Much has been said about the GLP drugs and their interactions with all kinds of addictive disorders. Alcohol, drugs, even gambling... Anecdotally, I "struggled" at times with gaming (not joking). I would find myself skipping meetings at times or ducking away to play online sometimes. It never became a real issue but I knew I did it and it was embarrassing.
Once I started on tirzepatide, and then with retatrutide, the "urge" to swap over to my PC between meetings and load up a game is pretty much zeroed out.
Is this an "addiction" or a form of "abuse" similar to alcohol or other drugs? I would have said no some time ago, but now I'm not sure. I definitely feel like, looking back, I was more or less "addicted" to video games. I don't want to romanticize it as some sort of "escape", it just is what it was.
This was an unintended side effect (benefit?) of the drug for sure, in addition to acute weight loss of course.
Unlike many others, even after titrating down and coming off the GLP's, I have not felt the urge to binge food, video games, or anything else. I maintain a healthy, active lifestyle and have kept my weight exactly where I prefer it. My relationship with my body and my time has massively improved. I feel like I am at risk of sounding like a complete shill, obviously, but in my mind these drugs can be something that absolutely has the potential to turn life around for many, many people.
I think it's probably still useful to distinguish addictions with hardcore substance related barriers to quitting (think withdrawals) from addictions where the barrier is a lack of dopamine or serotonin or simple habituation.
For people with normal executive function, the second category of problems should be fairly tractable to overcome, whereas the first is still quite difficult.
The second only really becomes an issue when you have a bit of executive dysfunction.
Maybe that distinction is important and one merits the term addiction while the other doesn't? Though both categories seem to be relatively treatable with drugs that massively improve executive function, so the parallels are pretty glaring.
Most of the addiction literature I've read says that physical addiction is overestimated: even heroin addicts regularly go through physical addiction, either involuntarily because they can't get it, or voluntarily (through treatment efforts, or simply deciding to sober up for e.g. a wedding or other important event). What makes them addicts isn't that they can't stop, it's that they start up again.
Conversely, people hospitalized for something acutely painful often get addicting (or, withdrawal causing) painkillers in amounts and at purities street users can only dream of. And once it's over, they go through withdrawal, and it's deeply unpleasant, and they never want to do it again. People going through something like that aren't more likely to become opioid addicts than anyone else, according to old study results (I may be able to dig them up if you're interested).
It's of course different for chronic pain. But then, the reason for people wanting to start up again is pretty obvious.
What do you now do instead of gaming? Do you find you have swapped for a different activity or a more balanced allocation of time among other things? Or do you still spend your off hours in the same way, but kicked the compulsion for gaming all day?
I do the work I probably should be doing, or side projects, or spend time with my kids, or go on a walk, or follow up on that thing I've been putting off, or any of the other million things that are more productive and fulfilling than video games are. It's embarrassing to admit that I was a grown man who would put off basic, important tasks just to play games but I did. Now I don't.
It's not even really about choosing not to, either... it really does feel fundamentally like I cannot even derive a dopamine response to video games at all anymore, period. Same could probably be said about doom scrolling social media or whatever else. I just get no false positive feedback loop from the act.
Can't speak for OP but I largely spend it reading (and web). I bought a kindle recently because I found the ipad/iphone were too distracting to reliably avoid web surfing instead of a book. I view the switch to long form content as a form of information dieting in the same way as a switch to whole foods.
Maybe try NAD+ boosters next? They seem to be reducing addictive behaviors quite a bit. Liposomal NAD+ or nicotinamide riboside or IV NAD+. The theory is an energetic deficit in the brain that drugs/addictions seem to override temporarily but deepen long-term and NAD+ is essentially bringing the energy back. Maybe GLPs do something similar due to flooding the body with broken down fat?
Not the person you asked but I have good data - I lost 32kg over 6 months on tirzepatide, 11kg of it was lean body mass, the rest was fat (based on DEXA scans).
In general, lean body mass loss is more of a result of rapid weight loss (I certainly consider mine very rapid), than result of the medication itself. If I was able to lose the same weight in the same period of time without the medication, and kept my protein and resistance training the same, I'd expect a similar ratio of muscle/fat loss.
Overall extremely happy with the outcome, very grateful that these drugs exist and that I was able to access them.
68lbs over 9 months for me on Tirzepatide. No exercise (I should, but I'm traveling an absolute ton right so consistent exercise hasn't been prioritized).
