Ozempic and related weight loss drugs may help people struggling with addiction, as they’ve been linked to a 40 percent reduction in opioid overdose and 50 percent lower rate of alcohol intoxication, according to researchers.
Ozempic is an injectable prescription drug designed to manage blood sugar levels in patients with Type 2 diabetes. The drug, however, has seeped into the public zeitgeist thanks to one desirable side effect: weight loss.
Ozempic and sister drug Wegovy—which has been approved by the FDA for chronic weight management—are based on a molecule called semaglutide, which mimics the structure of a hormone that naturally occurs in our bodies called glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1). GLP-1 plays an important role in regulating appetite and blood sugar levels by activating specific receptors involved in these pathways.
By mimic GLP-1’s structure, semaglutide can also activate these receptors, inducing feelings of fullness while delaying the emptying of our stomachs. In other words, it makes us less hungry and, therefore, less likely to overeat.
To induce these feelings of satiety, semaglutide interacts with a region of the brain called the mesolimbic system, which overlaps with brain circuits involved in reward and addiction. This led researchers to hypothesize that GLP-1 mimics drugs like semaglutide and might alter the way our brains respond to addictive substances.
To explore these effects, researchers from Loyola University in Chicago studied 503,747 patients with a history of opioid use disorder and 817,309 with a history of alcohol use disorder. Across both groups, 13,724 of the participants had a prescription for Ozempic, Mounjaro, or a similar weight loss medication.
The team found that those with the prescriptions had a 40 percent lower rate of opioid overdose and 50 percent lower rate of alcohol intoxication compared to those without a prescription to these medications.
“This study suggests that patients with heroin or alcohol addiction who are prescribed Ozempic (typically for diabetes or obesity) are less likely to be hospitalized for heroin overdose or alcohol intoxication, respectively,” Matt Field, professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield, said in a statement. “The findings add to those from other studies, particularly animal research, which suggest that this and similar drugs might one day be prescribed to help people with addiction.”
Field added, however, that the cases monitored in this study—i.e. those of overdose and hospitalization-required intoxication—are very extreme instances of substance abuse.
“Those outcomes are very different from the outcomes used when researchers test new treatments for addiction, in which case we might look at whether the treatment helps people to stop taking the substance altogether (complete abstinence), or if it helps people to reduce the amount of substance they consume, or how often they consume it,” he said.
“Those things could not be measured in this study. This leaves open the possibility that while Ozempic may (for reasons currently unknown) prevent people from taking so much alcohol or heroin that they overdose and end up in a hospital, it may not actually help them to reduce their substance use, or to abstain altogether.”
The study authors also pointed out that their findings were based on observational data, so it is unclear whether the medications were causing the reduction in hospitalizations. Even so, they say that their findings should encourage further research into the protective effects of Ozempic and similar drugs in treating patients with substance use disorders.
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Reference
Qeadan, F., McCunn, A., & Tingey, B. (2024). The association between glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide and/or glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist prescriptions and substance-related outcomes in patients with opioid and alcohol use disorders: A real-world data analysis. Addiction. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.16679
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