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Comment by jjice | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

Because it alters your rewards system, pretty simple.

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