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Ozempic drug supresses desire to smoke, drink and more?

theatlantic.com

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

#471
post #318
post #108

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The risk of pancreatitis is also increased substantially [0]. And for people who may already be predisposed to pancreatitis but haven’t had an attack, severe pancreatitis has a 10-30% mortality rate [1]. But even mild acute pancreatitis will make you want to crawl out of your own skin in pain. [0] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/johns_ho... [1] https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2007/0515/p1513.…

I'm somewhat dubious of the severe pancreatitis mortality rates-- the issue is that most cases of severe pancreatitis are caused by very severe alcoholism, and by the time the pancreatitis shows up everything else is already failing.

That’s not entirely true. Pancreatitis, especially necrotizing pancreatitis, actually causes the broad systemic organ dysfunction. So even alcoholics with fine organs can end up with liver, lung, heart, kidney, etc complications from a severe bout of pancreatitis. Even basic things like fluid balance and endocrine function can be thrown way off by both the disease and treatment (large amounts of fluid resuscitation). I recently had severe bouts of non-alcoholic pancreatitis, the worst of which ended in a 3 month hospital stay with various periods on ventilators and various organ dysfunction. My imaging and bloodwork from 3 weeks prior were clean (I do them routinely since the pancreatitis is recurring).

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

#472
post #286

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You're confusing complex carbohydrates with sugar.

Pasta, rice, and fruit have huge amounts of simple sugars.

What are you talking about? Wholegrain pasta has like 40g carbohydrate that includes 1g sugar. Brown rice has around 25g carbohydrates that includes 0.4g sugar.

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

#473

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I'm a former alcoholic. I quit cold turkey years ago. Had a drug problem before that. Cold turkey as well. While I agree with you somewhat, I too don't like the narrative, I also realize that some people actually can't do that. Some people are faster, some smarter, some stronger, and some of us are better at sticking to a resolution. Everyone has things they're good at and things they struggle at despite the effort.…

I'm happy you've quit your former habits and I celebrate you. Just so you know, the point of my post isn't to rip on people with low willpower or to brag about mine (which would be false valor anyway--there are reasons I had issues with alcohol and drugs to begin with). The thesis of my post is that the narrative is that you need a drug to get better. Ozempic is supposed to be a treatment applied to people who are no…

I think we're more or less on the same page.

And honestly, flagging a comment based on disagreement is a pretty shitty move. I've noticed that happening more often here.

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

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a former alcoholic. I quit cold turkey years ago. Had a drug problem before that. Cold turkey as well. While I agree with you somewhat, I too don't like the narrative, I also realize that some people actually can't do that. Some people are faster, some smarter, some stronger, and some of us are better at sticking to a resolution. Everyone has things they're good at and things they struggle at despite the effort.…

I'm happy you've quit your former habits and I celebrate you. Just so you know, the point of my post isn't to rip on people with low willpower or to brag about mine (which would be false valor anyway--there are reasons I had issues with alcohol and drugs to begin with). The thesis of my post is that the narrative is that you need a drug to get better. Ozempic is supposed to be a treatment applied to people who are no…

Pictures worth a thousand words: https://imgur.com/a/5drSm9F

I'm very happy for you that you beat alcoholism. it's a nasty beast. The rest of us are facing the ladder on the right for certain issues. It's time we take a deeper look at problems people face, and actually help them fix it rather than sit back and judge them for moral failings when in reality it turns out to be a brain chemistry thing that can't be helped.

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

#475
post #393

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Non diabetic, didn’t/don’t have diabetic retinopathy. I had assumed that the detachments were unrelated to Semaglutide but just happened as a freak coincidence in time. The no apparent reason was a bit of hyperbole, since my vitreous was pulling away from the retina and brought some pieces with it during the process. But as to why that was happening at my current age is unknown. Second was likely related to stress in…

Were you prescribed it? What strength?

Yes I slowly tapered up (4ish months) to 2.25 mg a week.

