In the grim far future, instead of an interlock device on your car after a DWI, how about some gene therapy to vaccinate against alcoholism via alcohol dehydrogenase?
(I note that another article on the front page is entitled "The most precious resource is agency", though I haven' gotten to it quite yet).
There are also attempts to specifically create drugs that will be identical to alcohol but without the negatives. Whether that will ever come to fruition, and be legal, I don't know. For example https://www.menshealth.com/uk/nutrition/a30117412/alcohol-ha...
Tolerance builds up fast, a couple of weeks at most for daily use, then you have to taper down or risk dealing with terrifying withdrawals (insomnia, vivid nightmares, anxiety), which are (somewhat ironically) diminished/eliminated by using alcohol.
Gabapentin I don't think is nearly as popular, though a couple of years ago I was told that it had become a hugely popular drug in UK prisons for some reason.
Very interesting person indeed, though I've met two unrelated people who've worked with him and both had great things to say about his science, not so great things to say about his personality / ego / way of working. But I hope he succeeds in his mission, and I'm already grateful for his speaking truth to power back when he got fired by the government for telling people the actual facts about how dangerous different drugs are.
Yep, Nutt always made a lot of sense to me. I never got the point of having an independent drug advisory committee if the government wasn't going to listen to a single thing it said, lean on them to say what that wanted to hear instead, and indeed make policy completely at odds with the science.
25mg orally would feel like a mild alcohol buzz, and would last for up to 4 hours.
Around 10mg nasally (either as powder or as a nasal spray) would have a similar effect, but would only last up to 2 hours.
DISCLAIMER: I am not suggesting anyone try this, it's information for educational purposes only!