Dr Chris van Tulleken has been working in a GP surgery in east London for weeks trying to treat specially selected patients without drugs. Now he wants to use what he's learnt to supersize his social experiment and offer drug-free treatments to all 14,000 patients at the practice.
When no-one turns up to his drug-free clinic, Dr Chris learns that patients just want a quick fix - people are busy and they prefer to pop a pill than motivate themselves to make lifestyle changes.
But with hard marketing from the receptionists, Chris finally gets a new patient. Crystal is taking 30 pills a day for extreme chronic pain in her back. Things have got so bad that she can't leave her house without a neck brace and a back corset. Over the course of five months, with a dramatic process of withdrawal from her addictive meds, Chris leads her on an extraordinary road to recovery.
Meanwhile, another patient, Sarah, is struggling to complete her drug-free therapy. She's been taking antidepressants for the last eight years, and Chris is hoping that cold-water swimming will steady her mood sufficiently to come off them. But a series of tearful phone calls show Chris that giving up her medication won't be easy. He will need to find a completely new strategy to help this young mum go drug free. While working with Sarah, he discovers that one of the most common tools to diagnose depression - a questionnaire - is developed by a drugs company who make drugs that treat depression.
Back at the surgery, Chris discovers the close relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and GPs is everywhere. He attends a practice lunch that is sponsored and paid for by a drugs company. Dr van Tullekkan believes this is a 'total disgrace' and 'a simple bribe'. He engages in a series of confrontations with the GPs and representatives from the pharmaceutical industry to try to put a stop to the drug-sponsored lunches. But can he pull it off?
Before he leaves the practice, he comes up with on
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