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Ozempic drug supresses desire to smoke, drink and more?

theatlantic.com

41–50 of 504 posts

Re: Ozempic drug supresses desire to smoke, drink and more?

#41
post #23

I’m glad people are enjoying Ozempic. My experience from seeing a family member on it, is I would not touch it if I were a 500-pound alcoholic smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. That’s an exaggeration since it probably outweighs the health issues there, but only slightly. The person I know taking Ozempic has only lost weight (35 lbs) due to the fact that eating now makes her sick. She has been sapped of all energ…

I take it, and when I started I got violently nauseous and had GI issues. I wasn't informed I needed to slowly ramp up.

I still have pretty big appetite suppression, and only minimal nausea sometimes if I eat too much, but what it's done to my blood glucose is AMAZING. And I lost some weight when I started which was a great bonus. It can be hard to start but it's truly worth it, just adjust the dose. I take 0.5mg as I can't handle the larger 1.0mg dose.

Re: Ozempic drug supresses desire to smoke, drink and more?

#42
post #23

I’m glad people are enjoying Ozempic. My experience from seeing a family member on it, is I would not touch it if I were a 500-pound alcoholic smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. That’s an exaggeration since it probably outweighs the health issues there, but only slightly. The person I know taking Ozempic has only lost weight (35 lbs) due to the fact that eating now makes her sick. She has been sapped of all energ…

While others have none or barely any side effects, it is a drug after all.

For those people who tolerate the drug well, it can be revolutionary in their lives, but it's unfortunately not a good fit for everyone.

I hope your family member gets better soon.

Re: Ozempic drug supresses desire to smoke, drink and more?

#43
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy it as a "research chemical" and save money, but then the potential consequences of diy medicine and all that that entails are all on you. Hopefully the price will come down more as it becomes more prevalent or as generics become available.

I'm not that afraid of swallowing random chemicals but self injecting is a bit hardcore for me.

FWIW, SubQ injections are pretty much completely unnoticeable in terms of pain / feeling at all. It’s more the mental barrier of doing it to yourself but once you’ve done it for the first time you soon realise it’s fine.

Re: Ozempic drug supresses desire to smoke, drink and more?

#44
post #23

I’m glad people are enjoying Ozempic. My experience from seeing a family member on it, is I would not touch it if I were a 500-pound alcoholic smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. That’s an exaggeration since it probably outweighs the health issues there, but only slightly. The person I know taking Ozempic has only lost weight (35 lbs) due to the fact that eating now makes her sick. She has been sapped of all energ…

>>due to the fact that eating now makes her sick.

Reminds me of the first FDA approved weight loss drug, Alli, that basically just gastrointestinally punishes you if you eat more than a few grams of fat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlistat#Side_effects

Re: Ozempic drug supresses desire to smoke, drink and more?

#45
post #5

A drug that promotes weight loss, lessens the desire to smoke, drink, etc...sounds too good to be true? From what I have heard, all of these issues come back as soon as someone comes off the drug. So either a person is committing to a lifetime of being dependent on this drug, or a person is committing to some period of time of ideal living, followed by a possible time of depression after reverting to the status quo.

> A drug that promotes weight loss, lessens the desire to smoke, drink, etc...sounds too good to be true?

What other desires does it lessen? Does it suppress every hedonistic impulse? What does it do to creativity? Impulsivity? Does it make you more susceptible to or resistant to persuasion? Feels like reporting ‘oh it has these other unintended psychological/behavioral responses. Neat!’ is ignoring a whole can of worms that that opens.

Re: Ozempic drug supresses desire to smoke, drink and more?

#46
post #5

A drug that promotes weight loss, lessens the desire to smoke, drink, etc...sounds too good to be true? From what I have heard, all of these issues come back as soon as someone comes off the drug. So either a person is committing to a lifetime of being dependent on this drug, or a person is committing to some period of time of ideal living, followed by a possible time of depression after reverting to the status quo.

The first days, weeks and months are often the hardest time when quitting a substance. If this drug helps a smoker not smoke for 3 months, by that time the nicotine addiction has weakened considerably. They've gotten past the hardest part. I see no downside to that. Similarly, if a person loses 30 pounds on this drug, then stops using the drug and reverts to normal habits, it will take a while to regain those 30 poun…

> The first days, weeks and months are often the hardest time when quitting a substance. If this drug helps a smoker not smoke for 3 months, by that time the nicotine addiction has weakened considerably.

I love(d) nicotine and it was the only substance that I ever was addicted to. I tried dozens of times to quit and the only thing that helped was getting treatment for my ADHD. Quitting nicotine was easy for me on methylphenidate. I only tried combining them and nearly went to the ER, so I quickly learnt that I can't take them both. But when I'm on methylphenidate I just don't crave nicotine that much. It took 2-3 years to completely not get any nicotine cravings at all.

Re: Ozempic drug supresses desire to smoke, drink and more?

#49
post #30

[flagged]

Sometimes I see people have written a bug in code and I wonder why they didn't just do the obvious and write it without the bug. Personally, every time I'm about to introduce a bug I just choose to not do it.

I mean if you know ahead of time the thing you're doing is going to produce buggy code then yep your analogy holds.

Re: Ozempic drug supresses desire to smoke, drink and more?

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first days, weeks and months are often the hardest time when quitting a substance. If this drug helps a smoker not smoke for 3 months, by that time the nicotine addiction has weakened considerably. They've gotten past the hardest part. I see no downside to that. Similarly, if a person loses 30 pounds on this drug, then stops using the drug and reverts to normal habits, it will take a while to regain those 30 poun…

That is not what happened to me. I took it for 2 months and then I wanted to get off. I did not go back to normal. Mentally I felt like I needed more food and more junk food than I ever did before using the drug. My hypothesis is that it supressed my body's natural production of whatever chemical in my brain helps me not go overboard with food. With that supressed by the drug I had an uncontrollable desire for food a…

An interaction with leptin? Or are you just feeling hungry after the side effects wore off?

You also said it stopped working while you were taking it in another post; are you just talking about satiety or one of the other effects like insulin production or glucagon release? Are you diabetic or just overweight?

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