> This was an unintended side effect (benefit?) of the drug for sure, in addition to acute weight loss of course.
Is it possible that video games were your escape from a world in which you were obese, with all that it can entail, and losing the weight removed the need to escape?
League of Legends is “used” by a lot of people as medicine. Nobody hides away to play Stanley Parable. Lots of games, lots of genres, difficult to generalize.
I guess if you can get addicted to work instead of video games, etc companies will start negotiating with GLP-1 drugmakers directly and make them widely available.
I think it depends. With tirzepatide (my first encounter with GLP1 meds) I got acute appetite suppression, perhaps too acute. I living comfortably on sometimes 1500 calories or less per day, and I track my calories religiously. We are talking maybe 1 cup of yogurt with frozen berries in the morning, and 1 whey protein shake around 3pm (Fairlife milk + 2 scoops whey) and I would be absolutely full until bed. No energy deficiencies to note. I worked out regularly 5 days a week.
This caused rapid weight loss. A side effect of this rapid weight loss and lack of food intake I also attribute to my thinning hair and dry, splotchy skin outbreaks. Any sort of overeating on tirzepatide (for me) caused severe sickness, or nausea.
Retatrutide, by contrast, causes far less pure appetite suppression (my dosage is also lower) and has another mechanism which helps me maintain leanness while also eating extra calories. I think I prefer the reta, but if I ever felt the need to very simply destroy my appetite again I wouldn't hesitate to use tirzepatide again.
I procured both tirzepatide and retatrutide through the peptide "grey markets" so one was not harder to come by than the other.
from what I saw people on GPL still eat as much as they can, they just can't eat as much due to the feeling on "fullness" setting in fast. They seem to push the boundaries further the longer they are on it though, so there seems to be some habituation to overcoming the "feeling full".
It could also be simply that as you lose weight, you have more tonus (something that I experienced myself), and activities that are inherently passive (watching TV, playing videogame) seem less relatively compeling than more active alternatives.
I'm going to put on my Boomer pull-yourselves-up-by-the-bootstraps hat, but are you concerned about the loss of grit resulting from changing your behaviors without the drug?
Definitely not GP, but I think it’s pretty clear that whatever grit there was to have, GP did not have it. “Die an early death due to being overweight or build the grit” is strictly worse than “lose the weight without building the grit, or build the grit”, and it’s even more so when you realize that “or build the grit” was never in the cards. Because then the choice becomes “die an early death or don’t“. Building the grit can be done on other, hopefully less lethal, projects.
Maybe if moral virtues can be purchased they were never moral virtues to begin with?
Many moral vices naturally decline with age as physical senses and hormones dull and life loses novelty. It may be a comforting fantasy that we can somehow link our inevitable physical decline to a story of moral progress and assume that our accumulated wisdom would protect us from the folly of youth if we were somehow thrust again into our younger bodies.
But what if instead moral progress is about finding the right way of living? About spending more time with your kid than with a screen.
Maybe the virtue wasn’t in getting over the wall but finding yourself on the other side and choosing it because it is better? Society puts up walls all the time to prevent people from finding themselves on the wrong side of the wall. Nobody ever talks about the “grit” of the addict persistently dodging law enforcement to score their next fix.
Maybe the problem is society putting walls in the wrong place. If that’s true, does it really matter how you get over the wall?
If I can change my behaviour and achieve good health outcomes, relatively painlessly, why on earth would I not?
This comes across to me like people who won't use painkillers - I should feel the pain, masking it is fake, there is virtue in suffering etc. Turns out those people often end up with secondary complications to (for example) muscle damage, because they've adapted their movements so much to avoid using the painful muscle that now everything else is tense, strained and locked up.
What do you mean "grit"? Does doing something more efficiently mean you lose it? What's the difference, say, between someone using an LLM to help them code and someone else using a drug to help them diet? Is the coder using an LLM losing their "grit"? Do you walk to work in 30 inches of snow, uphill both ways, in the rain? Are you concerned about your loss of "grit" by not doing so? This argument continues to baffle me.
I didn't take the GLP to help me with addictive behavior traits beyond my diet, but I observed tertiary benefits of the drug.
As I've titrated my dose down to zero, I've retained those habits and my weight. I'm in the best shape of my life and mentally healthier than I've been in over a decade.
Not the GP, but do you think Serena Williams - world number 1 womens tennis player for 319 weeks, who trained for 5 hours per day at her peak - has insufficient grit?
