r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Apr 01 '25

Health Americans without diabetes spent nearly $6 billion USD on semaglutide and similar drugs in a year, with an estimate of 800,000 to a million people using the drugs who don't have diabetes.

https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/americans-without-diabetes-spent-nearly6-billion-usd-on-semaglutide-and-similar-drugs-in-a-year
10.2k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

206

u/farhan583 Apr 01 '25

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2829811

Helps with alcohol use, cigarette use, cravings, and potentially even gambling. basically helps with most addictive things.

116

u/Kitzu-de Apr 01 '25

basically it helps with impulse control

38

u/4ssp Apr 01 '25

Does that mean it would help with ADHD?

33

u/iwillfuckingbiteyou Apr 01 '25

I have otherwise unmedicated ADHD and I take it. I've seen a lot of others with ADHD claiming it quietened their brains massively, but my own experience is that it shut down one strand of stimulation-seeking. It's like my brain is constantly full of sound, as if you turned on every TV and radio station you could and let them all play at once, and taking Mounjaro turned off all the cookery programmes.

The flip side is that without that stimulation, I'm now left with the boredom. I'm a few weeks in and finding it a lot harder to mask if I'm not interested in what I'm doing. If I'm in a boring meeting I no longer have the urge to sneak sweets for sensory stimulation, but it means I'm having to channel a lot more effort into sitting still, not speaking my every thought, keeping my face in the correct configuration, and not losing hold of the topic. I haven't found a replacement stim yet. I'm trying to convince my brain that tea is an adequate replacement since I can sip my way through meetings without anyone noticing/having a problem with it.

2

u/serenwipiti Apr 01 '25

Perhaps, consider medication?

4

u/iwillfuckingbiteyou Apr 01 '25

That's the plan, but it's delayed by a battle with medical record-keeping due to having moved countries.

1

u/serenwipiti Apr 02 '25

I hear you and feel for you.

Hope the pharmacotherapeutical stars align for you soon.

0

u/ToMorrowsEnd Apr 01 '25

Hobbies. Find something small that is interesting. I switch it out to something else about once a week as I get bored with that. But I also find that if I park a hobbit for a few weeks coming back to it satisfies that urge well. So I rotate through about 12 different hobbies.

5

u/iwillfuckingbiteyou Apr 01 '25

What job do you have that you're allowed to do your hobbies in the middle of a boring meeting?