GLP‑1 drugs may fight addiction across every major substance, according to a study of 600,000 people

A massive study of veterans suggests these medications may quiet cravings far beyond food.

Good Partner

Mar 31, 2026

By Good Partner

March 31, 2026

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Photo credit: Michael Siluk/Universal Images Group via Getty Images – With GLP-1 drugs becoming more accessible and affordable, they could also be within reach for substance use treatment.

Ziyad Al-Aly

A patient of mine, a veteran who had tried to quit smoking for over a decade, told me that after he started a GLP-1 drug for his diabetes, he lost interest in cigarettes. He didn’t use a patch. He didn’t set a quit date. He simply lost interest. It happened without effort.

Another patient on one of these drugs for weight loss told me that alcohol had lost its pull – after years of failed attempts to quit.

People struggling with many addictions, ranging from opioids to gambling, are reporting similar experiences in clinics, on social media and around dinner tables. None of them started these drugs to quit. This pattern of people losing their cravings across a broad range of addictive substances has no precedent in medicine.

But my patients were giving me an important clue. People taking GLP-1 drugs often talk about “food noise” vanishing: the constant mental chatter about food that dominated their days simply goes quiet. But my patients were reporting that it wasn’t just food: They were noticing that the preoccupation with smoking, drinking and using drugs that drives people back despite their best intentions to stop was going quiet too.

As a physician whose patients are often on GLP-1 drugs, and as a scientist who works on answering pressing public health questions – from long COVID to medication safety – I saw a problem hiding in plain sight: Many addictions have no approved treatment. The few medications that exist are massively underutilized, and none works across all substances. The idea that a drug already taken by millions might do what no addiction treatment has done before was too important to ignore.

My team and I set out to test whether GLP-1 drugs – medications like semaglutide (Ozempic and Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro and Zepbound), originally developed for diabetes and then approved for obesity – could do what no existing addiction treatment does: curb craving itself.

Our evidence strongly suggests they can.

Biological basis of cravings

The hormone that these drugs mimic – GLP-1 – is not only produced in the gut. It is also active in the brain, where the receptors it binds to cluster in regions governing reward, motivation and stress – the same circuitry that gets hijacked by addiction. At therapeutic doses, GLP-1 drugs cross the blood-brain barrier and dampen dopamine signaling in the brain’s core reward center, making addictive substances less rewarding.

GLP-1 drugs seem to inhibit cravings for several different substances in multiple animal models. For instance, rodents given GLP-1 drugs drink less alcohol, self-administer less cocaine and show less interest in nicotine. When researchers gave semaglutide to green vervet monkeys – primates that voluntarily drink alcohol much like humans do – the animals drank less without showing signs of nausea or changes in water intake. This suggests the drug lowered the reward value of alcohol rather than making the animals feel sick.

From animals to people

To find out whether these drugs have a similar effect on people, we turned to the electronic health records of more than 600,000 patients with Type 2 diabetes at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs – one of the largest health care databases in the world.

We designed a study that applied the rigor of randomized controlled trials – the gold standard in medicine – to real-world data. We compared people who started GLP-1 drugs to people who did not, adjusting for differences in health history, demographics and other factors, and followed both groups for three years.

My team and I asked two questions: For people already struggling with addiction, did the drugs reduce overdoses, drug-related hospitalizations and deaths? And for people with no prior substance use disorder, did GLP-1 drugs reduce their risk of developing one across all major addictive substances: alcohol, opioids, cocaine, cannabis and nicotine?

What we found was striking. In the group already struggling with addiction, there were 50% fewer deaths due to substance use among those taking GLP-1 drugs compared with those who were not. We also found 39% fewer overdoses, 26% fewer drug-related hospitalizations and 25% fewer suicide attempts. Over three years, this translated to roughly 12 fewer serious events in total per 1,000 people using GLP-1 drugs – including two fewer deaths.

Reductions of this magnitude are rare in addiction medicine – and what’s remarkable is that the finding came from drugs initially designed for diabetes, later repurposed for obesity and never intended to treat addiction.

