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Drugs and alcohol claim hundreds of thousands of lives every year in the U.S. And yet, the field of addiction has been stubbornly impervious to drug treatments for decades, with no approved medications for people addicted to cocaine, methamphetamine or stimulants, and largely ineffective drug therapies for those with alcohol use disorder.
But one highly improbable candidate is giving doctors and researchers hope that they might be at a turning point: GLP-1 drugs, the category of diabetes-turned-weight loss medications that includes Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound.
Now, a new study of more than 600,000 people reports that those taking GLP-1 drugs experienced a major reduction in risk of overdose, drug-related hospitalizations and deaths, and a lower risk of developing a substance addiction in the first place, across a wide range of substances.
Ziyad Al-Aly, the physician-scientist from Washington University in St. Louis who led the study, is cautious to note that more research is needed before GLP-1 drugs can be prescribed for addiction. But, he writes, “If additional trials confirm that they effectively curb cravings across addictive substances, these drugs could begin to close one of the most consequential treatment gaps in medicine.”
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