This weeks podcast discusses the repercussions of Dr David Nutt’s report calling for a reclassification of drugs – saying alcohol and nicotine are comparable in dangers to heroin and coke, and being asked to resign as a result, from the British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which he formerly headed. Humankind has a long history of looking for ways of changing our feelings, our consciousness, our relationship to our environment, from drugs to dancing to twittering. Listen to the discussion.
Transcript:
Welcome to the CNS pod cast featuring Dr Darryl Inaba research director for CNS Productions.
CNS: Hi and welcome once again to the CNS addiction radio pod cast. Im Howard LaMere here with Dr. Darryl Inaba. Darryl interesting things in the news this week – just going through a few of them, some celebrity news of note, or of some note, Andre Agassi admitting to a meth addition in his new book, and weve got some pop music stars and pop actresses having a twitter addiction, and its breaking, breaking them up. But maybe most interesting is the story out of the UK about, about the UKs top drug advisor coming out with a statement on the harmfulness of alcohol and cigarettes relative to other drugs and the trouble he got in.
Darryl: Yeah, its an amazing story, actually those are all kind of amazing stories, and of course the abuse of drugs by people in the news and celebrities and sport stars is really common news. Its more often a happening, than its not happening it seems, and the Jennifer Anistons and beau’s separating because of his addiction to twitter, I know of people here, in Oregon, in the Rogue Valley, who have split up also because of the World of Warcraft. Where usually the male gets so obsessed with it that he doesnt do anything else or doesnt pay attention to what he should at home so wives divorce them. So, that, that addiction, the game addiction, the internet addiction, the twitter, the text messaging, its just growing at epidemic proportions and soon be one of our major things we have to interact with and treat. But this guy, Dr David Nutt, I guess thats an interesting name all in of itself. But Dr David Nutt who is the chief drug advisor for England, who came out with a way of trying to reclassify drugs based upon the harm they cause society and the harm they cause the individual where he ranks alcohol and nicotine above LSD and ecstasy, but he also ranks heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other drugs above nicotine and alcohol. I thought it was a good attempt at trying to actually finally make a statement about the harms that drugs do and the fact that its our legal drugs that cause vast more harm than all of the illegal drugs combined. Of course he didnt do that I wish he would have gone that step further, but to get fired as a chief drug advisor for writing that and making that statement, that just doesnt make sense. So it feels like to me theres a conspiracy of the legal drug people of trying to again vilify the illicit of drugs and keep the competition away if you will, from their position of making so much money. Cause to me they, theres no question, there shouldnt be any question by anybody, that the most harmful drugs in our society are, are, are our legal ones.
CNS: Maybe because they are much more available.
Darryl: Well, thats the other question, should we legalize marijuana then, right now, should we legalize any drugs, if all of our drugs that are legal causes us so much more problems because of maybe their availability, but you know, look at nicotine alone – it kills four hundred forty thousand Americans every year, 440,000. Where are we, we are up there around, 4000-5000 deaths in Iraq, and a thousand deaths in Afghanistan, and people are going nuts but thats been all of these years and weve only lost about six thousand people, and yet every year about 440,000 die from nicotine problems. And weve got another, hundred to 100,000 to 130,000 die of alcohol. I feel that caffeine is responsible for a number of deaths every year, our prescription drugs was just reported, killed 26,000 people a year and theyve got our, well what was I going to say, sugar I guess, I didnt consider that drug. But, but if you look at the, compare that to a number of six thousand that die from cocaine and, and heroin combined, I mean, just the number who die, its clear that its our legal drugs that are much more deadly than all our illegal drugs. Of course the potential for our illegal drugs to be devastating is very true its very up there but the fact is if you want to look at just the number of deaths, the number of people in hospitals, what it costs our health care system and our legal system to deal with these legal drugs. If you want to reclassify them, then you should reclassify them fairly based upon all of those avenues and I dont think anybody would ever argue that its our legal drugs that are our, by far, our worst drug problems.
CNS: Well and I think its really scary that you know a scientists gets asks to resign over this, I mean, whats the point of having a scientist as a, as a consultant to the government if youre not, youre going not even just ignore him but where youre going to give him the boot.
Darryl: Yeah, well we cant be too hypocritical about this, and too holy roller about this because you look back a few years and you know as our scientists were saying that nicotine was non addictive and we should promote that and so its kind of sad but it does show that the politics and the economics do get in the way of good science and good public health. Because Im sure theres a lot of pressure that he caused by saying that you know that ecstasy and LSD are far less dangerous than tobacco and alcohol.
CNS: And marijuana too. But what does it say going back to the very beginning of this discussion, what does it say when so many people are finding so many different things to be or ways to be addicted? I mean that would seem to indicate that its not just a drug problem but its a social psychological problem thats, thats very wide ranging.
