CURB NOT ELIMINATE –
Aug. 28, 2023 – “There’s really been a large number of clinical and anecdotal reports coming in suggesting that people’s drinking behaviors are changing and in some instances pretty substantially while taking [Ozempic or Wegovy],” says Christian Hendershot, a psychologist and addiction researcher at the University of North Carolina.
He’s leading one of six clinical trials now underway aimed at understanding how semaglutide may alter people’s drinking and smoking habits.
“All these reports, for the most part, are anecdotal,” Hendershot adds. “At the same time, it does seem like there’s a pretty strong signal here.”
Scientists are hopeful that a new class of treatments for alcohol use disorder or smoking may be on the horizon. Some doctors have even started prescribing these drugs for this specific purpose, even though evidence from large, randomized controlled trials are still years away.
To many doctors and patients, like J. Paul Grayson, Ozempic’s effect on alcohol came as a big surprise.
“Before Ozempic, I could consume a whole bottle of wine in an evening without trying real hard, along with a bag of chocolates,” he says, laughing. “But with Ozempic, even one beer didn’t feel good to me somehow.”
“I had no idea this would happen,” he adds. “Nobody told me anything about the drug affecting alcohol, too.”
But for scientists who study GLP-1 drugs, this striking side effect was exactly what they expected. “It’s really not surprising,” says pharmacologist Elisabet Jerlhag.
