128. Former Doctor, Former Prisoner with Dr Tim Kerr

·50 min·3 clips

On St Patrick’s Day 2017, police arrested Kerr on the wards while he was the doctors’ mess president.

1. The Drug Science Podcast episode centers on Tim Kerr, a former doctor and former prisoner, speaking with David Nutt about drugs, medicine, and prison. 2. Kerr is a research worker on fear memories at the Institute of Psychiatry, and David Nutt introduces him as a rising young research star with an unusual CV. 3. The episode asks how Kerr moved from Newcastle medical school to drug use, arrest, rehab, and prison. 4. Kerr says he chose medicine because he was good at science at school, wanted a guaranteed career, and had early exposure to the NHS after his father died of cancer when he was 11. 5. He describes a 2008 gap year at the Bank of England during the financial crisis, where he earned about £1,500 a month and started drinking heavily after work. 6. Kerr says he became known as a heavy drinker at Newcastle and did not connect the alcohol education in medical school with his own behavior. 7. During a fourth-year elective in Miami, he drank four-loco-style drinks, had what he calls almost a seizure on the beach, and then took his first ecstasy pill from a friend who sold it to him. 8. He says that first ecstasy experience pushed his mood from “minus one and zero” to “plus one,” and he soon turned to the dark web to buy drugs more cheaply. 9. Back in Newcastle, Kerr says clubbing culture, festival drug supply, and his own selling supported a pattern of repeated ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine, nitrous oxide, GHB, and psychedelics use. 10. He says cocaine felt subtle compared with ecstasy, which is why he could take it at post-work drinks, on dates, and on a Saturday afternoon. 11. Kerr says work as a doctor functioned as a protective factor because shifts, nights, and colleagues gave structure, even as he turned up late smelling of alcohol on some occasions. 12. The arrest came in his second foundation year when a co-defendant’s iPhone named him in a conspiracy to import and supply drugs, and police arrested him on the wards on St Patrick’s Day 2017. 13. He spent that night in Newcastle police cells, then faced a police interview where his lawyer advised “no comment” as officers read out allegations. 14. Kerr says he self-reported to the GMC, was suspended from work, and kept using drugs while lying to the trust, occupational health, and the drug-and-alcohol service. 15. He moved back to London to live with his mother, entered the NHS Practitioners Health support pathway, and tried to stop for two months so his hair test would come back clean. 16. Kerr says he cracked within a week, and a GMC-appointed psychiatrist’s blunt statement that “there is another way” helped push him toward rehab. 17. He spent six weeks in residential rehab at Cloud House in Wiltshire, started an antidepressant, and began attending AA meetings most evenings. 18. The interview style is frank and chronological, with David Nutt pressing on drinking, cocaine, prison conditions, and the practical details of dependence. 19. Listeners interested in medical careers, addiction, and prison life will likely follow this closely. 20. Listeners wanting a light or purely academic drug-policy discussion may skip it.

As heard by us

A sober, unusually candid addiction story, told with calm restraint.

Tim Kerr's story carries the episode. A former doctor and former prisoner, he describes how addiction can break apart a professional life while the person behind it keeps trying to function.

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Why you'd press play

Hear a former doctor and former prisoner explain how cocaine use and lying kept his life spinning out.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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