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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

> maybe some therapy for addiction (of all kinds) and a shift in focus toward health is a better idea than being on a drug for the rest of your life.

It doesn't work for nearly as many people as GLP-1 agonists do. There are many different treatment methods that have been tested and evaluated, and being told to diet and exercise through therapy barely works at all. GLP-1 by contrast works very well.

> At some point, we may find that these drugs cause long-term health problems of their own, too.

Almost sounds like wishful thinking on your part -- you might want to stop and consider why you're so invested in these drugs having long-term side effects.

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I was referring to real therapy, not simply being told to diet and exercise:

https://bpsmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186s13030...

CBT is very good at breaking addictions and other bad thought patterns, and it is the scientific basis on which most hard drug rehabs work. There's no reason to suggest that it works less on food than on heroin.

> There's no reason to suggest that it works less on food than on heroin.

And nobody said it did. But the thought that obese people haven’t considered therapy is absurd. Most of them do so for depression, not the obesity, but they are usually related.

The people who GLP-1 drugs help have not “never tried anything,” including but not limited to “real therapy.”

If CBT and other modalities help someone, great! But they often don’t, and when they don’t, it’s absurd to want them to continue to suffer instead of get help with medication.

> And nobody said it did. But the thought that obese people haven’t considered therapy is absurd. Most of them do so for depression, not the obesity, but they are usually related.

Citation needed. As I understand it, serious therapeutic psychological treatments for obesity are highly stigmatized in the US. You may be projecting your own experience onto a group that does not share it.

By the way, CBT as used for depression and for obesity are totally different types of CBT. CBT methods are highly tailored to the specific thought pattern you want to prevent.

Not just me. I have plenty of friends who have tried therapy many times. Anecdotal, yes, but I’m unfamiliar with any studies about this.

And yes, I’m familiar with the differences. I was simply saying they usually walk in with depression, and move on to obesity.

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