Chapter 43 - Can GLP drugs help cure addiction?

Can Weight Loss Drugs Treat Addiction? The Surprising Science Behind GLP-1 Medications

What if the same medication helping millions of people lose weight could also help silence cravings for alcohol, cigarettes, opioids—even gambling?

In this fascinating episode of Burn It Down and Begin Again, Erica explores one of the most promising breakthroughs in addiction research. Originally developed to treat diabetes and obesity, GLP-1 medications like Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Mounjaro®, and Zepbound® are showing unexpected results that could change the future of addiction treatment.

Drawing from recently published clinical trials, government-funded research, and her own experience with both addiction recovery and peptide therapy, Erica explains how these medications appear to influence the brain's reward system—not just reducing food cravings, but potentially quieting the dopamine-driven urges behind alcohol, nicotine, opioid use, and even compulsive gambling.

This episode breaks down the latest science in plain language while separating proven research from early findings. Erica also shares why she's hopeful this emerging field could transform the lives of millions of people struggling with addiction—and the families who love them.

If you've ever wondered why cravings feel impossible to control, are curious about the science behind GLP-1 medications, or know someone battling addiction, this episode offers hope, insight, and an exciting look at what could become one of the biggest advances in addiction medicine in decades.

Because sometimes healing doesn't come from more willpower.

Sometimes it begins with understanding how the brain really works—and discovering new tools that finally make recovery possible.  

🌸 About Chickology™
Chickology™ is more than a podcast brand — it’s a collective of strong, real women telling real stories. Together, we’re reclaiming our narratives, breaking cycles, and lifting one another up through truth, laughter, and raw conversations. Every show under the Chickology™ umbrella is created by women, for women, with love.

✨ Join the Movement
We’re always looking for bold voices and powerful stories. If you’re a woman ready to share your truth or host your own podcast with us, reach out! One honest truth at a time, we’re helping one isolated woman at a time feel less alone.

📍 Find Us

• Explore all Chickology™ podcasts at [Buzzsprout Podcast Directory link or Chickology website]
• Email us at: ChickologyPodcasts@gmail.com
  
  

💫 Because when women rise together, we change the world.

