CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Studies suggest Ozempic may reduce the desire for alcohol or opioid use.

The Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization that conducts health research, said in a study in May that about 6% of U.S. adults, or more than 15 million people, have a prescription for a class of drugs that includes Ozempic.

The group of drugs, known as GLP-1s, is often prescribed to those who have type 2 diabetes and more recently for weight loss. New research is showing these drugs could reduce the desire to drink or use opioids. 

Dr. Joyce Besheer, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine and the associate director for the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, has been conducting research into this topic for almost two years. She became interested after a former colleague, Dr. Christian Hendershot, was working on the first clinical trial to study Ozempic’s efficacy to reduce drinking in individuals who have an alcohol use disorder. 

“Talking with Dr. Hendershot, I became more and more familiar with anecdotal reports that people were posting on social media, that individuals that were on Ozempic, who were either on it for weight loss or for diabetes, reported reducing drinking,” Besheer said. 

Besheer, a behavioral neuroscientist, focuses on novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of alcohol use disorder. After a grant from the Foundation of Hope, a Raleigh foundation that funds mental health research, she began her own study with rats. 

“The goal of the grant was to look at the effects of Ozempic and see if it would change the subjective effects of alcohol in our models,” Besheer said. 

Through her research, she says the effects or buzz of alcohol are being dampened by Ozempic, which would cause some people to lose interest in drinking. 

“It's likely changing the perception of alcohol when you do drink it. Some individuals report that Ozempic dampens the food buzz, so they're not always thinking about food, and it's probably doing something very similar for alcohol,” Besheer said. 

She says many studies are being conducted on the effects of Ozempic and other weight loss drugs. Some even claim the drug could lower the risk of overdosing.

“There's definitely a lot of interest in these medications right now because a lot of people are taking them. I think we have to be careful at this point about prescribing off-label use for alcohol or other substance use until we get randomized controlled clinical trials and we get data from those trials,” Besheer said. “Because if you think about it, a dose that someone may take for weight loss may not be the same dose that we want to give somebody who has an alcohol use disorder, for example.”

"So I think we need to still work things out, but there's definitely a lot of potential,” she said.