Instant Genius - Why we should rethink our relationship with alcohol

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

The shocking fact is that alcohol is responsible for around three times more deaths globally than any other drug combined, save for tobacco. However, many of us still consume it. So how have we reached this point, and why is alcohol consumption still so deeply ingrained in human culture? In this episode, we speak to Professor David Nutt about the history of alcohol use and the many and varied effects it has on our health, lives and wellbeing. He tells us exactly what alcohol does to our bodies and brains, why some of us find it so difficult to stop drinking once we’ve started, and why education is vital if we are to limit the damage alcohol causes to public health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition. First Citizens Bank. Now more people than ever can bring in their bill for a better deal at Verizon. Got AT&T or T-Mobile? We got you.

Xfinity or Spectrum? You too. So tell your friends, your family, your quirky neighbor Jeff. Grab your megaphone and yell it from the rooftop. Get a better deal at Verizon. Because chances are anyone in shouting distance is included. in your AT&T, T-Mobile, Xfinity, or Spectrum bill, and we'll give you a better deal on the best network network. Come by Verizon today.

Best Network based on root metrics, best overall mobile network performance. US second half, 2025. All rights reserved. Must provide recent consumer mobile bill on the name of the person redeeming the deal. Additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's

MMA pioneer Gina Carrano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. and the best have you wait in the world, Frances Ngano versus Felipe Lins. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio, and focal. Streaming has made music more accessible than ever, but true listening is about more than ease. It's about quality.

British audio experts name audio, alongside French acoustic specialist focal, combine and handcrafted tradition with cutting-edge innovation and high-end materials, delivering digital precision with analogue warmth. So you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio.com to learn more. Hello and welcome to Instant Genius, a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. Every Monday and Friday you'll hear world-leading scientists and experts talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor at BVSI's science focus. The shocking fact is that alcohol is responsible for around three times more deaths

globally than any other drug combined, save for tobacco. However, many of us still consume it. So how have we reached this point and why is alcohol consumption still so deeply ingrained in human culture? In this episode we speak to Professor David Nutt about the history of alcohol use and the many and varied effects it has on a health, lives and well-being. He tells us exactly what alcohol does to our bodies and brains. Why some of us find it so difficult to stop drinking once we've started, and why education is vital if we're to limit the damage alcohol causes to public health. So Professor David Nutt, welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much for joining us. Thanks for inviting me. So today we're talking all about alcohol. So let's start with some numbers first before we get into the sort of the meat of things. So people

familiar with your work will know that one of the messages you're keen to get across is the fact that the harm caused globally by alcohol is greater than that of any other drug I know it's more than it excluding tobacco but all recreational drugs or recreational intoxicants if you sum all the deaths from those so that's stimulants that's opiates there's cannabinoids etc yeah alcohol is about three times that of everything else put together so I think for most people that would be quite shocking due to the prevalence of alcohol use. Yes.

So let's have a look at the history of alcohol use then. How did we reach this point? Because it's so ingrained in our society. Yeah, that is really a critical question. And the answer is we stumbled upon rotting fruit when we moved out from the sort of deep jungles into the savannas. We found fruit that was rotting. We ate it.

We discovered. I saw other animals eating it and enjoying it. And we realized actually it could take away some of the people. pain and distress of living a hand-to-mouth existence. And we've been seeking the pleasures and the relaxation of alcohol really ever since humans existed. There's a really interesting theory by an American anthropologist called Edward Slingerland. His theory is that the core basis of human society was when we stopped being nomadic

and we settled down to grow things and we settle down to grow wheat. And Johann Hariri thinks growing wheat led to civilization because it made people stable. So while they were waiting for the wheat to grow, they could do other things like develop language and mathematics, etc. Slingland says, no, we didn't grow wheat to make bread like Hariri thought. He said, we grew wheat to make beer. So it was actually beer that brought humans together as a culture. And we've used it ever since. The other thing about alcohol is it when you ferment water with sugars and yeast to make alcohol, you kill off the toxic bugs.