Transcript

Erica 0:00

There is a drug sitting in 15 million American medicine cabinets right now that was built to shrink your waistline. Nobody designed it to touch your relationship with alcohol, cigarettes, opioids, or the slot machine, but it's doing it anyway. Doctors are watching patients walk in for weight loss and walk out saying the wine doesn't call to them anymore, and neither does the cigarette or the casino floor. This is not a rumor. This is showing up in clinical trials, in Lancet publications, and in the VA's own research budget. Today we're going to dive into what the data actually says, what it doesn't say yet, and why the same molecule that shuts down food noise might be the closest thing that modern medicine has ever found as a volume knob for every craving you've ever had and might help us tackle addiction. Welcome to Burn It Down and Begin Again, because sometimes the only way out is through the fire. I'm Erica, and this is my story told one chapter at a time. Not to relive the pain, but to reclaim the power that was buried beneath it. I share it boldly because I know I'm not the only one. Too many of us carry stories like mine of trauma, silence, survival, and shame alone. But healing isn't just about surviving what hurt us. It's about becoming the people we were meant to be. How we can transform pain into purpose and rebuild life on our own terms to show what is possible when we rise to the strongest version of ourselves. If you hear yourself in my words, know this. You're not crazy, you're not broken, and you're definitely not alone. This podcast is part of Chick-ology: real women, real stories, and real transformation. We're here to break cycles, rise higher, and create lives that radiate power, purpose, and passion. So if you've walked through hell and you're ready to grow, evolve, and rebuild, then stay with me. There's hope here, there's healing here, and there's an army of us rising with you. Now, let's begin. So today is going to be a little bit different than our usual chapters. We are going to step out of stories of psychology, people, and relationships for a little bit into something a little bigger because I think it matters to every single person listening whether addiction touched your life directly or you've watched it wreck someone else's life. I spent years in the trenches of my own healing with addiction. And I've also spent years deep in the world of peptides and biohacking. So when this story started breaking recently, and I watched a few episodes on this and I started researching it about weight loss drugs and the possibility that it is the next frontier in addiction treatment, I got fully into it and I'm really surprised and very hopeful about the things that they are beginning to publish. Before we get into it, if this show has ever helped you feel less alone, do me a favor, leave a rating and a few stars wherever you're listening. It helps the algorithm decide who gets to hear it next. And if there's somebody out there that needs it, maybe this episode or a different episode, then go ahead and leave those stars and leave that rating. It helps a lot. This podcast is designed for anybody who's ever suffered, anybody who wonders if it's possible to reclaim and rebuild your life and the mindset that it takes to get there and some of the challenges that we face. I'm really glad you're here. Thanks for being a part of the family here at Burn It Down and Begin Again. So I always start with the challenge of the week. And this week I am paying attention to something that I recently, I mean, I knew it kind of about myself, but I'm learning it more about myself. I live my life with a lot of enthusiasm, whether it be if I'm complaining about something or I'm excited about something, you know, I tell the whole story. I connect all the dots, I dive in head first, and that's just part of who I am. And so I don't want to lose that. But I've also been thinking about something else. Not everybody has the same bandwidth in every moment. Sometimes people want the full conversation and sometimes they only have room for the headline. Neither one is wrong. So my challenge of the week this week isn't about becoming less of myself. It's about becoming more aware of the moment that I'm in and the person I'm dealing with. Could I read the room a little bit better? Uh, what does this person need from me right now? Maybe they need the whole story, maybe they just need the next sentence. And for me, this isn't about shrinking my personality. It's about learning when to turn up the volume and when to let it be a little quieter. Uh, and basically what had happened this week is I have a manager who is also a friend. He's on the management team. And there's two channels that I communicate with him on. I have the professional channel, which is the text message, and then on Instagram, we follow each other and I will oftentimes leave him voice messages or messages on there, along with memes or whatever. That's really the designated personal channel. That's the way I've always treated it. And I'm pretty sure that he uh sees it that way too. But I had some scheduling changes that I was really upset about. And even though I prefaced it by saying, hey, you know, I'm really upset about these schedule changes. I'm talking to my friend here, not my manager. I know you didn't make the schedule, but this is what's going on. It got brought up in a sync that I was doing yesterday with the main manager and him. And basically, in so many words, he addressed it to let me know that he didn't appreciate the fact that I basically unloaded on him about the schedule. So I was a little hurt by that because I thought, well, I'm doing it on my personal channel that's between us. But obviously, he felt like it was too much information. He didn't want to deal with that. I know that he has a really busy schedule because the manager that's in place right now is an interim manager, kind of a temporary manager. So a lot of that stuff that he's dealing with, he's dealing with store manager level stuff. And it probably just overwhelmed him. Genuinely, he's got one of the biggest hearts of anybody I've ever met. But I think what he was saying to me in that moment, enough that he had to bring it up in the conversation, partially because it was about scheduling. And