How to drink alcohol without destroying your health | Prof. David Nutt

Welcome to ZOE Science and Nutrition, where world leading scientists explain how their research can improve your health. The sound of a cork popping at a New Year's Eve party, the invigorating buzz of a busy bar on a Friday evening. Alcohol is embedded deeply in our collective consciousness. Whether it's unwinding after a stressful day, celebrating a promotion, or drowning our sorrows, alcohol is usually our drug of choice. But would you still want that drink if you knew that apart from tobacco, alcohol kills more people than all other drugs combined? Today, I'm joined by David Nutt, a psychiatrist and professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London. He's the world's leading expert on alcohol, having published over 500 original research papers, eight government reports, and 40 books. His passionate, outspoken dedication to sensible science backed drug policy has landed him in hot water, but the evidence is on his side. In this episode, he explains why alcohol is so harmful, why it's still so popular, and how you can start cutting down today. By the end of this episode, you'll have the cold, hard facts about alcohol and some simple tips to help guide you on how you could reduce your intake. And indeed, if you should. David, thank you for joining me today. Nice to be here. It's a real pleasure. We always start these shows with a rapid fire Q and A with questions from our listeners. And we have some very strict rules. You can say yes or no, or if you have to, a one sentence answer. Yes. You got it already. Alright. Is alcohol more harmful than the drug ecstasy? Yes. Can reducing alcohol intake improve your sleep? Yes. Should the government ban alcohol? No. If I'm only drinking a glass or two of alcohol a night, could it still be affecting my mental health? Depends on the size of the glass. So yes. Do I need to cut out alcohol completely in order to improve my health? No. And finally, what's the biggest misconception that people have about alcohol? That middle aged men benefit from drinking red wine. Alcohol is sort of so pervasive in the world. I've never really thought about the fact that at some point in the past, our ancestors must have discovered how to make it. And if I'd guessed, I would have assumed this was, like, two or three thousand years ago. But I understand you told our research team that our ancestors have actually had a love affair with alcohol for a really long time? Well, we don't know when humans first started the manufacturing alcohol, but they almost certainly met alcohol through rotting fruit. And they would have been fascinated by why other animals were foraging around trees, fruit trees, plum trees, etcetera, where the stuff had fallen on the ground and fermented. They would have eaten that, and they would have found it was psychoactive. The first sort of recorded evidence of producing alcohol …