What if it were possible to get grit from a pill? People who have taken it and come off of it are saying that they haven't reverted. You get good at what you practice, which is as true for grit as it is of anything else. If some people need assistance in getting that practice, this can probably help them. I've taken ritalin for ADHD for a long time, and if I don't take my treatment, I'm still far more focused and productive than I ever was before treatment, because I developed habits through the medication that stuck. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar were at work here.
I think this is a valid point, and the reason I haven’t tried these drugs and don’t plan to. There are huge benefits to developing the mental strength and discipline to lean into discomfort consistently and just do what needs to be done- and all types of addiction provide one of the hardest, and therefore most valuable and useful obstacles here. As Marcus Aurelius said “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
I’ve found that the general act of leaning into challenges and mild physical discomfort has a ripple effect on my mind, and all types of addiction and dopamine seeking behaviors become automatically less interesting- almost exactly like what people report on these drugs. If I take a cold shower or work out every morning even when I don’t feel like it- pretty soon I’m eating healthier and limiting my alcohol, caffeine, and screen time without even really trying to.
That said, it only works if you manage to actually do it. It’s much better to get over addiction with a drug than to continue suffering from the addiction, and be unable to escape, especially something that causes as much damage as alcohol can.
One idea I had was to set a deadline for overcoming an addiction, and to just use the drug if you reach the deadline and the mental approach is still unsuccessful.
Been on Mounjaro/Zepbound for the past 2 years. Lost around 80lbs, and my brain feels like I’m 25 again. Almost no urge for alcohol and have an opened bag of Halloween candy in the closet which isn’t calling my name. But the most surprising part hasn’t been that… it’s that my no limit poker game has gotten really quite good. I’ve played for 20 years, and been well above average, but after the glp-1, something just clicked. Maybe I no longer go on tilt or something? Played in the World Series of poker for the first time last year and placed in the money, in the top 10% after having not played since before Covid. I just started playing in a house game that I’d previously played in 10 years ago. Same people, and before I’d never placed in the money. I’ve now won in 3 of the last 5 games. Something’s different. Is playing poker pleasurable? Not in the least, but a good friend invited me, and played for the social aspect, but now I’m just stunned at how good I’ve suddenly become. Disliked the World Series so much last year, that I opted against playing again, even though I expected to place again. Maybe other poker players will adopt it.
Just a single datapoint here. About 8 months after starting on semaglutide I took a month off alcohol and by the time the month was over had lost all interest for alcohol.
Almost 2 years now. I'm not religious about it and will occasionally drink the celebratory glass of bubbles or a beer (alcohol free if available) when it's hot outside.
As someone who doesn't really drink and never has alcohol at home, is it just that people buy beer/wine and drink on a daily basis for fun? The wine I feel like you can pair with food and feel classy as an excuse but beer that ain't the case.
I realize how completely dumb this question might sound.
> As someone who doesn't really drink and never has alcohol at home, is it just that people buy beer/wine and drink on a daily basis for fun?
Yes, anything from a couple of drinks a night with dinner / tv to getting blackout drunk multiple times a week, alone, with your significant other, or with friends / roommates.
In the case of people in my social circle (late 30s early 40s) it's primarily still for fun, as well as just a large amount of momentum from your teenage years, 20s, 30s, etc. For a lot of people I know, the association between drinking and good times / relaxation has been deeply engrained since high school.
I've recently taken an extended break for my health, as I'm fully aware that it takes a toll on me, but I still love grabbing some drinks whether I'm relaxing alone in the evening or going out with friends and family.
While it's certainly true that many people get into a dark place with drinking and let it spiral into a self-destructive, depressive pursuit, I don't think it's quite the rule it's made out to be.
I have a good amount of family who live idyllic, full, happy, social lives, drinking heavily multiple times a week with their friends and family into their 70s/80s until death.
When drinking small quantities, it's more to relax/unwind at the end of the day than to 'have fun'. Sometimes it's self-medication for stress/depression.
But it can easily escalate into a rather unhealthy habit. And even fairly small amounts can disrupt sleep.
I'm not trying to pick on you because I've seen this anecdote on many occasions; however, it strikes me that people are quite willing to walk past "personality changes" as a side effect of a drug.
Does anyone else feel a slight sense of worry about this?