So until about 200 years ago, the only safe, potable form of liquid was actually beer, weak beer or in the continent it was wine. So people were brought up to think of alcohol as essentially the safest drink and water as a rather dangerous. thing. Yeah, I've heard before that going back a few hundred years, English housewives would all have a sort of bucket of beer in the kitchen that they'd use as their daily sort of liquid hydration. Absolutely. That was called small beer, and it was sort of less than about 3%. And then you went for the heavy beer. A great term they still used in Scotland. The heavy beer was the sort of 4% upwards, which you drank at night or at weekends for celebration. So I don't know if you'd agree with me, but I think personally, one of the reasons that alcohol use is so sort of, I guess I'd say pernicious,

is that drinkers can kind of make it fit any situation. So I'm promoted at work, I'll celebrate with a drink. It's my birthday. I'll celebrate with a drink. I've lost my job. I'll console myself with a drink. I've had an argument with my partner. I'll console myself with a drink. You know, what can we say about that? Do you agree with that? No question. I mean, alcohol is present from the day we're born to after we're dead. And the reason for that is that it's a very social drug. When people are celebrating in groups, there's always a degree of anxiety. I like to say that humans are really social creatures.

The reason we are the utterly dominant species on this planet is because we work as an amazing team. I mean, look, we've got a team here already. I don't know any of you, but I'm, you know, I'm working. working with you. So we are phenomenally social, but we're also a little bit anxious of strangers. And sometimes we're quite anxious of our own extended families. And alcohol reduces that anxiety. So it's used in social engagements to dampen down social anxiety. And actually, that's why it should be used. That's why it exists. That's why it has been perpetuated. I mean, yeah, go back to the Bible. You know, what everyone knows, you know, after the raising of Lazarus, the next great.

achievement of Jesus was turning water into wine in the wedding at Cana. Why was wine important in Jewish weddings? Because that's how you really, it was a celebratory drink. It brought the whole of the family and maybe the tribe together. But of course it's evolved also to be a deadening agent, a dampening agent. And that's where people get into problems. If we just use it to celebrate once in a while it would be okay but if you're using on a daily basis to deaden the stress of work or to you know deaden the trauma that you've had sometime in your life to numb yourself from stress then it does that but it builds up problems because you actually get dependent and and also in the withdrawal state what you're trying to dead and gets worse so sort of sticking

with the social thing I mean personally speaking I know I can say several times I've been to in a barbecue or somebody's birthday or something didn't really want to drink, but I had one anyway, you know, just because that's what's done. Well, you're quite right, it's become a social norm, hasn't it? And in fact, it's a huge problem because for people, particularly people, presumably not you, but others who've actively decided never to drink, they're seen as weird, they're seeing as outcast, and there's huge pressure on them to drink, and it is very unfortunate. And I think that reflects, like it reflects two things, it reflects ignorance, and it reflects.

It reflects advertising, which basically shows that the best way to socialise is through alcohol. That advertising is pervasive. But on top of that, I think it's also those of us who drink actively denying the harm. So someone I use is not drinking. When you're exposing our frailties, you're exposing our basically illogicality, and people don't like that. So do you think attitudes are changing? So I can say one, like personal anecdote that I have, when I was younger, I was. worked with an older person. I guess he must be in his late 70s now. And he told me in the 60s

that he would go to the pub, have a few drinks, and then he'd go home and he'd go for a drive to sober up, which is just absolute mad, absolute craziness, isn't it? That's why we brought in the drink driving loss. But do you think, so now these days, like, apparently younger people are drinking less. We have more alcohol-free options. Do you think this shift is actually happening? The shift is slightly more complicated than that. So, yes, there are definitely a larger proportion of young people are either drinking nothing or drinking less. But the overall consumption in young people hasn't gone down. And that tells you that others are drinking more.

And so we're getting a sort of polarisation, very heavy drinking, exceptionally heavy drinking now in particularly young professional women. We're now drinking actually drinking more than men, which is quite worrying, because women are more vulnerable to the effects of alcohol than men, particularly metabolic effects. But the reason a significant proportion of people are drinking less is fascinating. And there are several factors.

Partly it's health, partly people realize that alcohol is more toxic than they were led to believe because of the sort of messages that this program is putting out. I think it's partly to do to the mobile phone. I think the prospect of doing something really stupid when you're drunk and having it filmed and having immortalised forever by your friends, and putting it into the cloud.

