High Society (2016)

British people use Nitrous oxide more than any other country in the world, and it recently became the second-most popular drug in the UK. The media became obsessed with the drug after a handful of deaths associated with it – often over-inflating its dangers. The government’s response has been to include it in the Psychoactive Substances Act. This is a law that came about in response to the popularity of legal highs, putting a ban on the sale of anything that can change your mental state (except alcohol, cigarettes, and coffee). Now, selling nitrous carries a sentence of up to seven years. We set out to discover what happens when you ban a substance overnight, and how dealers will continue to supply Britain with its best-loved gas.

Timmy Davis is not an alcoholic. But like many twenty-something students, he's worried he may be drinking too much. And cutting down isn't easy. The feel-good memory associations that our minds create – between the sight of a cold pint of beer and pleasure, for instance – lead to the cravings that sustain addictive behaviour, and cause us to relapse. Dr. Ravi Das is a neuropsychopharmacologist at University College London whose research explores whether we can intervene in addiction by weakening those memories. His latest experiment theorises that ketamine – a controlled drug notorious for its recreational use (to attain a state of intense dissociation and incapacitation described as a 'K-hole') – may have the makings of the elusive 'forgetting pill' – a drug that, administered under correct clinical conditions, can weaken specific memories safely. Timmy has volunteered for Dr. Das' latest experiment, in which 90 volunteers will receive a ketamine infusion in a controlled setting. Timmy is no stranger to psychedelics. But could a drug he has previously encountered recreationally really help him cut down his drinking?