I don't know much about the drug, maybe you're talking about something else... but FWIW, I got sober from years as a practicing alcoholic the traditional way, I had lots of personality changes, some good some bad, but who I was when I was drinking all day every day and who I am today are quite different people.
I don't think it's a personality change, at least insofar as personality is separate from neurochemistry. Ghrelin and dopamine are strongly linked, and dopamine is our central reward-seeking driver; GLP-1s generally reduce ghrelin production, which I suspect helps remove you from a state of being constantly primed for reward-seeking. I noticed this firsthand when I went hard keto for the first time, and could suddently for the first time tell a significant difference between "I want food because I'm hungry" and "I'm not hungry but want food because it's pleasurable".
I worry about it. I do tend to wonder if it can change your relationship with addictive and maybe risky behaviors, does it also potentially make you into a more conservative (not politically) person? Does creativity and risk tolerance go down as well?
Yeah I am reading through this thread and it does feel that things can go wrong here. With alcohol/drugs it is very likely to be an extremely positive change (at least for the majority), but some people shared videogames, and while they can totally be addicting, I personally place them on the same level as books/shows/movies, and losing interest in all of that is definitely a big change.
I had a lot of fear about this when I resisted getting treated for my very bad Anxiety. I feared that it might change me. I feared that I would be a different person.
Guess what? That's a good thing. The anxious person I was drove me to struggle to do basic life things, struggle to do things I wanted to do, and caused me to drive away someone I loved and harm them.
Fuck that guy, I don't want to be him. I did change. I became able to try new things. I became able to accept other people without needing to impose what I considered "right" onto them. I became able to manage my stupid jealousy to stop it from hurting my relationships.
Now I can ride rollercoasters without having a panic attack. Oh what a shame I lost that guy.
The things that medications treat also cause personality changes. Significant mental or psychological problems consume parts of you, and drive your life negatively.
There's no such thing as a "true" you. You are just biological machines doing chemistry. That chemistry dictates YOU. That chemistry is literally affected by the food you eat. Drawing a line because we require you to get a chemical from someone with a special piece of paper is not reality.
Wearing the proper glasses will cause a personality change if you grew up vision impaired.
Don't deify a broken brain.
Other lies people insist on to avoid medication include "There's no silver bullet/magic pill"
Guess what? Sometimes there is! A low dose of a boring medication fixed my anxiety, as in, turned me from being a dysfunctional anxious wreck to someone who has a normal anxiety response. Even the "side effects" I experience have been positive outcomes.
Now if you do something like take anabolic steroids and it gives you roid rage? Yeah, avoid that, not because "It changed you" but because it made you demonstrably worse in a way you probably do not want
Do you know what else causes irreversible personality changes and will change who you really are?
I think the calorific content of alcohol and general habituation are under-looked. I also basically never drink any more (and am on zep), but when I do occasionally have a craving, an alcohol-free beer 100% hits the spot for me.
I was a light or social drinker for decades. Probably 3-5 drinks per week.
In November of 2024, I decided to avoid alcohol as a personal experiment - no GLP-1 medications involved. I have not consumed any alcohol since.
After 3-4 months, my interest in alcohol seemed to really fall off a cliff. I joked with friends that I was going "dry in 2025", but I am now more seriously considering taking 2026 off from alcohol as well before making a decision about whether to add alcohol back into my diet.
All I will say, is if/when you start noticing digestive issues, it's probably the GLP-1 even if it's after a year of taking the stuff... and woah boy, coming off the stuff is anything but fun.
What was your comedown like? After 6 months of taking subcutaneous semaglutide, I just stopped taking it one day and it was fine. Need a bit more effort to be mindful of snacking now, though.
EDIT: saw your other comment that you felt you were starving. that sucks. the whole thing experience sounds awful.
I have the sulphur burps on Ozempic/Monjourno if I eat too much. I can tell that my digestion has slowed considerably regardless of the affect on my hunger. But the first time it occured terminating the injections terminated the sulphur burps.
Started developing gastroparesis issues after about a year on Trulicity... over the pandemic, due to shortages I was switched to Ozempic for a few months which was less effective with my diabetes mgt. I didn't actually lose weight on the medication(s).
After seeing several doctors about the issue including a couple specialists, only one of about half a dozen medications tried actually worked to help the gastro issues, which included fecal vomiting, rotted fermented food coming up, both regularly. No actual blockages. The medication that did work wasn't covered by my insurance. After a couple years of suffering, I saw a news report about the Trulicity lawsuit related to gastroparesis issues. Over the same period, I started to develop retina issues, several retina bleeds and regular injections to treat it.