It's actually quite disturbing for something because it could actually destroy people's careers. And we've seen that. I mean, that student in Newcastle who got very drunk on a pub crawl and he peed on a warm memorial. And it almost destroyed his life, you know, the attacks he had. But also, I think we're actually moving now

into another phase where younger people are actually looking to the old ones like the car you used to look after. That was rather blind. kind of a bit thoughtless. You know, we know more. We're more educated. We can find the truth about the harms of anything much more easily than you did before.

Because it used to be that wonderful old adage, you know, what's the definition of an alcoholic? An alcoholic is by definition of someone who drinks more than their doctor. And given the fact that doctors, medical students and doctors drink more than the average, it was actually quite difficult to get a diagnosis for an alcoholic in the old days. And actually that did seriously impede the roll out of effective treatments. But now young people are much more cynical. They find out the data for themselves and come to their own conclusions. So let's sort of stick with this cultural aspect that surrounds

alcohol, which I think is really interesting, which is the use of language. So you mentioned the women who are drinking. So we've got wine o'clock. Yes, we've got have a tipple. You know, they're all very sort of warm, friendly terms, you know. And I think that's interesting. There's something psychologically going on there. You know it's harmful, but you just say, oh, I'll just have it, I'll have a tib, I'll have a weed ram. Yeah, well, of course, in the old days,

the worst one of what was one for the road. Now, that was all right if you were sitting in the back of a horse-drawn carriage, but when you're driving a motor vehicle, that's extremely dangerous. Basically, it illustrates the point that alcohol is, for many people, a very warm, very beneficial drug. It makes people have fun socially. I mean, most, I think I can certainly say for my generation,

the vast majority of people who are in partnerships have met and engage with their partners over alcohol. So alcohol has that rather special role. And that's an important role for human society. One of the theories that Slingerland came up with for great sort of, you know, pre-ancientian era monuments like Stonehenge was that they were built so that people would know where to go to get drunk. They were festival sites. It brought together tribes to consume alcohol, mostly in the case of the UK beer, obviously, in places like Turkey that would be wine. And there were two purposes of that. One was to sort of make peace with the other tribes for a bit, and the other was to get partners and spread the gene pool. You can argue that again, if alcohol successfully

spreads sort of the genetic diversity of humans. It actually had quite a big impact on maintaining humanity as a, or humans as a species. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere in a crowd, but too often life gets busy, or the price holds you back. Priceline is here to help you make it happen.

With millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars, you can go see the game live. Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com. Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. You thought this was your run club era. Turns out, it was more of a thinking about run club era.

The good news? Someone's marathon training is about to start. Sell your workout gear on D-pop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. They get their race day fit and you get a payout for trying. Someone on Deepop wants what you've got. Start selling now.

Deepop where Taste recognizes taste. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. With over 100 years of combined expertise, Name and Focal have been bringing music to listeners just as the artist intended. Since day one, this mantra has shaped every innovation in high-fi design, technology and acoustic engineering. balancing craftsmanship and tradition with pioneering thinking.

Name Audio pushes cutting-edge technology to ensure digital precision whilst sustaining Pratt, pace, rhythm and timing, the elusive quality that makes music feel alive and gives it emotional texture. Today, in partnership with French acoustic specialist focal, name audio creates systems that deliver exceptional sound, and unforgettable listening experiences at home. for yourself at a focal powered by name boutique, visit focal powered by name.com for more information. So let's move on to physiology then. So say I have an alcoholic drink. What happens? What's going on in on my body and my brain? Yeah, so I can ask that question a lot, and I always have to ask a

question back. Would that be your very first ever drink? Or would that be a drink that you are your favorite drink? Let's start with your first ever drink, you know. I don't know what you'll split it out. The first time you, I mean, I don't know if you can remember your first ever drink. Yeah, Dad, can I have a lager shandy? I hated it, yeah. Yeah, but why is shandy? I suppose I wasn't allowed a proper lager. Yeah, I was probably about 13 or 13.

