A scientist whose work within the Nineteen Seventies helped pioneer weight-loss drugs like Ozempic has warned that individuals will struggle to take it for greater than a couple of years since it takes the pleasure out of eating. “When you’ve been on this for a yr or two, life is so miserably boring that you may’t stand it any longer and you may have to return to your old life,” Professor Jens Juul Holst said in an interview with Wired.

Over the previous few months, Semaglutide – sold under branded names Ozempic and Wegovy, amongst others – has come to dominate the cultural conversation because of its off-label use as a weight-loss drug. The medication originally created to treat diabetes by regulating blood sugar levels, has also been found to greatly suppress one’s appetite and slow the speed at which the stomach empties. This has meant it’s turn out to be extremely popular amongst people trying to shed some pounds, and words like ‘miracle’, ‘revolutionary’, ‘silver bullet’ and ‘holy grail’ are being thrown around when talking in regards to the drug. In keeping with some reports, there may be mass usage of the drug in Hollywood, Manhattan and it’s now apparently making its way through Westminster.

Holst, a professor within the Department of Biomedical Sciences on the University of Copenhagen, first began researching GLP-1, the hunger-regulating hormone which is mimicked by Semaglutide, within the Nineteen Seventies. It was his work developing treatments around GLP-1 that directly led to the creation of Semaglutide, although initially the scientists were working on cures for duodenal ulcer disease before realising it had advantages for individuals with diabetes after which for weight reduction and obesity.

Semaglutide just isn’t without its uncomfortable side effects, nevertheless. Nausea, dizziness, constipation, vomiting and diarrhoea often come as a part of the package, while patients have also reported hair loss and a gaunt face – “Ozempic face” – because of this of rapid weight reduction. Renal failure, pancreatitis and intestinal obstruction might develop in rare cases. Alongside this, based on Professor Holst, is a lack of joy in the case of food. “What happens is that you just lose your appetite and likewise the pleasure of eating, and so I feel there’s a price to be paid if you do this. Should you like food, then that pleasure is gone,” he warned.

But it surely’s not only one’s appetite for food that appears to be suppressed. Reports have been emerging that individuals are also losing the will to do the whole lot from drink alcohol to smoke cigarettes and even buy groceries and bite their nails. Lab mice taking GLP-1 drugs are better able to say no to cocaine. In an article published by The Atlantic, one woman’s experience of taking semaglutide is described as a switch being flipped in her brain. “The need to buy had slipped away. The need to drink, extinguished once, didn’t rush in as a substitute either. For the primary time – perhaps the primary time in her whole life – all of her cravings and impulses were gone.”

It is probably going that this is occurring because GLP-1 drugs may alter the brain’s fundamental reward circuitry – i.e. it affects dopamine pathways within the brain in order that the identical reward (be it eating, sex or other activities which normally trigger a dopamine hit within the brain) brings less pleasure. Apart from anecdotal evidence, nevertheless, nearly all of research on this relationship has been on animals and thus more human trials are needed, which can disprove the drug’s effectiveness in addiction. 

One other concern is that when you stop taking the drug, the results are often reversed in the case of weight which could mean the identical will occur with addiction. “The load comes back; the suppression of appetite goes away,” as Dr Janice Jin Hwang told The Atlantic. And other people don’t appear to be staying on the drug. In 2020, research found that 70 per cent of patients on GLP-1 stopped taking them inside two years.

“One among the explanations, as I said, is that when you may have tried it and also you realise you’ve lost interest in food, then that could be enough. We don’t know why people stop taking these drugs, but we all know for a incontrovertible fact that they do stop,” Holst told Wired. “I don’t see that a large a part of the population might be placed on Wegovy and can stay on Wegovy for the remainder of their lives – I simply don’t see that picture, because this hasn’t happened with other GLP-1 drugs.”

Even when GLP-1 medication does become effective at curbing all cravings and addictions, not everyone thinks that a drug which suppresses and frees you from desire is a positive thing. “The notion of an Ozempic era, stuffed with people who find themselves paying a fortune to now not give you the chance to enjoy certainly one of humanity’s great pleasures, is just unbelievably depressing,” writes Vanity Fair editor Katey Wealthy.

Is there something dystopian in a drug which numbs people to pleasure and indulgence – particularly in a culture which regularly encourages strict self-discipline and suppression? Will it create a stoic society where people can bio-hack their bodies for optimum focus and efficiency, without the distraction that comes from having needs? A complete workforce engineered to exist as robots without the urge for food, drinks, sex or every other form of craving? 

In Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian tale Brave Latest World, pleasure is a priority and it’s achieved through the mass proliferation of soma, a mood-altering drug which blocks negative emotions. The result’s a society which is totally numb through pure bliss, and due to this fact complacent and compliant. Will Ozempic offer the alternative – numbness through the suppression of desire? “Selecting to take pride is the least I could do for myself in a system that’s hell-bent on making me a little bit employee bee – in a society that praises people for not being hungry,” dietitian Christyna Johnson says in a Vice article.

Then again, addiction ravages people, families and communities – Stanford University estimated that 1.2 million people within the US and Canada will die from opioid overdoses by the top of the last decade – and if there may be a medicine that might help without the uncomfortable side effects of medication like methadone, surely that may only be thing. 

Without more research and time to review the long-term effects of medication like Ozempic, it’s unimaginable to know what is going to occur. Within the meantime, it should pay to be cautious of any drug that’s hailed as a miracle – particularly in the case of the weight-loss industry which has an extended history of medication which seems to be too good to be true.

Join Dazed Club and be a part of our world! You get exclusive access to events, parties, festivals and our editors, in addition to a free subscription to Dazed for a yr. Join for £5/month today.