When I found out about the lawsuit, I stopped taking the medication going back to straight insulin injections (long and short) currently Lantis and Novalog. For close to a year after coming off, I experienced a feeling of starvation 24/8... didn't matter if I was physically full up to my throat, the ravenous feeling of hunger would not subside. I gained about 80# during this time (again, didn't lose weight on the meds).
I'm a few years off and my digestion is inconsistent and unpredictable... sometimes I'll have a few days where things flow normally... others I'll be backed up for close to a week and have to take a heavy magnesium laxative to get things going again. I stay pretty close to carnivore as just about anything else can range from discomfort to pain. Not to mention legume allergies and really sensitive to wheat... I still cheat about once every other week, and I pay for it physically.
Because I was on more than the one medication, I cannot participate in either the Trulicity or the Ozempic class action lawsuits. These medications have kind of ruined my life. I'm now about half blind and using 45" monitors to work, and even then have to zoom text and lean in to be able to function.
Over the years, I've been on several drugs for diabetes that I'd built up a quick tolerance to, that may have had other negative effects... Byetta, Victoza and others... I've always had digestion sensitivities, these just turned it up to 11. When I started Trulicity, my insulin use was pretty minimal and I was already on a Keto diet and had been losing weight... I wish I'd stuck with that and never even heard of the stuff.
Some of the recollections are a bit jumbled, apologies for that, I'm just kind of writing as it comes to mind.
Aside: along with the medical issues has been some employment inconsistencies the past few years with a few contract roles spread a few months apart. I had hoped to maintain my income level as many available jobs were lower pay. Currently, my insurance is "emergency" coverage based, and doesn't even cover the 3 doctors I'm seeing regularly and doesn't help much with the medications I am still taking. Let alone the eye injections I haven't been able to get for about a year now ($7k/eye/injection). Tried working 2 jobs for a while, but couldn't keep up with the load after a few months. I'm depressed and angry. Prior to about 8 years ago, I never carried debt... now I'm maxed out and staring at bankruptcy.
> A more recent RCT showed that low-dose semaglutide reduced laboratory alcohol self-administration, as well as drinks per drinking days and craving, in people with AUD [72].
I think this quote is... wrong? Or at least extremely misleading? Here, citation 72 refers to a paper by Henderson et al. That paper did (sorta) reduced laboratory alcohol self-administration, but did not find any reduction in the amount that people drank. https://dynomight.net/glp-1/
> Semaglutide treatment did not affect average drinks per calendar day or number of drinking days, but significantly reduced drinks per drinking day (β, −0.41; 95% CI, −0.73 to −0.09; P = .04)
So they didn't find any reduction in (1) drinking, or (2) in the number of days that people drank, but they did technically find (3) a reduction in the number of drinks that people consumed on the days that they drank. So I guess what they said is technically correct... but I still think it's very odd not to mention the headline result that there was no actual reduction in drinking!
I don’t understand the math here. The average per calendar day didn’t go down, so the total drinking is the same. That total is distributed among the drinking days, which are also the same. So how can the drinks per drinking day have changed?
> a reduction in the number of drinks that people consumed on the days that they drank
I can attest to this myself. I used to be called an "occasional binge drinker" by my endocrinologist. Now I'm just an "occasional drinker". It definitely has cut back my consumption, I'd say by more than half, if not more.
Just to counter some anecdata here - doing glp-1 for quite some time for weight loss. It works for me for that specific purpose. But I noticed no effect on mood or addictive aspects. But it appears to lower my alcohol tolerance, so I drink less of it. Ymmv
My 24yo is on Mounjaro for type 2 diabetes and has said it’s also eradicated her interest in alcohol. She’s been a typical social drinker but now she’s doing mocktails.
It’d be interesting if these meds help with weight and addiction or just even overdoing it regularly.
As a beer enthusiast drinking unhealthy amounts rather too frequently, my drinking went way down when on Mounjaro.
(Maybe it wouldn't have made the same difference if I was into whisky instead of beer - with beer, I suspect it's the relatively large volume of drink involved that may have made it less appealing?)
