical spirit" reported to reproduce the relaxed and social effects typically associated with the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

In collaboration with Amanda Feilding and the Beckley Foundation, Nutt is investigating the effects of psychedelics on cerebral blood flow.

Nutt previously worked as an advisor to the Ministry of Defence, Department of Health, and the Home Office.

He served on the Committee on Safety of Medicines where he participated in an inquiry into the use of SSRI anti-depressants in 2003. The inquiry drew criticism for Nutt's participation, based on potential conflict-of-interest over his financial involvement in GlaxoSmithKline, which led to his withdrawal from discussions of the drug paroxetine. In January 2008 he was appointed as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), having previously served as Chair of the Technical Committee of the ACMD for seven years.

As ACMD chairman, government ministers have repeatedly clashed with Nutt over conflicting opinions regarding drug harm and drug classification. In January 2009, Nutt published an editorial in the Journal of Psychopharmacology ("Equasy – An overlooked addiction with implications for the current debate on drug harms") in which the risks associated with horse riding (1 serious adverse event every ~350 exposures) were compared to those of taking ecstasy (1 serious adverse event every ~10,000 exposures).

The word equasy is a portmanteau of ecstasy and equestrianism (based on Latin equus, 'horse'). Nutt told The Daily Telegraph that his intention was "to get people to understand that drug harm can be equal to harms in other parts of life". In 2012, he explained to the UK Home Affairs Committee that he chose riding as the "pseudo-drug" in his comparison after being consulted by a patient with irreversible brain damage caused by a fall from a horse. He discovered that riding was "considerably more dangerous than [he] had thought ... popular but dangerous" and "something ... that young people do".

Equasy has been frequently referred to in later discussions of drug harmfulness and drug policies.

The issue of the mismatch between lawmakers' classification of recreational drugs, in particular that of cannabis, and scientific measures of their harmfulness surfaced again in October 2009, after the publication of a pamphlet containing a lecture Nutt had given to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London in July 2009. …

David Nutt lives in Bristol, with his wife Diana. He has four children.

Nutt is a Patron of My Death My Decision, an organisation which seeks a more compassionate approach to dying in the UK, including the legal right to a medically assisted death, if that is a person's persistent wish.