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Comment by matwood | Hacker News Reader

And not just weight loss, but the people I know on GLP-1's have also significantly cut back on alcohol. I think there are ongoing trials around GLP-1's and general addiction.

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I've heard similar for gambling, and as one of the sister comments said, things like video games. I'm so curious to understand _why_ that effect is there, but I've heard this so many times now that I do believe that it exists in some capacity. Such an interesting world we're opening up here.

Every person I know who tried to give up smoking has the same story - they were successful for a while and then they encountered some stressful moment (exam, work deadline, etc) and they fell off the wagon. One explanation could simply be that normally we have food stresses which manifests in general stress which we relieve via video games or whatever else. If these drugs turn down the volume of hunger then maybe this has the benefit of reducing the need for stress relieving behaviours in general.

I’ve taken a GLP for two years. It resets your dopamine reward system. It helped me lose 80 lbs and I’m running now. Zero craving for alcohol and sugar. But, my libido is like 3x lol.

If some rando internet dude thinks I’m weak or stupid, fine with me. It’s a drug that has improved my life in ways that are difficult to describe.

As a rando internet dude, that just sounds like you found medication that works for you. That's great!

>my libido is like 3x lol

Something that eliminates all your drives except your sex drive, a miracle drug surely.

Weird that this is not talked about more, but I don't see a lot of ads in general so maybe it is.

> One explanation could simply be that normally we have food stresses which manifests in general stress

Our biology is parsimonious. I'd bet that when our brains first started processing higher-level stresses, it salvaged the hunger pathway instead of engineering something biochemically new.

I wouldn't speculate on the cause of action, however all those activities are linked by activation of the dopaminergic reward circuit, so semaglutides might have some broad based anti-addiction properties by moderating dopamine activity.

My hypothesis is addiction is generally a secondary application of overeating. Getting pleasure from eating a surplus when you’re not hungry is adaptive (or at least was for most of human history).

In a lot of ways these other behaviors are similar, it wouldn’t shock me if it’s a shared underlying mechanism originally to encourage eating a calorie surplus.

Because it alters your rewards system, pretty simple.

It helped me cut back on my drinking significantly. I'm not an every day drinker but a weekend binge drinker and the amount I drink when I drink is down by I'd estimate by around half or more.

I find my compulsion towards videogames is decreased. Not eliminated, but I feel much less compelled to be playing all the time.

I'm curious if this affects smartphone usage. E.g., "compulsive" feed-checking and doom scrolling.

I wonder how it compares to Adderall.

Adderall produces a very, very different experience and is prescribed to address a very, very different root cause.

However, amphetamines such as Adderall were also sometimes prescribed for weight loss. I'm surprised it was done so rarely before Ozempic was a thing. They were quite effective.

The side effects of adderall are pretty bad. If I'm on a dose that's high enough to suppress my appetite, then I get a very bad crash in the evening. I start to feel like if I want to enjoy life after work, I need to take another adderall to feel normal. That disrupts sleep, and then things start to get really bad.

This varies from person to person, but the effects mentioned above have been my personal experience as well.

Stimulants have well documented downsides. It’s one of the hard aspects for adults with adhd as you often need to taper as you develop heart issues.

This is not accurate outside of abusive dosages or those with pre-existing conditions and I know adult patients in their 70s and even 80s on stimulants.

I have an Adderall prescription, although I rarely use it. Adderall lets me focus on things longer, with distractions staying in the background. If anything, Adderall makes me too focused on a task.

If I were doom scrolling when Adderall kicked in, the risk is I'd continue doing it for hours.

That may be a correlation without causation. Don't know if you lost much weight, but if you did, a huge benefit of losing weight is to increase the level of tonus, and suddenly activities that require no tonus (playing video games, watching TV) become less compelling relatively to other activities.

Definitely lowered alcohol consumption for me.

I no longer get that dopamine rush of the first drink.

Some people go as far as describing it as anhedonia. I kinda get it.

Not for me, in fact my diet involed not taking any dessert, which GLP1 made fairly easy, so I ended up allowing myself to drink a couple of glasses of wine in the evening, which I never did before. I never noticed an alteration of the sense of taste, just a general feeling of satiety (particularly on an empty stomach).

Though many people mention feeling sick as a common side effects, I can very well imagine that they would lose any pleasure from food and drink.

The cynic in my thinks this will its undoing. Some huge fraction of alcohol profits come from a small portion of drinkers. If these G* peptides help these poor people their drinking under control, it would take a huge wrecking ball to the profits, and thus to the taxes. Can't have that.

Reduced healthcare, policing, and other costs that are paid for with tax dollars from lower alcohol consumption would almost certainly be a net gain over the piddly tax revenue from alcohol consumption sales.

So you're saying it's also going to harm the revenues of the health care industrial complex and the police state? That's not going to help its case.

They're very expensive drugs so it would be one lobby against another. However given that they're so expensive, I would think that broke, uneducated alcoholics just won't have access to them, so those profits are safe...

I think you over estimate the liqour lobby and underestimate how much of alcohol profits likely come from luxury purchases

Friend of mine took it for his wedding and completely stopped gambling after having a problem with it. He says he's never been more focused in his life on being productive with work and family.

I've heard this as well, but (anecdotally) they haven't reduced my interest in alcohol at all.

Would you consider yourself addicted? Perhaps it stops the addiction without stopping the general desire to drink with friends.

> Would you consider yourself addicted?

No.

> Perhaps it stops the addiction without stopping the general desire to drink with friends.

The anecdotes I've heard come from people who aren't addicted, either.

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