I recall reading a book where a guy used these meds to lose weight. One thing he found was that because he was overeating due to depression, removing his appetite left him a bit stuck because his coping mechanism had been taken away. I would worry that if you're drinking due to an emotional issue, exposing that issue so immediately could have serious consequences if it didn't come with some serious support.
Yeah IIRC the current state of the addiction medicine model is that the drug use of addicts is maladaptive but that there is a real illness or suffering that at one point it gave relief from, or the user thought it would. So someone who gets addicted to opioids after knee surgery is in the same category, doing the same thing, as an alcoholic who started drinking so they wouldn't have nightmares about their abusive childhood. Or whatever. The addict may not always even know explicitly but there is a reason they initially started using in this way.
If you get someone off their normal drug, they a) have none of the other tools or coping mechanisms to deal with the initial problem, having failed to develop them during the years of using drugs instead and b) are grappling with the full and unattenuated experience of whatever caused them to start using in the first place.
People newly detoxed from a long addiction are particularly vulnerable to new addictions and need a lot of support and resolve to develop the intrapersonal emotional skills they've been neglecting. And in some cases picking up a new addiction is the less harmful option. I'm not particularly a fan of AA (but not anti either) but it turns out there was wisdom in their common advice for newly dry alcoholics to not worry about their cigarette or coffee or candy intake. Smoking won't kill you this week but drinking might, you can deal with the nicotine addiction next year.
Which is why GLP-1 are of such interest to some. Anecdotal reports aren't hey, I stopped binge eating but now I'm addicted to gambling, which happens in the world of addiction and addiction treatment. Instead some of the anecdotes are hey I'm not eating as much and I also quit smoking and didn't pick up gambling. Naturally, anecdotes don't prove anything, but there are enough, on this post, even, to warrant further study.
AA is many things. At its heart is a mutually supportive community. For some it works well; it works if you work it. For others, it doesn't. It isn't deep psychotherapy work with a licensed clinician, but the steps do resemble certain pieces of that and lead many to success. The problem is with the numbers, and how success is measured. Someone who's forced into the program, by court order, or by family, and just goes through the motions, counts in the statistics the same as someone that's going of their own volition and is truly committed to their own change.
One of those two people is more likely to succeed in getting dry/clean. The other, less so. It's a shame that both of those people get counted in statistics on AA's efficacy equally.
It's great that it's not replacing one addiction with another. But if, for example, I drink because I had an abusive childhood. Now I can't hide from that via addiction and it's so overwhelming I become deeply depressed and suicidal. So I think for people utilising GLP-1 for an addiction that stems from some particular reason, it might need to be prescribed alongside therapy or something like that.
I recall reading a book where a guy used these meds to lose weight. One thing he found was that because he was overeating due to depression, removing his appetite left him a bit stuck because his coping mechanism had been taken away. I would worry that if you're drinking due to an emotional issue, exposing that issue so immediately could have serious consequences if it didn't come with some serious support.
Yeah IIRC the current state of the addiction medicine model is that the drug use of addicts is maladaptive but that there is a real illness or suffering that at one point it gave relief from, or the user thought it would. So someone who gets addicted to opioids after knee surgery is in the same category, doing the same thing, as an alcoholic who started drinking so they wouldn't have nightmares about their abusive childhood. Or whatever. The addict may not always even know explicitly but there is a reason they initially started using in this way.
If you get someone off their normal drug, they a) have none of the other tools or coping mechanisms to deal with the initial problem, having failed to develop them during the years of using drugs instead and b) are grappling with the full and unattenuated experience of whatever caused them to start using in the first place.
People newly detoxed from a long addiction are particularly vulnerable to new addictions and need a lot of support and resolve to develop the intrapersonal emotional skills they've been neglecting. And in some cases picking up a new addiction is the less harmful option. I'm not particularly a fan of AA (but not anti either) but it turns out there was wisdom in their common advice for newly dry alcoholics to not worry about their cigarette or coffee or candy intake. Smoking won't kill you this week but drinking might, you can deal with the nicotine addiction next year.
Which is why GLP-1 are of such interest to some. Anecdotal reports aren't hey, I stopped binge eating but now I'm addicted to gambling, which happens in the world of addiction and addiction treatment. Instead some of the anecdotes are hey I'm not eating as much and I also quit smoking and didn't pick up gambling. Naturally, anecdotes don't prove anything, but there are enough, on this post, even, to warrant further study.
AA is many things. At its heart is a mutually supportive community. For some it works well; it works if you work it. For others, it doesn't. It isn't deep psychotherapy work with a licensed clinician, but the steps do resemble certain pieces of that and lead many to success. The problem is with the numbers, and how success is measured. Someone who's forced into the program, by court order, or by family, and just goes through the motions, counts in the statistics the same as someone that's going of their own volition and is truly committed to their own change.
One of those two people is more likely to succeed in getting dry/clean. The other, less so. It's a shame that both of those people get counted in statistics on AA's efficacy equally.
It's great that it's not replacing one addiction with another. But if, for example, I drink because I had an abusive childhood. Now I can't hide from that via addiction and it's so overwhelming I become deeply depressed and suicidal. So I think for people utilising GLP-1 for an addiction that stems from some particular reason, it might need to be prescribed alongside therapy or something like that.