there was a real element of that, like going forward, this is the way he was going to be doing scheduling. But he did bring that up as part of the conversation to let me know that, hey, you know, there's nothing I can do about it. And I think he was just basically expressing to me that he felt overwhelmed that I was venting to him on this uh channel that's typically used for personal. So I learned something about myself. One, I have to be more careful when there's somebody at work, even though they're a friend, but they're also a manager, probably with what I'm sharing. Um, that's not like I say anything bad. I was just venting, but I think that it was just too much for him to deal with at the moment and it wasn't appropriate. And I do that in other areas of my life, and I notice that about me. I think that's what makes me a good salesperson or a good podcast host, is that I naturally connect with people, I tell a story, I'm enthusiastic about everything, whether I'm mad or whether I'm excited, but not everybody has the bandwidth at a particular moment or in general to deal with that. So I think that I'm just so used to living my life out loud and being me that I've never really thought about that before. I think I need to start thinking more about who am I speaking with, what is their particular bandwidth, and what do I need to bring into this conversation? And I hate to be calculated like that. I think that's the thing. I spent so much of my life being edited by my ex-husband and having to live by that set of rules that one of the great freedoms that I found in my life is that I can just be myself and not let it all hang out, because I certainly don't. But I just have, you know, I just am me. And I think maybe sometimes that might be a little much for people. So I think that that's my challenge of the week this week is learning how to gauge that a little better without actually changing my personality and what I bring to the table, but being more careful about what I share, when I share it, how much I share. It's not like I just have verbal diarrhea, but maybe sometimes I do. Maybe there's a little bit of that with me where I'm not talking about somebody else or or bringing up things that people don't need to know about my personal life. But whatever it is that I'm doing, I'm probably saying 100% of what needs to be said when really the situation only warrants 20%. So it's something I have to work on with myself, right? So that is my challenge of the week this week is just mitigating my own behavior because it affects other people. And I think I just need to be more aware. That's the thing I do consider myself aware, but maybe not in this regard. Maybe sometimes my level of enthusiasm and uh communication that I bring to relationships is a lot for people. I don't feel that way with my best friend. I feel like she and I are very similar. So maybe that's why we get along so well. But I think for some people it's just too much. So I've got to work on toning it down without losing my personality. That is my challenge of the week this week. Then I'm pretty excited about this particular episode that we're going into today. So, long story short, you guys know I'm really into peptides. They've changed my life, but I also struggled with addiction. When I watched this expose that was done on Australian news channel, that basically talked about all of these women that have come forward saying, hey, I was treating my weight loss, but I was low-key, a bit of an alcoholic. I was like a bottle of wine a night kind of girl. And now literally it's repugnant to me. I can't, you know, even consider doing it. There was a gambler that talked about that. Cigarettes. So apparently, this particular molecule, whatever's in the peptide, is also touching the addiction factor or that addiction connection in our brain, not for everything, but for like opioids, alcohol, cigarettes, and gambling, oddly enough. So, whatever part of the brain center that is, it's it's affecting that. And people are beginning to have this really positive experience of not only losing the weight, but losing these addictive behaviors to things that have impacted their life negatively in the past. And I think that's really something. So let's talk about uh first what's actually true. Because I cannot tell you science has cured addiction, but this is a start, you guys. I believe it is a connection and it is going to eventually change how we treat addiction. Imagine if we could actually cure addiction, what would that do for the people that we've lost? I've I've lost personally three people that I know that have died from addictive-related uh incidents or directly from the addiction itself. This is a very exciting thing. So the class of drugs that we're actually talking about are GLP1 receptor agonists. Now, I know you're gonna know them by their brand namesic, Wegavy, Manjaro, and Zepp bound, which is basically semaglutide and terzepatide, right? The molecules, they are doing all the work. They were built to mimic a gut hormone that tells you that you're full. That's it. And then they slow down digestion too. So that was the whole plan, of course, when they did this. It also helps to control your blood sugar, your appetite, it helps with diabetes and obesity. But the interesting is they're finding out it does more than that. There's even, and that's another episode within itself, that these drugs are actually helping to not cure cancer, but it's helping with cancer. And I don't want to say too much on that because I haven't actually studied that yet. But it is beginning to be looked into as part of cancer treatment. And this addiction thing just really lit my fire because wow, can you imagine getting people on these drugs and it changing their life? Because it certainly changed my life. I had tackled my addiction at the time. Uh, so it really just helped with my weight loss, but it did really help with my food addiction, which is basically what I had, right? My relationship with food. So your brain doesn't just use like the hormone system for food, the receptors that these drugs bind to sit in places like the ventricle tegmental area, and then I think it's called the nucleus acumabens. That is the prefrontal cortex, the exact real estate responsible for dopamine reward, motivation. Um, it's