Dhruv Khullar

Now, for a long time, GLP-1 was thought to be mainly about digestion.

But it's now clear that the medications affect much more than eating.

They might have some of their most surprising effects not in the gut.

but in the brain.

There's still a lot of stigma that's preventing people from coming forward when they have an addiction.

I don't want to say that, you know, our behavior, our will has no role in these conditions.

Of course, we need to encourage and help people make decisions that are in line with their health.

But I think that needs to be paired with an understanding that a lot of these processes are neurobiological and shaming people because they have these conditions is not going to be a productive way to go about it.

Last year, I met a woman I'll call Mary.

Mary was 13 when she started drinking, and soon, she could drink 18 beers in a sitting and barely seen bust.

Her days became a blur of inebriation and hangover.

Mary wanted to stop drinking.

She tried alcohol rehab, Alcoholics Anonymous, a medication called Antabuse.

None of them worked for her.

One day, Mary was at a bar with a friend who also drank heavily.

But that evening, Mary noticed that her friend had hardly sipped her drink.

Her friend told her that she started taking Ozempic, and now she could barely drink two beers at a time.

Mary was perplexed.

She'd always thought of Ozempic as an obesity medicine.

What did it have to do with drinking?