Ozempic (Diabetes drug that is also used as miracle weight loss tool) may also act as anti-addiction drug

[CitizenVectron]

Could Ozempic Also Be an Anti-addiction Drug? - The Atlantic

WWW.THEATLANTIC.COM

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People taking Ozempic for weight loss say they have also stopped drinking, smoking, shopping, and even nail biting.

 

Really interesting stuff.

 

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Earlier this year, she began taking semaglutide, also known as Wegovy, after being prescribed the drug for weight loss. (Colloquially, it is often referred to as Ozempic, though that is technically just the brand name for semaglutide that is marketed for diabetes treatment.) Her food thoughts quieted down. She lost weight. But most surprisingly, she walked out of Target one day and realized her cart contained only the four things she came to buy. "I've never done that before," she said. The desire to shop had slipped away. The desire to drink, extinguished once, did not rush in as a replacement either. For the first time—perhaps the first time in her whole life—all of her cravings and impulses were gone. It was like a switch had flipped in her brain.

 

Quote

As semaglutide has skyrocketed in popularity, patients have been sharing curious effects that go beyond just appetite suppression. They have reported losing interest in a whole range of addictive and compulsive behaviors: drinking, smoking, shopping, biting nails, picking at skin. Not everyone on the drug experiences these positive effects, to be clear, but enough that addiction researchers are paying attention. And the spate of anecdotes might really be onto something. For years now, scientists have been testing whether drugs similar to semaglutide can curb the use of alcohol, cocaine, nicotine, and opioids in lab animals—to promising results.
 

 

[TheLeon]

I could use me some of that.

[Guest]

Considering that the scientists don’t really know how GLP-1 injections cause the hunger reductions that mostly drive the weight loss, not terribly surprising that there could be other impacts. The sort of hunger feelings that obese people have are pretty equivalent to the way people addicted to other things describe their addictions.

[marioandsonic]

23 minutes ago, TheLeon said:

I could use me some of that.

 

[best3444]

I'm an addict so this is definitely interesting. 

[SuperSpreader]

I'm addicted to Rock & Roll

[stepee]

1 hour ago, SuperSpreader said:

I'm addicted to Rock & Roll

 

maybe this will finally allow me to quit you baby

[Uaarkson]

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in addiction it’s to be wary of magic bullet solutions.

[CayceG]

This sounds suspicious. And I wonder what the side effects are down the line. Because it sounds like it directly interacts with your brain chemistry. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

6 minutes ago, CayceG said:

This sounds suspicious. And I wonder what the side effects are down the line. Because it sounds like it directly interacts with your brain chemistry. 

 

I'd imagine that a treatment that curbs addictive behaviors must interact with brain chemistry by default.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, CayceG said:

This sounds suspicious. And I wonder what the side effects are down the line. Because it sounds like it directly interacts with your brain chemistry. 

It is altering various hormone levels, so, yes indeed it is impacting brain chemistry.

 

17 minutes ago, Uaarkson said:

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in addiction it’s to be wary of magic bullet solutions.

 

I don’t think it is any sort of magic bullet, even the weight loss effects are very scattershot. But whatever it is that is leading to the reduction in hunger feelings seems to indeed impact other cravings in certain people. Just a couple of common anecdotes I’ve heard from those in the diabetes world; a sudden aversion to fried foods and booze by people who were very regular consumers of both.

[Keyser_Soze]

Isn't this the drug for dogs or is that something else?

[GoldenTongue]

Not terribly surprising.  A sizeable plurality, if not outright majority of new drug interventions for mental illness over the past decade have been drugs originally used for treatment of other conditions: anti-convulsants used for treatment in OCD, anti-seizure medications used in treatment of depression/BPD, hell, I think there was a drug used for treating osteoporosis which was repurposed for treatment of schizophrenia.

 

It's been great, considering that in many of these instances, the side effects are significantly less severe and intrusive than those of drugs which were traditionally used.

 

Semaglutide's been an interesting one to watch as its use has grown from diabetes treatment, to weight management, with a fairly strong success rate, although like many pharmacological interventions, it isn't uncommon to see rebounding once the treatment ends.

[Spork3245]

22 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Isn't this the drug for dogs or is that something else?

 

It's for diabetes (in humans).