But of course, shandies exist in part so that the horrible bitter taste of the hops that is in lager doesn't make you want to spit it out. If you take a chatt, a baby and you put your finger in a, you know, into a vodka, glass. us and put it on their tongue. They will, it's really horrible and aversive. People say they drink alcohol. I say no one, unless serious alcoholics, drink pure alcohol. Because it's really aversive. We all drink alcohol that is flavoured in some way.

And some of that flavouring is like shandy, it's sweetener to encourage people to drink. And of course, that's one of the huge, one of the worst, I think, marketing behaviours we've had over the last 30 years is to make breezers, to make sweet forms of rum and vodka so that young people can drink them without knowing there's an alcohol taste in them. They drink them right lemonade. And of course, that can lead to serious intoxication and even death sometimes. But as you get more sophisticated, get more used to drinking, other things happen. So if you are a regular drinker, and say you have your favorite glass of wine, the first thing that happens is that you're already enjoying it as you pull the cork.

As you begin to pour it, and you feel it and taste it. All those actions are activating a circuit in your brain. That has over, I don't know, in your case, maybe 20 years, become conditioned by the experience of the alcohol, eventually getting into the brain, and you saying, wow, I enjoyed that. So when people say, I absolutely adore this aroma of, you know, my 1964, you know, shadow, whatever,

what they're actually saying is over the time, And the alcohol has made them enjoy that. Because to give it to someone who has never drunk it before and they wouldn't appreciate it at all. It would actually be rather different from any other wine they had before. And there's a really interesting anecdote. So there's this very famous wine, you know, Latour wine, the Latour Claret. And the guy, I was giving a lecture at a university and economics department. And we were having dinner afterwards.

and the professor of economics said, we were drinking some quite pleasant wine because he was a wine buff and he said, I've got to tell you this story, David, he said, I was in China a couple of years before, and he said, and they opened. They opened a tour of 64, you know, like 500 pound bottle of wine.

I had never tasted it. He said, I was gagged out. Fantastic. I'm going to taste one of the ultimate wines. So they poured it out, and before he could pick it up, they filled it out with Coke. because they hate the taste

but they wanted a show after that they were drinking the one of the world's most expensive wines he said I didn't know what to do because I didn't want to embarrass them it was like talking about having the glass taken from your lips so how about our brains because obviously anyone who's been around people have had too much to drink

knows that somebody who's very previously mild-mannered can become aggressive or there's the old oh I love you mate thing and you know What's going on there? It's complicated. Alcohol is a very promiscuous drug

and promiscuous in the sense that it works on multiple neurotransmitters. So you're aware that there are maybe 80 different neurotransmitters in the brain. And it's almost certain alcohol affects all of them at certain concentrations. But it does it in a stepwise fashion. And that's another reason why it has survived so long.

Because if you just have one drink, you generally just relax. and you don't get into trouble. In fact, you generally don't have massive increase in accidents. And that's because the first drink turns on the relaxing transmitter in the brain called Gabba. When you get anxious, Gabba levels the down and alcohol pushes them up or pushes the function of Gabba up to take away social anxiety. Great. When you get to the next drink, Gabba is acting maximally.

Fine. But something begins, for many people, begins to trigger at that level of the second drink. And that then makes them want to drink more. And there's a sort of moorishness. And we've seen that. And we've seen that. We all know people that say, I'll just come for two drinks. And you know, as soon as they've had the second drink, they will lose control.

And that's because, as the alcohol levels rise, it begins to release dopamine. No, dopamine is an activating transmitter. It also releases endorphins. And endorphins are pleasure chemicals like dopamine. But they're also disinhibiting as well. So the push of dopamine makes you active and loud and noisy. And the push of endorphins makes you, I don't care anymore. And then the vicious cycle of drinking more takes over.

And then eventually, once you've had about five or six drinks, and hopefully most people don't get to there, but many do. You get to a state where you have blackouts. You don't remember what you're doing or you've done. And that's because alcohol then blocks the transmitter called glutamator. And that is the main excitatory transmitter in their brain. Your brain is working.