The drugs also appeared to prevent addiction from developing in the first place. Among people with no prior substance use disorder, those taking GLP-1 drugs had an 18% lower risk of developing alcohol use disorder, a 25% lower risk of opioid use disorder and an approximately 20% lower risk of cocaine and nicotine dependence. Over three years, this translated to roughly six to seven fewer new diagnoses per 1,000 GLP-1 users.

With tens of millions of people already using GLP-1 drugs, the reductions in deaths, overdoses, hospitalizations and new diagnoses could translate into thousands of prevented serious events each year.

Converging evidence

Our findings align with a growing body of evidence.

A Swedish nationwide study of 227,000 people with alcohol use disorder found that those taking GLP-1 drugs had 36% lower risk of alcohol-related hospitalizations. This is more than double the 14% reduction that the same study found with naltrexone, which was the best-performing medication approved for treatment of alcohol use disorder in that analysis. Other observational studies have linked GLP-1 drugs to lower rates of new and recurring alcohol use disorder, reduced diagnoses and relapse in cannabis use disorder, fewer health care visits for nicotine dependence and lower risk of opioid overdose.

Meanwhile, randomized controlled trials that directly test whether these drugs help people with addiction also show promise. In one trial, semaglutide reduced both craving and alcohol consumption in people with alcohol use disorder. In another, dulaglutide reduced drinking. More than a dozen additional trials are already underway or actively enrolling, and several more are planned.

The future of addiction treatment

GLP-1 drugs are the first type of medication to show potential benefit across multiple substance types simultaneously. And unlike existing addiction medications, which are prescribed by specialists and remain vastly underused, GLP-1 drugs are already prescribed at enormous scale by primary care doctors. The delivery system to reach millions of patients already exists.

The consistency of GLP-1 effectiveness across alcohol, opioids, cocaine, nicotine and cannabis suggests these drugs may act on a shared vulnerability underlying addiction – not on any single substance pathway. If confirmed, that would represent a fundamental shift in how society understands addiction and how doctors treat it.

Some unanswered questions remain, though, about how these drugs would affect addiction. Many people who take GLP-1 drugs to treat obesity or diabetes discontinue them; afterward, their appetite typically returns and they regain the weight they lost. Whether the same rebound would occur with addiction, and what it would mean for someone in recovery to face the roar of craving again, is unknown. Nor is it clear whether the benefits persist over years of continuous use, or whether the brain adapts in ways that dampen those effects.

Also, because GLP-1 drugs engage the brain’s reward circuitry – the same system that governs not just craving but everyday motivation – prolonged use could, in theory, dampen motivational drive in some people. Whether that might affect real-world outcomes, such as initiative, competitive drive or performance at work, remains an open question.

What comes next

GLP-1 drugs have not been approved for addiction, and there is not yet enough evidence to prescribe them solely for that purpose. But for millions of people already weighing whether to start a GLP-1 drug for diabetes, obesity or another approved indication, it is one more factor worth considering.

A patient living with diabetes who is also trying to quit smoking might reasonably choose a GLP-1 drug over another glucose-lowering medication, not because it is approved for smoking cessation, but because it may help them quit, a benefit that other diabetes drugs do not offer. Similarly, for people living with obesity who also struggle with alcohol, the potential for benefit beyond weight loss could be one more reason to consider a GLP-1 drug.

If additional trials confirm that they effectively curb cravings across addictive substances, these drugs could begin to close one of the most consequential treatment gaps in medicine. And the most promising lead in addiction in decades will have come not from a deliberate search but from patients reporting a benefit no one anticipated. Like my patient who quit smoking after a lifetime of trying, it happened without effort.

This article originally appeared on The Conversation. You can read it here.

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Photo credit: Canva – A woman intensely exercises, left, and a morning stretch, right.

Care, Health

More women are rejecting ‘optimization culture’ for realistic wellness plans

Feel great and be happy.

Mark Wales

5/16/2026

Being fit used to mean getting enough sleep, drinking more water, and moving your body, perhaps in a daily walk. With the explosion of social media and digital self-help trends, finding an acceptable level of wellness can feel like stepping into a full-time job with daily performance reviews.