Recently switched to Wegovy since the big Mounjaro price hikes here in the UK, and it seems rather less effective overall. Both beer and snacks are somewhat more appealing again :(
Side effects are generally rare, but it really depends on the person. I tried to start five times, and got massive side effects each time. The last time I started, I did my own protocol (started at 0.5mg every three days and increased a bit on every injection).
Now I'm up to 6mg and I'm not getting any side effects, but it also doesn't work for me! I lost 6kg at one point but the effects wore off and I gained the weight again.
None of my friends had this experience, for everyone else it's worked with no side effects. I really am cursed.
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Once I started on tirzepatide, and then with retatrutide, the "urge" to swap over to my PC between meetings and load up a game is pretty much zeroed out.
Is this an "addiction" or a form of "abuse" similar to alcohol or other drugs? I would have said no some time ago, but now I'm not sure. I definitely feel like, looking back, I was more or less "addicted" to video games. I don't want to romanticize it as some sort of "escape", it just is what it was.
This was an unintended side effect (benefit?) of the drug for sure, in addition to acute weight loss of course.
Unlike many others, even after titrating down and coming off the GLP's, I have not felt the urge to binge food, video games, or anything else. I maintain a healthy, active lifestyle and have kept my weight exactly where I prefer it. My relationship with my body and my time has massively improved. I feel like I am at risk of sounding like a complete shill, obviously, but in my mind these drugs can be something that absolutely has the potential to turn life around for many, many people.
For people with normal executive function, the second category of problems should be fairly tractable to overcome, whereas the first is still quite difficult.
The second only really becomes an issue when you have a bit of executive dysfunction.
Maybe that distinction is important and one merits the term addiction while the other doesn't? Though both categories seem to be relatively treatable with drugs that massively improve executive function, so the parallels are pretty glaring.
Conversely, people hospitalized for something acutely painful often get addicting (or, withdrawal causing) painkillers in amounts and at purities street users can only dream of. And once it's over, they go through withdrawal, and it's deeply unpleasant, and they never want to do it again. People going through something like that aren't more likely to become opioid addicts than anyone else, according to old study results (I may be able to dig them up if you're interested).
It's of course different for chronic pain. But then, the reason for people wanting to start up again is pretty obvious.
The lifelong craving is the bigger issue.
It's not even really about choosing not to, either... it really does feel fundamentally like I cannot even derive a dopamine response to video games at all anymore, period. Same could probably be said about doom scrolling social media or whatever else. I just get no false positive feedback loop from the act.
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In general, lean body mass loss is more of a result of rapid weight loss (I certainly consider mine very rapid), than result of the medication itself. If I was able to lose the same weight in the same period of time without the medication, and kept my protein and resistance training the same, I'd expect a similar ratio of muscle/fat loss.
Overall extremely happy with the outcome, very grateful that these drugs exist and that I was able to access them.
Is it possible that video games were your escape from a world in which you were obese, with all that it can entail, and losing the weight removed the need to escape?
Anyone saying they’re taking retatrutide almost certainly obtained it this way. Quality and purity untested.
League of Legends is “used” by a lot of people as medicine. Nobody hides away to play Stanley Parable. Lots of games, lots of genres, difficult to generalize.
This caused rapid weight loss. A side effect of this rapid weight loss and lack of food intake I also attribute to my thinning hair and dry, splotchy skin outbreaks. Any sort of overeating on tirzepatide (for me) caused severe sickness, or nausea.
Retatrutide, by contrast, causes far less pure appetite suppression (my dosage is also lower) and has another mechanism which helps me maintain leanness while also eating extra calories. I think I prefer the reta, but if I ever felt the need to very simply destroy my appetite again I wouldn't hesitate to use tirzepatide again.
I procured both tirzepatide and retatrutide through the peptide "grey markets" so one was not harder to come by than the other.
Many moral vices naturally decline with age as physical senses and hormones dull and life loses novelty. It may be a comforting fantasy that we can somehow link our inevitable physical decline to a story of moral progress and assume that our accumulated wisdom would protect us from the folly of youth if we were somehow thrust again into our younger bodies.
But what if instead moral progress is about finding the right way of living? About spending more time with your kid than with a screen.
Maybe the virtue wasn’t in getting over the wall but finding yourself on the other side and choosing it because it is better? Society puts up walls all the time to prevent people from finding themselves on the wrong side of the wall. Nobody ever talks about the “grit” of the addict persistently dodging law enforcement to score their next fix.
Maybe the problem is society putting walls in the wrong place. If that’s true, does it really matter how you get over the wall?