Now, everything that you have heard me say, every thought you've had about what I've said, every vision that's happened in the last 20 minutes, has been encoded by glutamate. And if you block glutamate, eventually you're anesthetized, and alcohol used to be used as anesthetic, and eventually you're dead. And that complex sort of staircase effect of alcohol explains why people have different responses. And some people go deliberately to get the dopamine. Some people go, and they will drink half a... bottle of wine or a bottle of wine before they go anywhere because they know they're going to be up

and ready for action or ready for fighting, etc. Yeah, so how about the strength of the alcohol that you're drinking? So a lot of people say, well, you know, I don't have a problem because I only drink beers or wines. I never touch spirits. The strict answer is that there's no difference, provided you consume the same amount of alcohol. Of course, it's quite easy to drink far too much alcohol if you're if you're drinking a spirit if you drink you know we don't serve spirits in pint glasses for a good reason but because we used to you know when the gin craze hit London when we liberated basically liberated the the market for distillation people were drinking a lot of gin because it was the same price as beer but but you could get a lot more

intoxicated and that's that's it that's when we started bringing in controls on drinking through taxation and actually pretty successful now. By and large, with the exceptions of strong ciders, which are undertaxed, I mean a strong cider can have as much alcohol as a weak wine and for historic reasons because cider is a good British drink. We haven't taxed cider as a bread, but we're beginning to do that now. But by and large, the taxation reasonably reflects the amount of alcohol that's in the drink. So how about real sort of what I guess you'd called problem drinking. So some people can just have a glass of wine on a, I don't know, on a Saturday with their

dinner and just leave it at that once a week, once a month. Other people, once they start, it's so difficult for them to stop. What do we know about that? We know that there are at least three drivers to loss of control. So we know 80% of the British adult population drink alcohol to some extent. probably about 15% have problems. And of course, that is why it's still so popular, because for most people, alcohol doesn't lead to problems,

but 15% of 80% of the population is millions of people. And that is also why it's a huge problem because of the bulk of numbers of users. So why do people get into problems with alcohol, where there are three main drivers? The first is very typically young people, who were drinking to get really high. And when they get so high, they lose judgments.

And they sometimes even damage their brain through fights or through traffic accidents, et cetera. So they're in sort of the early onset, people with alcohol dependence. And then there's another group, and this is the largest group. Those are people from sort of 20s onwards who are stressed, have tough jobs,

who are, you know, maybe suffering, you know, Maybe they're, you know, financially strapped as well. So life is stressful and they turn to alcohol to reduce stress, which works. It relaxes them and they come home, you know. Have a drink. It relaxes them. But if you do that every day for months or years,

in the end, you become more vulnerable to stress. So you have that cycle of drinking. And then there are other people who have got formal psychiatric disorders like PTSD, you know, where the, Chromatic memory comes back every day, every night. And we don't have good treatments for PTSD. And so many people, the majority of veterans with PTSD, drink excessively because it numbs the experience

and the reliving of the traumatic memories. And they end up becoming dependent on alcohol as well. So let's have a look at dependence then. Let's start with tolerance. So a lot of people talk about alcohol tolerance. Yes. So in some ways, it's seen as a badger. of honour, isn't it, like, amongst certain people?

Absolutely. He's a good lad or whatever. He can drink six, eight pints or something. But does it vary from person to person, or is it only sort of based on habit? And acquired, yeah. Well, both are both. And there's some remarkable work done here in Bristol with the Alspac cohort. This is following children over a period of, I think now they're about 30. And they monitor drinking behaviors when they were in preteens. A lot of people could start drinking before them. And they essentially kind of proved a theory which was developed by a guy called Mark Shuckett in America. He noted that the sons of male alcoholics had a very high propensity to become alcoholic. And they often were less affected by alcohol.

They were the people that would still be standing when all their mates. And so they did get kudos. You know, he's a hero because he can take his booze. But they end up becoming alcoholic. And in fact, the ASPAC cohort was a sort of independent verification that if you are very resistant to alcohol, paradoxically, you're more likely to become alcoholic because you drink more, because you can drink more.

