This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. It's rare that a drug has had as big an impact on our lives as OZempic.

It's been on the market for a relatively short time, and something like 12% of Americans

have taken OZempic or one of the others in its class, the GLP-1 drugs.

Now, 12% is a lot, but when you consider that around 40% of us are obese, we're probably not at the plateau for GLP1 drugs.

And because these are relatively new drugs, there's a lot that scientists don't know about them yet.

Drew Kular is a contributing writer covering medicine and health care.

And he just published a piece of reporting in the New Yorker called Kenozempic cure addiction.

This segment will be called Everyone's Doing It, Doing It, Doing It.

Oh, God.

Are you willing to admit it's a wonder drug?

I don't know about a wonder drug, but it's the closest thing we have.

So how did you get clued into this research on GLP1 drugs, OZempic, Wigovie, and so many others, and then tie it to the problem of addiction?

Yeah. Well, I've been interested in these drugs forever, in part because we saw, I mean, they can manage diabetes and then obesity, but not just

that. I mean, it's not just an aesthetic thing with these drugs. So if you think about cardiovascular

risk, stroke risk, chronic kidney disease, liver disease,

all these things seem to be getting better with the longer that people are on these drugs.

And then there's just all these stories, these anecdotes, from people who start taking the drugs.

They don't feel like drinking anymore. They don't drink, feel like smoking. They're not doing opioids.

They don't want to gamble. They don't want to shop. And so there was an avalanche of these stories, and then you start to get these clinical trials.

And it's what's trying to unpack.

Is this something that's actually true and happening, or is it just on Instagram?

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