If I can change my behaviour and achieve good health outcomes, relatively painlessly, why on earth would I not?
This comes across to me like people who won't use painkillers - I should feel the pain, masking it is fake, there is virtue in suffering etc. Turns out those people often end up with secondary complications to (for example) muscle damage, because they've adapted their movements so much to avoid using the painful muscle that now everything else is tense, strained and locked up.
Better living through chemistry, 100%.
I didn't take the GLP to help me with addictive behavior traits beyond my diet, but I observed tertiary benefits of the drug.
As I've titrated my dose down to zero, I've retained those habits and my weight. I'm in the best shape of my life and mentally healthier than I've been in over a decade.
Because she went on GLP-1 to lose weight.
I’ve found that the general act of leaning into challenges and mild physical discomfort has a ripple effect on my mind, and all types of addiction and dopamine seeking behaviors become automatically less interesting- almost exactly like what people report on these drugs. If I take a cold shower or work out every morning even when I don’t feel like it- pretty soon I’m eating healthier and limiting my alcohol, caffeine, and screen time without even really trying to.
That said, it only works if you manage to actually do it. It’s much better to get over addiction with a drug than to continue suffering from the addiction, and be unable to escape, especially something that causes as much damage as alcohol can.
One idea I had was to set a deadline for overcoming an addiction, and to just use the drug if you reach the deadline and the mental approach is still unsuccessful.
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Small amount of psychoactive substances seem to help a lot of people get into "the zone".
Almost 2 years now. I'm not religious about it and will occasionally drink the celebratory glass of bubbles or a beer (alcohol free if available) when it's hot outside.
Very interesting how it has worked.
I realize how completely dumb this question might sound.
Yes, anything from a couple of drinks a night with dinner / tv to getting blackout drunk multiple times a week, alone, with your significant other, or with friends / roommates.
In the case of people in my social circle (late 30s early 40s) it's primarily still for fun, as well as just a large amount of momentum from your teenage years, 20s, 30s, etc. For a lot of people I know, the association between drinking and good times / relaxation has been deeply engrained since high school.
I've recently taken an extended break for my health, as I'm fully aware that it takes a toll on me, but I still love grabbing some drinks whether I'm relaxing alone in the evening or going out with friends and family.
While it's certainly true that many people get into a dark place with drinking and let it spiral into a self-destructive, depressive pursuit, I don't think it's quite the rule it's made out to be.
I have a good amount of family who live idyllic, full, happy, social lives, drinking heavily multiple times a week with their friends and family into their 70s/80s until death.
But it can easily escalate into a rather unhealthy habit. And even fairly small amounts can disrupt sleep.
Does anyone else feel a slight sense of worry about this?
Guess what? That's a good thing. The anxious person I was drove me to struggle to do basic life things, struggle to do things I wanted to do, and caused me to drive away someone I loved and harm them.
Fuck that guy, I don't want to be him. I did change. I became able to try new things. I became able to accept other people without needing to impose what I considered "right" onto them. I became able to manage my stupid jealousy to stop it from hurting my relationships.
Now I can ride rollercoasters without having a panic attack. Oh what a shame I lost that guy.
The things that medications treat also cause personality changes. Significant mental or psychological problems consume parts of you, and drive your life negatively.
There's no such thing as a "true" you. You are just biological machines doing chemistry. That chemistry dictates YOU. That chemistry is literally affected by the food you eat. Drawing a line because we require you to get a chemical from someone with a special piece of paper is not reality.
Wearing the proper glasses will cause a personality change if you grew up vision impaired.
Don't deify a broken brain.
Other lies people insist on to avoid medication include "There's no silver bullet/magic pill"
Guess what? Sometimes there is! A low dose of a boring medication fixed my anxiety, as in, turned me from being a dysfunctional anxious wreck to someone who has a normal anxiety response. Even the "side effects" I experience have been positive outcomes.
Now if you do something like take anabolic steroids and it gives you roid rage? Yeah, avoid that, not because "It changed you" but because it made you demonstrably worse in a way you probably do not want
Do you know what else causes irreversible personality changes and will change who you really are?
Aging.
In November of 2024, I decided to avoid alcohol as a personal experiment - no GLP-1 medications involved. I have not consumed any alcohol since.
