Dan Lewer

Visiting Research Fellow, National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC)
December 2019
Each issue we ask someone from the alcohol and other drugs sector to share a little about their work and life.

This weekend I will...

Stay with my family in North Sydney and then fly to New Zealand for a summer holiday (VERY exciting for someone from rainy London).

I wish I'd never... 

Started a systematic review (JOKE). I wish I’d never started watching Love Island 2018 – that really killed my summer.

I'd originally planned to work...

As an ‘inventor’, which is what I wanted to be when I was a child. I liked taking old radios and computers apart – I loved the components and microchips. Later I thought I wanted to be a banker, but that turned out to be wrong.

The qualities I most value in my colleagues are... 

Being interested in things.

I'll never forget...

Using the wrong milk in my tea in the confusing feudalist milk sharing system that prevails in local government offices in the UK. This led to a public shaming and me drinking black tea for the remainder of my time in that job. I’m happy to say that NDARC has A LOT of milk and anyone is free to use it in their tea (why so much milk guys??).

If I had more time, I'd...

I’ve got lots of time. It’s more a problem of motivation.

I'm most scared of...

Employers who require you to complete timesheets. Or Bayesian statistics? Going to prison? Actually it’s climate change. And ischaemic heart disease.

For my next holiday...

I’m going to New Zealand for a month!

I can't get enough of... 

Reality TV shows like “pimp my ride”, “scrapyard scavenge”, “home improvement battle royale”, “stationary cupboard survivors”, “date my mom”, “America’s top conveyancing solicitor”, etc.

I'm really terrible at...

Pub quizzes.

Career wise, I’m most proud of... 

Being awarded a UK NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship to study healthcare for people who use heroin and crack cocaine (crack in the UK is somewhat analogous to methamphetamine in Australia). There are so many important priorities for health research and I feel privileged to have this opportunity, so I hope I can do something useful.

My big hope for the drug and alcohol sector is...

That we can find safer versions of psychoactive drugs (or ways of using drugs) that will give the benefits of drugs without so many costs. And that we can move on from public debates that seem to stem from the stigma around drugs and who is to blame, like “is addiction a disease?”, or “anyone could become homeless or addicted to drugs” (not true), and just focus on helping people.

The sector's biggest challenge going forward is...

I’m not sure what the biggest challenge is, but one of them is the high prevalence of tobacco smoking among people who use drugs. It’s probably not the top priority if you’re worried about things like housing and safety, but it does end up causing the most excess deaths.

Dan Lewer

Dan Lewer is a public health registrar in London and an NIHR Doctoral Research Fellow at UCL. His research focuses on how the NHS in the UK can provide better care for physical health problems among people who use heroin and crack cocaine. He is a visiting research fellow at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW Sydney, where he is researching healthcare quality for people prescribed opiate substitution therapy in Australia.