alt Hacker NewsThe most surprising effect of Mounjaro, at least initially was that it drastically reduced by desire to drink beer, and when I started, my drinking was at a very unhealthy level (beer calories being a major factor in my weight problem). But maybe I'm an odd case, as I had a real beer habit but don't like wine and very rarely touched spirits.
Actually losing some weight as well as cutting my drinking down, helped me with depression far more than SSRIs (which had previously led to even faster weight gain)
Unfortunately, the effects started to diminish somewhat after about a year on it, as if I was building up a bit of a tolerance to the drug. And then I switched to Wegovy (=Ozempic) after big UK price hikes to Mounjaro, and found it much less effective, started gaining weight again (winter/xmas didn't help). Switching back to Mounjaro at the moment, but having to slowly step back up from a lower dose. Not expecting to see the initial near-miraculous effects again, expecting to have to combine it with some actual willpower and more exercise going forwards.
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I've had a similar experience where I'd be craving a beer, but not really craving alcohol since wine or spirits didn't sound appealing at all. I think it might actually be the hops and not the alcohol.
I don't know if it's common in the UK, but in the US, a lot of breweries have started making hop water. I've found that it can really scratch that itch. Even just a hop tea might work if you can't find pre-made hop water.
It sounds weird, but it's actually delicious with nice floral and citrus notes and just enough bitterness that you don't drink it too quickly.
It’s not just you. I’ve known several people who lost their desire to drink beer specifically on these drugs. I didn’t personally experience it, but then I am more of a whiskey guy.
The really beautiful thing now is that, with the evidence from GLP-1 drugs as a class, we're seeing 3 things: new targets for all kinds of things, that were previously discarded as "too difficult to make into medication", and in addition, injectable treatments - for a long, long time anything that required injections was just ruled out at the mechanism level. The third thing is that pharmaceutical industry has learned how to hit multiple targets with a single drug - previously most drugs were formulated to hit at most one or two receptors, and now we're seeing work on quad or 5-way drugs.
I'm super optimistic, the pipeline for future medications in these classes and other related ones are enormous. Huge effects both for me personally but for the world as a whole, a world in which obesity and other chronic behavioral conditions are treated more like cancer than smoking - even smoking itself!