Dr. David Nutt
Professor and psychiatrist
Alcohol and drug harm
About the expert
Focus: Alcohol harm and rational drug use
A psychiatrist who studies how alcohol and other drugs affect the body and society. He describes alcohol as the most harmful drug once health effects and social costs are counted together. He argues for tracking your own intake rather than following fixed rules. He also invented and sells Sentia, a herbal drink marketed as an alcohol alternative, which is worth knowing when weighing his recommendations.
Why this matters
Academic psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist who has spent four decades on how drugs act on the brain, and who treats alcohol as a drug like any other rather than as a social category exempt from that question. Strongest on the pharmacology and the dose-response, where he sits squarely in the mainstream; his distinctive move is to weigh social benefit against physical harm explicitly rather than leave it out, which takes him past what the evidence alone settles, and he has a commercial interest in a herbal alcohol substitute he invented.