lit up like that circuitry is lit up by a drink, a cigarette, a bet, a hit, right? So we're getting stimulated by outside things that we do, and they become addictive. It could even be social media. So when you turn down the volume on that food reward, you're not just turning down that channel, you're turning down that whole system that responds to that. That's the mechanism. So let's talk about the numbers because I know you want those. Alcohol has the strongest data by far. A 2026 randomized placebo-controlled trial published in the Lanclet took 108 people already diagnosed with alcohol use disorder who also had obesity. Half got semiglutide, half got a placebo. Both groups got standard therapy. Over six months, the semiglutide group cut their heavy drinking days by over 41 percentage points from where they started. That's incredible. The placebo group only dropped about 26 points. So, I mean, that's real, that's measurable. These people that had been given the actual drug, they kept saying, I don't know what it is, but I a drink just doesn't sound good to me anymore. And that is turning down that noise in our head, which is the hardest thing when you're suffering from an alcohol use disorder. That's the first thing that happens, is you have to fight that battle in your head that tells you that's the fix that you need to feel better. And there is more behind it. A JAMA psychiatry trial found that low dose semaglutide reduced both the amount that people drank and the peak blood alcohol they hit during controlled drinking tasks, with craving sources dropping significantly over nine weeks. That's amazing. It didn't get everybody to stop entirely, but on the days that they drank, they drank considerably less and they didn't really want it, or they wanted it less, or they'd actually put down the glass half full when they used to drink the whole thing. Separate observational research tracking real patients found that people on semaglutide had a 50 to 56% lower rate of developing an alcohol use dependency disorder within a year compared to people on other weight loss medications. That's pretty incredible. The group in Sweden published this last January in e-Biomedicine that trazepatide reduced alcohol drinking and relapse behavior in animal models through the same reward circuit mechanism and held up consistently enough that researchers are pushing it towards human trials next. This isn't a fringe interest, though. This is a big deal. The VA just launched a full phase three trial specifically testing semi-glutide in veterans with alcohol use disorder running through 2028, backed by federal research dollars. That's huge. So the government obviously knows that this works. And think about how many people in the VA. You do have a lot of people that have alcohol issues and uh coming out of you know horrible situations where they have PTSD. And so, how do they quell the issue? A lot of them drink. One of my friends that I had, a veteran, died uh about five years ago from drinking himself to death because he had such trauma, right? So they're running this trial because they deal with a lot of that in the VA. So when the government starts funding multi-year trials, that tells you that the early data was strong enough to justify their investment because the government just doesn't randomly do that. Nicotine is next. And this one surprised me. A cross-sectional study following over 13,000 patients on GLP1 medications found that among people who were smokers when they started the drug, 17% became ex-smokers, and almost a quarter reported a direct drop in nicotine cravings. Isn't that interesting? Because that's a really hard one for people to kick. One study combining extenitide with nicotine patch also showed 20% greater abstinence rates compared to the patch alone. One study combining GLP with a nicotine patch showed almost 20% greater, even above and beyond the initial study findings, abstinence rates compared to the patch alone, plus less weight gain after quitting smoking, which, as you know, is a big deal. If you've ever quit smoking, you know that half the reason that people go back is because they gain weight. It's that oral fixation thing. The connection is always in our brain. What they're really determining is whatever it is that turns up that food noise that makes food comforting and like something that we want to do to quell the noise in our head, it's the same hit that we get with things like alcohol or drugs like opioids or nicotine or gambling. It hits that dopamine center. And because the GLPs are directly hitting that same center, that is what is making the difference. It's actually not only just tackling the food noise, which helps us lose weight, it's tackling those areas of our brain that tells us that we need that drink or that hit to feel better. One study found that a GLP medication could cut opioid cravings by 40%. That's huge, you guys, in three weeks. And opioid addiction is a big deal. Retrospective research comparing people with opioid or alcohol use found that on those GLP medications, they had a 40% lower rate of opioid overdose and a 50% lower rate of alcohol intoxication than people who weren't on them. Those are real life and death numbers in a country that loses over 100,000 people a year to overdose. Now let's talk about gambling. So right now it's anecdotal. Researchers are hearing reports, patients on these drugs are saying that pull to gamble isn't there anymore. And a lot of people have reported this. And the mechanism makes sense given everything we've just covered, because gambling runs through that exact same dopamine reward pathway as substances and food do. There is no large controlled trial yet proving it because I think that alcohol and drugs, and of course, smoking are the real health issues that they're trying to impact. But it is a very exciting frontier, even though it's the least proven, because gambling also ruins lives. The researcher who's been at the center of all of this, his name is Lorenzo Leggio, a senior investigator at the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. He's been working on this since 2015 when his team published a mouse study showing GLP reduced alcoholic style drinking. His team published a mouse study showing that GLP1 drugs reduced alcohol drinking paired with human genetic