This is an audio long read from nature. In this episode, will blockbuster obesity drugs

revolutionise addiction treatment? Written by Ailey Dolgin and read by me, Benjamin Thompson.

Last April, neuroscientist Sue Grigson received an email from a man detailing his years-long struggle to kick addiction.

First to opioids and then to the very medication meant to help him quit.

The man had stumbled on research by Grigson, suggesting that certain anti-obesity medications could help to reduce

rats' addiction to drugs such as heroin and fentanyl. He decided to try quitting again, this time

while taking semi-glutide, the blockbuster GLP1 drug, better known as a Zempic.

That's when he wrote to me, says Grigson, who works at

Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey. He said that he was drug and alcohol-free

for the first time in his adult life. Stories like this have been spreading fast in the past

few years through online forums, weight loss clinics and news headlines.

They describe people taking diabetes and weight loss drugs, such as semaglutide, also marketed as wega-vi,

and to zeppotide, sold as Mungiaro or Zepbound, who find themselves suddenly able to shake

long-standing addictions to

cigarettes, alcohol and other drugs. And now, clinical data are starting to back them up.

Earlier this year, a team led by Christian Henderson Hendershot, a psychologist now at the University

of Southern California in Los Angeles,

reported in a landmark randomized trial that weekly injections of semi-glutide cut alcohol consumption,

a key demonstration that GLP-1 drugs can alter addictive behavior

in people with a substance use disorder.

More than a dozen randomized clinical studies testing GLP1 drugs for addiction and now underway

worldwide, with some results expected in the next few months.

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