And in fact, you know, it's very common in, you know, I'm a psychiatrist, it's quite common. to talk to people, particularly people who are very anxious. Actually, they say even a small amount of alcohol makes them feel a bit difference. So they'll never get drunk because they're just terrified that they won't be able to control themselves when they're drunk. So there is a genetic component. But then on top of that, yes, the more you drink, the more tolerance you develop.

And then the more tolerance you develop, the more you need to drink. And that vicious circle is what eventually spirals people into severe dependence. So you mentioned their children. Does the sort of the age at which you take your first drink affect your drinking habits later in life? Yeah, that's a really difficult question. And it's such an important question because, you know, there are protagonists for the theory. Well, you can teach people to drink sensibly by introducing alcohol to them, as your father did to you in a weak form in a social gathering so they can learn how to drink socially.

And others are just saying, no, don't let them have anything. until they're 18. And we don't know the answer to that. I mean, it's quite likely that, you know, for some people, one work for other people, the other work, but it's impossible to, you know, to actually make a general statement. What we can say is that the drinking age doesn't seem to have a huge impact because we know in the UK the drinking age is 18. And the median age for becoming alcohol dependent is.

15. And we know in the UK, for the last 40 years, we've been monitoring these data, half of all 15 to 16 year olds are drunk once a month. That's three years before. So early drinking is very, very common. The drinking age doesn't seem to make much difference. In America, and it's now, the drinking age is 21. But the median age for becoming alcohol dependent is now 18. So kids will drink before they're allowed to drink because they see other people drinking. And I don't, what message does that have to us? I think the message is you need a different approach. You can't, legislation isn't working.

It's got to be something like education. Or as I've been trying to do, give people alternatives. So let's sort of stick with dependence. So another tone that gets thrown around quite a lot is they're a functioning alcohol dependent person. I mean, is there such a thing? Totally. And that's one of the more chilling discoveries in the last 20, 30 years.

And the most staggering data that I came across from the work of Professor Nick Sherron from Southampton University. So he's a world expert on alcohol-related liver disease. And in his liver unit in Southampton, he would assess hundreds of people every year for liver disease. Most of them were alcoholic.

A third of them never met the criteria for being alcohol dependent. They were just people, ordinary people, who just drank a bottle of wine every evening with their meal. Middle class people just drinking because that's what you do. I mean, doesn't everyone drink a bottle of wine with them? If you watch the TV, if you watch Netflix or HBO, that's what everyone does. You know, the placement of alcohol, particularly in relation to women's eating and drinking, is staggering. We have normalized, maybe that's the biggest social change in the last 50 years, is we've normalized wine drinking. You can see that, there's massive increase in wine consumption.

We've normalized wine drinking with meals. Drinking wine with meals doesn't make it less toxic. So we've talked about it a lot. So let's have a look at some solutions then. What can we do? what can we do to stop this problem, which is obviously huge? Yeah, well, the first thing is accept as a problem. And we're getting there.

We haven't quite got there yet. I mean, we still advertise alcohol. Despite David Cameron saying, we would stop doing that. We don't advertise tobacco, but we advertise alcohol. They don't actually promote drinking, but they promote the value of the entertainment industry. And the fact that the drinks industry is also being really good at undermining in a very subtle way the evidence alcohol is harmful. So until about 10 years ago, and I remember this absolutely vividly, because I remember where I was, I was in my flat in London, and it was breakfast news.

And I remember University of Sheffield, which is the sort of Britain's leading centre for looking at the harms of alcohol, came up. Someone, one of their spokespersons came on, so we've just done this report. And it was about the justification for minimum unit pricing in Scotland, which eventually the Scots took on. But this was when the process was just beginning. So we're probably talking about 2010 or something. And the drinks industry had someone on there. And the drinks industry person said, well, there's no proof that minimum unit pricing will work. And I could feel the tension.

It was silence. The Seffield academic was silent. Because I knew he had to say, yes, there isn't any controlled trial showing that. But he didn't want to say that. And he didn't know what to say. What he should have said, of course, was, well, actually, you know, the gin epidemic in 1720 showed that pricing has a huge impact on consumption. But he got locked into this, well, is there real proof in the modern era? And it was great.

