Everyone’s talking about drugs. The annual UN report estimates that 271 million people worldwide used drugs (2017), 35 million of them severely dependent. Alcohol – also a hard drug – is not included in these figures. The WHO counted 3 million alcohol deaths per year in 2018, and the WHO estimates the number of people severely addicted to alcohol at more than 200 million worldwide. Alcohol is probably consumed by a majority of people. Drugs are therefore an indispensable part of everyday life. So is drug consumption a part of “human nature”? A longing for a change in the “normal state”? The state of consciousness?

This panel discussion features two outstanding authors who have approached the topic in very different ways, Norman Ohler and Daniel Pinchbeck