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

#476
post #317

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…

Nicotine physical addiction is over with in less than a week. The remainder is psychological habit and classical conditioning.

In my experience, different drugs have different effects on different people, sometimes radically so, and overly-generalizing is less than useless when trying to learn and understand how drugs work, both on an individual level and a societal level.

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

#477
post #435

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This isn't true. I am not dissociated when not actively undergoing the treatment. If anything, the after-effects of ketamine treatment alleviate my lifelong dissociation and other symptoms depression and PTSD. Something about the induced dissociation "wraps around" and snaps people back into fully being present. Have you ever had ketamine treatment? Where are you getting these conclusions?

Yes I did have two treatments. After the first treatment I really liked it and I thought I had my life back. All my debilitating symptoms were gone. Weeks after the second treatment I noticed that my depression and trauma is not gone. It just made me not constantly aware of it, if that makes sense. I was not clinically dissociated as well, just dissociated from the things that caused my suffering. I didn’t think that…

> I did have two treatments

> Weeks after the second treatment ... I stopped getting treatments

This sounds like an unusual, very sparse schedule. Most ketamine treatment routines have many more than two doses, and nothing resembling multi-week intervals between doses at the start.

My wife has undergone ketamine treatment, and as part of it, I read up on the literature. Typical ramp-up schedules (like hers was) would be one or twice per week for one or two months, and then less frequently until you stop or go into "as-needed" maintenance dosing.

I'm glad you found other things that worked for you, but what you describe doesn't sound like a normal course of ketamine treatment.

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

#478
post #68

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I'm not sure why "it stops working when you stop taking it" is used as an argument against these new peptides. This is the way almost every medication we encounter works. Tylenol might get rid of your headache, but that headache can come back tomorrow. Stop taking birth control and you might get pregnant. Stop taking Claritin and your allergies return. Stop taking insulin, and, as with these new peptides, you lose co…

I am not holding Ozempic to needing to be the cure for anything. My point is that people without diabetes are looking to this drug for weight loss, at which point they create a dangerous dependency, with no hard evidence that their actual health improves. This is opposed to coming up with long term solutions that involve re-evaluating daily decisions that lead to some of these diseases in the first place. If Ozempic…

> My point is that people without diabetes are looking to this drug for weight loss, at which point they create a dangerous dependency, with no hard evidence that their actual health improves.

These drugs would have to be pretty bad to counteract the massive health benefits from losing weight (even if they don't have diabetes). I've heard a few eye-openers in the comments, but unless they're more prevalent than I've read, or there's some ticking time bomb, the drugs are probably still a net health benefit.

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

#479

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> Find the right exercise/workout for you and it'll be its own reward. appreciate the perspective but I want to be like the people that feel pulled to "find" it at all.

The pleasure of working out only becomes obvious after you've built the habit to do so. You'll know you've built the habit when it starts to feel bad when you don't work out on a day you're normally supposed to. It's pretty similar to a drug addiction.

yeah I want a drug induced version of that where I can't feel satisfied until I figure out that I need to exercise

but its pretty clear what I'm asking I don't have to keep re-explaining that, for thanks for chiming in.

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

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find the right exercise/workout for you and it'll be its own reward. Shouldn't take more than a bit of caffeine to get you moving at that point. As to empath mode, you've just described MDMA. But it'd be nice if there were something a little less intense. That you could take weekly without frying your brain & was mild enough for family/work social situations. (And no, alcohol doesn't fit the bill).

> Find the right exercise/workout for you and it'll be its own reward. appreciate the perspective but I want to be like the people that feel pulled to "find" it at all.

close the feedback loop enough to get the dopamine rush each time:

- aim to either meet or exceed the previous workout, and consider that a success

- count reps so you can increase them 1 at a time until you're ready to increase weight

- for cardio, increase difficulty (incline/speed) until you're ready to increase distance

- set a longer term goal, too, like a body weight bench press or a 10 minute mile

- after doing this for a while, you might notice some differences in your appearance, which can be its own motivator

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