After 3-4 months, my interest in alcohol seemed to really fall off a cliff. I joked with friends that I was going "dry in 2025", but I am now more seriously considering taking 2026 off from alcohol as well before making a decision about whether to add alcohol back into my diet.
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EDIT: saw your other comment that you felt you were starving. that sucks. the whole thing experience sounds awful.
After seeing several doctors about the issue including a couple specialists, only one of about half a dozen medications tried actually worked to help the gastro issues, which included fecal vomiting, rotted fermented food coming up, both regularly. No actual blockages. The medication that did work wasn't covered by my insurance. After a couple years of suffering, I saw a news report about the Trulicity lawsuit related to gastroparesis issues. Over the same period, I started to develop retina issues, several retina bleeds and regular injections to treat it.
When I found out about the lawsuit, I stopped taking the medication going back to straight insulin injections (long and short) currently Lantis and Novalog. For close to a year after coming off, I experienced a feeling of starvation 24/8... didn't matter if I was physically full up to my throat, the ravenous feeling of hunger would not subside. I gained about 80# during this time (again, didn't lose weight on the meds).
I'm a few years off and my digestion is inconsistent and unpredictable... sometimes I'll have a few days where things flow normally... others I'll be backed up for close to a week and have to take a heavy magnesium laxative to get things going again. I stay pretty close to carnivore as just about anything else can range from discomfort to pain. Not to mention legume allergies and really sensitive to wheat... I still cheat about once every other week, and I pay for it physically.
Because I was on more than the one medication, I cannot participate in either the Trulicity or the Ozempic class action lawsuits. These medications have kind of ruined my life. I'm now about half blind and using 45" monitors to work, and even then have to zoom text and lean in to be able to function.
Over the years, I've been on several drugs for diabetes that I'd built up a quick tolerance to, that may have had other negative effects... Byetta, Victoza and others... I've always had digestion sensitivities, these just turned it up to 11. When I started Trulicity, my insulin use was pretty minimal and I was already on a Keto diet and had been losing weight... I wish I'd stuck with that and never even heard of the stuff.
Some of the recollections are a bit jumbled, apologies for that, I'm just kind of writing as it comes to mind.
Aside: along with the medical issues has been some employment inconsistencies the past few years with a few contract roles spread a few months apart. I had hoped to maintain my income level as many available jobs were lower pay. Currently, my insurance is "emergency" coverage based, and doesn't even cover the 3 doctors I'm seeing regularly and doesn't help much with the medications I am still taking. Let alone the eye injections I haven't been able to get for about a year now ($7k/eye/injection). Tried working 2 jobs for a while, but couldn't keep up with the load after a few months. I'm depressed and angry. Prior to about 8 years ago, I never carried debt... now I'm maxed out and staring at bankruptcy.
I think this quote is... wrong? Or at least extremely misleading? Here, citation 72 refers to a paper by Henderson et al. That paper did (sorta) reduced laboratory alcohol self-administration, but did not find any reduction in the amount that people drank. https://dynomight.net/glp-1/
> Semaglutide treatment did not affect average drinks per calendar day or number of drinking days, but significantly reduced drinks per drinking day (β, −0.41; 95% CI, −0.73 to −0.09; P = .04)
So they didn't find any reduction in (1) drinking, or (2) in the number of days that people drank, but they did technically find (3) a reduction in the number of drinks that people consumed on the days that they drank. So I guess what they said is technically correct... but I still think it's very odd not to mention the headline result that there was no actual reduction in drinking!
I can attest to this myself. I used to be called an "occasional binge drinker" by my endocrinologist. Now I'm just an "occasional drinker". It definitely has cut back my consumption, I'd say by more than half, if not more.
It’d be interesting if these meds help with weight and addiction or just even overdoing it regularly.
(Maybe it wouldn't have made the same difference if I was into whisky instead of beer - with beer, I suspect it's the relatively large volume of drink involved that may have made it less appealing?)
Recently switched to Wegovy since the big Mounjaro price hikes here in the UK, and it seems rather less effective overall. Both beer and snacks are somewhat more appealing again :(
It used to be the case that 1-2 drinks would make me feel good, and introduce a craving for more (a "just one more will get me right" feeling).
But that's gone now. It's an amazing side effect.
Now I'm up to 6mg and I'm not getting any side effects, but it also doesn't work for me! I lost 6kg at one point but the effects wore off and I gained the weight again.
None of my friends had this experience, for everyone else it's worked with no side effects. I really am cursed.