The drinks industry undermined the argument. It took seven years for the Scottish Parliament to get minimum unit pricing through. It eventually ended up in the European Court of Justice. Anyway, so the drinks industry fights a very clever, very long game. That's the first thing. And it uses all sorts of myths like, well, can we really say alcohol's bad when there's a bit of evidence that if red wine might be beneficial to the heart? that's spun for about 12 years, 15 years.

Well, people believe that the reality is red wine is great for the heart. If you live in Providence, eat lots of polyunsaturateds and get lots of vitamin deep from the sun. Yeah, great. But if you're drinking red wine and, you know, cheat red wine in Glasgow or Belfast or Bristol, it's not going to protect your heart. So the dissembling the machinations to undermine the health message. And then on top, there's also this misunderstanding by the treasurer. I mean, the one thing the drinks industry is good at is paying taxes every month, every quarter of the drinks industry.

So, you know, there's a steady income. And when we say things like, well, look, if we could reduce drinking, we would reduce health costs. The Treasury said, yeah, but that'll be a long time coming. You know, we might not even be in power. You know, the government, well, the reality is it's not, actually, one of the interesting aspects of that is it the Scottish experiment with minimum pricing show that that assumption was wrong because if you reduce alcohol consumption, even by about 10%,

which is what minimum pricing did in Scotland, the predominant impact is on two groups. It's on people who are really, really suffering from alcohol. One of the reasons the Scots brought in minimum pricing was because at that time, 40% of all the intensive care beds in Scotland were occupied by people whose illness was due to drinking. And if you reduce that from 40% to 30% which they did,

that's a massive health cost. And it's immediate. So we can argue against the supposition that actually it takes a long time for changes in alcohol policy to come to benefit the Treasury. And we're winning. I mean, you know, programs like this are helpful as well because the public, I think, now, beginning to understand at least there's a debate.

both ways. So say alcohol didn't exist. Yes. And then tomorrow, somebody invented it, and it came onto the market. Do you think that would be a legally controlled drug? Yes. In fact, it's one of the interesting aspects. Some of you may know in 2016, Theresa May through when she was Home Secretary, Theresa May was convulsed by hatred of people using drugs. So she brought in the Psychoactive Substances Act, not realizing that alcohol was the psychoactive substance. And that created huge problems for the government. And what they did was they said, oh, yes, it is a psychoactive substance.

But we're exempting it from the Act. and those of us who thought the Psychoactive Substance Act was an insane piece of legislation. The first time in the history of this country, you had a legal act. They didn't have any examples of what it was talking about. There was not a single agent drug mentioned in the Psychicicistisicine except alcohol, tobacco and caffeine. So alcohol was exempted proving the government knew it was psychoactive. So we wrote to them and said, well, what is the criteria for exemption? and they said the exemption is based on precedence.

And actually I can accept 40,000 years of alcohol, use his precedence. But if we invented it today, we wouldn't have that precedence, would we? So what would we do? Well, what we would do is this. You would put your alcohol through food safety testing. And it would fail. It would fail because this has been done, the maximum recommended amount of alcohol to any individual should consume in a year based on the toxicology is a large glass of wine per year.

So it would fail. That's why they had to exempt it because you couldn't put it through normal testing. So that tells you how relatively harmful alcohol is. But I want to finish with, I don't want to, my approach to alcohol is not that it's, all bad. If it was all bad, it would have disappeared. And the point is, there are good aspects to it. And it would be really nice if we could maximize the benefits and minimize the harms. And that's, you know, what a lot of my research at present is about. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought to you from the team behind

BBC Science Focus. That was Professor David Nutt. To discover more about the topics we've just discussed, check out his book, Drink, The New Science of Alcohol and Your Havis. health. If you liked what you just heard, then please do consider subscribing to Insidgenius on your preferred podcast platform. If you'd like to see our guests and hosts in person, then please also check out our YouTube channel at ScienceFocus. The current issue of BBC ScienceFocus magazine is out now. Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or download us on your app store of choice. You can also find us on Apple News or online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal.

The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analogue warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist focal, Name creates high-end audio systems, combining innovation with craftsmanship, so you can listen to music, just as the artist intended. Discover more at Name Audio.com. Thank you.