research, linking variants in that GLP1 receptor gene itself to a person's baseline risk for alcohol use disorder. That is a decade that he's been working on now of groundwork over a decade of groundwork. We're just hearing about it now, but that's because all of that work has paid off. So what's coming next? Multiple phase three trials are active or launching through 2026 and 2028. Federal agencies are funding and they're dedicated to those addiction-specific research on those molecules for the first time. And drug companies that spent a decade only thinking about blood sugar and body weight are now looking at this mechanism as something that's going to reach into that reward system for almost anything that the human brain can get hooked on. So this could be really, really big for people that suffer and families that suffer by osmosis from addiction. Whether that becomes a purpose-built addiction drug that's formulated from this, or whether the doctors just start prescribing existing GLPs off-label for addiction for the same patients that are struggling from these things. And interestingly enough, I do know of somebody personally whose doctor's really into GLP who mentioned, hey, you know, I know you wanted to lose some weight. Let's go ahead and prescribe this GLP. There's some interest in the fact that it also curbs addiction. Let's see if that works for you. And this person that I personally know, which really sweetened the deal for me in wanting to do this episode, says, gosh, Erica, not only is the food noise less, but I actually don't feel like drinking. That is incredible. So I will say this as someone who spent years deep in the peptide world for entirely different reasons. I went in there for fat loss and longevity and like mitochondrial repair, but I've said for a long time that peptides are going to change the way that medicine works and what it means to people and what we can do because they don't work like a prescription medicine, which is kind of like a blunt pharmaceutical hammer. They work with signaling systems in your body that your body already has. This is exactly the kind of discovery that proves a point. Nobody set out to build an addiction drug. They set to build out a hormone mimic for blood sugar, but it turned out to be sitting on top of this entire human reward system the entire time. So I'm not in active addiction. You guys know my story, but I know what it took to be cured of the disease of alcoholism. And they say you're never really cured. So to get out of it, because I was owned by something, and you cannot understand how it owned you. You can't explain to somebody what that entails unless they've suffered from addiction and what it takes to get out of it. I know the terror of watching somebody that you love be owned by it. I've I've seen friends die from this, right? If there is a real evidence-backed path that, or even a chance that it gives people extra or a fraction of their control back, that deserves a lot of research, you guys. And I would even go as far as to say if you need to lose some weight, but you're also struggling with some addiction, I would love to hear from you. Why don't you try it? Semaglutide and terzepitide have both been shown to work in this regard. And like I said, I personally know somebody who's having this experience. That is incredible. So where does that leave us? Alcohol, which has strong replicated government-funded evidence, right? Nicotine, real signal, smaller trials, promising, very promising. Opioids, early, but still life-saving numbers and gambling, less talked about, but a very compelling story, least proven by far. But guys, we're just on the threshold, the beginning of this. Watch what peptides are gonna do. Everything is still anecdotal, basically, but not really, because you've had this guy studying since 2015. I've read some of his stuff. He has got such incredible numbers. This is a story worth watching closely. I'm not calling it a cure because I can't make that claim, but I can tell you that when I took a GLP, my experience was that relationship that I had with food, that noise in my head, it just turned off. I literally wasn't interested in food anymore. And of course, over time, as you wean off the drug, your relationship with food comes back, but it's very, very different. If it can do that with alcohol, if it can do that with drugs, guys, this could be incredible. I would love to hear from you guys. Just let me know in the comment section. Like, have you had this experience? Do you know anybody that's tried this? This could be an incredible find that could change millions of lives of people suffering from addiction and the families and the friends that love them. So if this episode gave you something like a fact to bring to your own doctor, check it out. Do your own research, maybe a reason to hope for somebody that you love or a new way to think about where cravings come from. And a lot of us think it's a weakness. It's not, it comes from a part of our brain. So just think about these things, guys, because I do believe that modern medicine has failed us in many ways. And I think that peptides in general are opening up pathways through our brains, through these tiny molecules to change the pathways into the way that we relate to food, to alcohol, and to these dopamine-hitting substances that can basically ruin our lives when we go into the addictive pattern. So I hope that this helps you a little bit. And I hope you do your own research on it. Because if you know anybody that's suffering from addiction, or if you're suffering from yourself, wouldn't this be incredible if it turned out to be something that was really documented? Always do your own research, guys, but I'm super excited about this. So that's it for me. Very, very quick episode. Super busy in my life right now, but I wanted to share that with you. I hope that uh fires something up in you. Thank you for being here and holding this part of my story with me. If today's episode resonated with you, please don't stay in silence. Share it with someone who might need to hear it. And if you're walking through your own fire right now, know this you are not too broken, you are not too late, and you are never ever alone. This is Burn It Down and Begin Again. I'm Erica, and I will see you in the next chapter.