Darryl: Well its an awareness problem, well its not even a problem, I think since the beginning of any body recording history and way before that we as a species in which the hominid in the fossil record started developing a neo-cortex, a cognizant aware, a more analytical brain about five or six million years ago and really so with only within the last two hundred thousand years. I think its clear that, that we as a species have, have needed to alter our states of consciousness, change the way we look at the world around us, change the way we feel about the world around us and do things or look at things in, in, from a new perspective and in that effort, drugs do offer that benefit – whether its legal or illegal drugs – they do alter states of consciousness. Now where I think we have gone wrong is that many of the people who Ive talked to in this field, the ethno-pharmacologists, in the pharmacognists and things like that, people like that, sort of therefore think that validates the need for using substances to alter states of consciousness in the same way you just presented. Well look it, every bodies doing it anyway. Well, I think thats really the wrong message, I think we should admit that we need to alter our states of consciousness and its part of our human existence and it maybe keeps us healthy to do so. But drugs may be an unhealthy way of doing it, we need to find more healthier ways that people and cultures and human beings have found since the beginning of their time, theyve found things like music, that effectively alter their states of consciousness, dance that effectively, a spirituality if, you know theres so many wonderful ways, just jogging or exercising, and that, that we need to embrace what we are doing with those activities that while altering our state of consciousness and embrace that more that you do it that do those things to do so rather than you know saying that its acceptable that drugs are the only way to do so.
CNS: I wonder if it has to do with things that are easier, or more accessible or more popular, more you know, faddish if you will, certainly twitter, I think falls into that fad category.
Darryl: You know its really strange because anybody can dance, I mean you know, like Im not saying were Fred Astaires or anything and some of us may not be very good but thats not the point, the point is, to free your mind to change your thought patterns, to do things differently, and we should be all encouraged to do so and its easy to do so but its but somehow weve evolved in modern society for when we do those activities we rarely pay attention to what we feel in our brain. Were maybe trying to look at how other people look at us, or how that other person is dancing with us, or outside rather than now focusing back at how is my brain feeling when Im dancing. How is my brain feeling when Im singing, you know, how is my brain feeling when Im doing these other healthier activities and thats I think the message we need to bring, because those are the healthy ways to alter states of consciousness and theyre effective and easy ways to do so. The only way, or reason that drugs that come out of plants and amphibians, even arachnids or weeds or you know the only reason those chemicals that are found in those various places, do anything to our brain is because they happen to mimic, disrupt, interact with, or somehow mess with our own natural brain chemistry, and therefore if we have receptor sites in our brain to provide these effects, that means weve already got natural chemicals in our brain to do everything that these drugs can do for us, and what we need to do is just pay attention to these activities or things that were involved with that make our brain feel the same. Like Agassi for instance, I mean, how can he be, how can amphetamine make him feel better than when he won a national championship or a worldd championship or played a real, real tough game and came up on top. You know your brain is going to be higher than I think on any amphetamine; in fact, amphetamine only works because it releases a natural brain stimulant in the first place. So he already had that capacity he just didnt pay attention to it when he was doing it naturally and chose instead to artificially abuse it.
CNS: I keep saying this but as our society, our societys become more complex they, it seems to be more over whelming the human, the human mind and so it searches repeatedly, endlessly for some kind of escape.
Darryl: Obviously we are just on this huge run a way train, its getting more and more technology just by the minute and how were going to be even driving around and what we were going to be having for energy is going to change I think within the next fifteen years, were going to have another change where we wont even be able to think about how we had incandescent light bulbs and how we used gasoline to drive cars and things like that. I remember going through my whole high school and college science career and everything, using the slide rule, and we didnt even have a calculator. You know we just had slide rules, and the closest to a calculator was an abacus or something like that. But now you know, no kids have, you know theyll have to use these tremendously powerful calculators and, computers to do the work but in looking at even with all of that if we look back at the, what, what youre talking, the idyllic times, when we were much simpler life and people were living in much easier, much more clear easy situation, I think what most people would be shocked to find is that they were abusing drugs back then. They were abusing substances to alter their states of consciousness, I still believe that the way opium was discovered by human beings was somebody came across these luscious flowers with these what looked like these apple on a stick growing right next to these opium poppy balls. These hunters and gatherers maybe a hundred thousand years ago, or ten thousand years ago and thought they were something to eat, chopped down on it, maybe threw it up a little bit because it was so bitter tasting but enough of it got into the system that that individual or band of individuals says well I think were staying right here, were not moving from this spot and out of that grew the civilizations, the great city states of Mesopotamia, the first organization of human beings into any kind of a social structure came about I think because of these drugs that alter states of consciousness. So its, its not enough to say that its a modern run away technology and thing thats creating all this need to alter states of consciousness I think that its, part of our brain, I think its hard wired into our brain that we need to, maybe because we are much more inquisitive, we have a mind thats more analytical, we need to look at things from different perspectives all the time in order to continue our existence, in order to continue our growth, to satisfy what is uniquely ours and thats the neo-cortex the human brain thats very different from the animal brain, Having said that though, all mammals abuse the same drugs that human beings do and they dont have a neo-cortex. So maybe its even more primitive than that.
CNS: So it goes back to the brain. Well this is an interesting topic and weve just you know skirted upon it, danced with it a little bit. Your questions and comments, of those who are listening, are always welcomed. To make a comment stop by our web site cnsproductions.com and you can drop an email or comment on the pod cast blog-space which ever one you find easiest to use. Darryl thanks.
Darryl: Thanks for stimulating topic you actually got me thinking even more today.
CNS: Well, thinking is good. Ok, see you next time. That wraps our pod for today. Thanks for visiting the CNS pod cast. Please check back soon for the next in the series and visit our website www.cnsproductions.com.