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Some people taking popular new diabetes and weight-loss drugs including Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound and Mounjaro have reported reduced cravings for substances besides food<\/a>. The medications seem to dampen the effects of drugs ranging from nicotine to alcohol\u2014but scientists haven\u2019t been able to fully figure out why.<\/p>\n A recent preliminary study in Scientific Reports<\/a> offers clues to how the new class of drugs may make people drink less alcohol\u2014and feel less drunk when they do. The study authors suggest that understanding the drugs\u2019 mechanism in the entire body\u2014not just the brain\u2014could open up avenues for treating alcohol use disorder.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of action in the brain, but what we were trying to argue in our paper is that there also is probably action in the gut,\u201d says study co-author Alex DiFeliceantonio, an appetitive neuroscientist at Virginia Tech. \u201cWe need to look at both to really fully understand how these drugs are working to reduce the intake of substances with abuse liability.\u201d<\/p>\n On supporting science journalism<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing<\/a>. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n The drugs promote the release of insulin and make people feel full by mimicking the natural gut hormone glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1). Scientists largely agree that the primary way GLP-1 drugs cause weight loss is through their effects on feelings of satiety in the brain\u2014causing people to feel full faster and ultimately eat smaller meals. Past<\/a> evidence<\/a> suggests<\/a> the brain\u2019s pleasure and satiety pathways overlap, which has spurred researchers to propose that the GLP-1 drugs may be also quieting reward signals<\/a> key in certain addictive behaviors, such as drinking alcohol<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the drugs also cause a physiological reaction in the gut: they slow down the movement of food and liquids from the stomach into the small intestine, a process known as gastric emptying.<\/p>\n People taking these drugs \u201ccan\u2019t eat quite as much, because the food is staying in their stomach longer,\u201d DiFeliceantonio says. \u201cThe interesting thing about alcohol is it is not well absorbed in the stomach. It needs to empty into the intestine to be absorbed and for you to feel the effects.\u201d<\/p>\n If the GLP-1 drugs delay gastric emptying, alcohol may take longer to reach the brain. \u201cWe know that slowing down a drug makes it less rewarding,\u201d DiFeliceantonio says\u2014and reducing reward<\/a> may help treat addiction<\/a>. \u201cThe substance matters, yes, but the speed at which it gets to your brain also matters,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n DiFeliceantonio and her colleagues set out to test this hypothesis. In a makeshift bar in their lab, they gave vodka mixed in orange or cranberry juice to 10 people who were taking one of the GLP-1 medications for weight loss and a similar number of people in a control group. None of the participants had alcohol use disorder. In the span of an hour, all participants drank three vodka doses, calculated based on their body size, to increase their breath alcohol content (BrAC) to 0.08 percent. This is equivalent to a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.1 percent, past the legal limit for driving in the U.S.<\/p>\n The researchers surveyed the participants about how drunk they felt and took several breath alcohol measurements over four hours, or until the participants\u2019 BrAC levels dropped below 0.02 percent.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we found was that, especially in the first 20 to 30 minutes after drinking the alcohol, there was a lower breath alcohol content in the group taking a GLP-1 receptor agonist, and they reported that they felt less drunk,\u201d DiFeliceantonio says. All the participants reached similar BrAC levels after about an hour, but slowing the alcohol\u2019s effect on the brain made people feel less intoxicated, she says.<\/p>\n Neither changes in blood glucose nor nausea (a common side effect of GLP-1 medications<\/a>) explained how intoxicated people felt, the researchers found.<\/p>\n The study has several limitations. The sample size was small, and different participants were taking different weight-loss medications<\/a>, which act on different gut hormone receptors or are prescribed at varying dosages. Ideally in drug studies researchers would keep the medication and dose consistent, but this study is a good start, says Carolina Haass-Koffler, an addiction researcher and associate professor of psychiatry at Brown University, who was not involved in the study.<\/p>\n \u201cAlcohol use disorder is a complex, systemic disease and involves not only brain dysfunction but also a metabolic component,\u201d Haass-Koffler says. \u201cI really like the integration of the whole-body concept in this study.\u201d<\/p>\n She notes, however, that introducing GLP-1 medications to a new population requires careful evaluation of the risks and benefits. \u201cSafety data are out there for people with diabetes and now people taking the medication for obesity,\u201d but the clinical presentation could be completely different in people with alcohol use disorder, Haass-Koffler says. DiFeliceantonio wouldn\u2019t recommend GLP-1 drugs as future frontline treatments for someone with alcohol use disorder who is underweight.<\/p>\n Randomized controlled trials of these drugs have shown some promise in treating alcoholism. A 2022 clinical trial found that the early-generation GLP-1 medication exenatide lowered alcohol cravings<\/a> in people with alcohol use disorder, and another trial published in February found that people with obesity and alcohol use disorder drank less when treated with semaglutide<\/a>, the generic name for Wegovy and Ozempic.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems like a really small thing, to just slow down [alcohol reaching the brain] a little,\u201d DiFeliceantonio says. \u201cFrom this study, we can\u2019t definitively say this is the reason that people taking GLP-1 medications drink less, but it\u2019s adding to this body of evidence of what the mechanism is.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s Time to Stand Up for Science<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/a>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts<\/a>, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters<\/a>, must-watch videos, challenging games<\/a>, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. 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I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"November 6, 2025 4 min read Why Drugs Like Ozempic Can Make People Drink Less Alcohol A small…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[163,85,46,482],"class_list":{"0":"post-119831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-medication"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}