For many women, what started as self-care has slowly become another exhausting form of self-optimization. And increasingly, they’re pretty much done with it. According to Women’s Business Daily, one of the biggest wellness shifts happening right now is a move away from extreme routines. Women want habits that actually fit into real life.

An intense workout.
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Wellness feels like a full-time job

Instead of chasing perfection, more women are choosing what can be described as a more realistic approach to wellness, incorporating sustainable routines built around balance and emotional well-being rather than climbing a never-ending ladder of constant improvement.

The shift comes after a solid decade of what many refer to online as “optimization culture.” This exhausting idea assumes that every part of life needs to be carefully measured, improved, and optimized.

Experts believe this mindset is not only making people miserable; it’s unsustainable.

An exhausting routine.
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A backlash against the “always improve yourself” culture

A recent article in Psychology Today found that “wellnessmaxxing” trends turn self-care into another form of anxiety. This is especially true when routines become so demanding that people feel more guilt than relief. As creators post TikToks showing themselves “maxing out” in some kind of self-congratulation, they spread unhelpful expectations that no longer promote self-care.

Verywell Health explains that these influencers broadcast an all-consuming performance metric. People now face a painful realization that they can never do enough. It’s hard to miss the irony that wellness has begun to feel unhealthy.

Women are increasingly embracing low-pressure routines instead of overly aspirational ones. Think walks instead of cross-training, and a morning meditation instead of a week-long stay at a Tibetan monastery. It’s okay to just eat more vegetables instead of a perfectly balanced daily nutrition plan of 150 grams of protein, wheatgrass smoothies, and specifically rated pH-balanced alkaline water.

After all the extreme exercises, self-help books, and sophisticated meal plans, it’s time to get back to basics. Here’s one version of a realistic plan: drink some water, get outside, and try to sleep a little better.

A casual walk with a dog.
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Getting back to the basics

A beauty editor writing for Who What Wear documented her attempt to follow a social-media-inspired wellness reset. With all the expensive and complicated habits she hoped would unlock the “incredibly high-functioning, ultra-productive version” of herself, she came away understanding that she should stick with the basics.

Modern life already asks women to juggle careers, caregiving, appearance standards, finances, and relationships. Somewhere along the journey, wellness became just one more category to add to the pile.

Maintaining a perfect life balance.
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Women are choosing simple, sustainable routines

Finding realistic wellness is a trend that reflects a growing desire for community-centered wellness rather than isolated self-improvement. Instead of wellness looking like a solo pursuit for an achievement award, many women are leaning toward connection: walking groups, shared meals, accountability with friends, and being honest about feeling burned out on all of it.

The Times reports that people feel walking groups are less intimidating and more emotionally supportive. People don’t just want fitness; they want to belong to something.

A 2025 study in Frontiers in Psychology focused on the benefits of women finding social support groups. Programs that incorporated women’s preferences into their daily lives were more likely to be enjoyed and maintained.

Wellness cultures have told women the answer is to do more: more discipline, more self-reflection, more perfect sleep, more work dedication, more family direction, more effort.

Making life more enjoyable and realistic can help well-being feel easier to maintain. A joyful life is better lived “in” than constantly measured “against” unrealistic expectations.

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Photo credit: MoMo Productions/DigitalVision via Getty Images – Emphasizing the sounds of certain words to young children can help them retain language, not confuse them about speaking properly.

Health, Research

Is baby talk bad? Why ‘parentese’ actually helps babies learn language

Sing-song speech can support early language growth.

Good Partner

5/15/2026

Karen Stollznow

Many parents have heard the warning: Don’t use baby talk with babies and toddlers. Instead, caregivers are often encouraged to speak properly and use adultlike language, out of concern that simplified speech could confuse children or delay language development.

But my research, which I highlighted in in my new book, “Beyond Words,” suggests the opposite is true. The sing-song voice many adults instinctively use with infants, sometimes called “baby talk” but more accurately known as “parentese” or infant-directed speech, actually helps children learn language.

Far from confusing babies, exaggerating phrases like “Loooook at the doggie!” capture their attention, help them detect patterns in speech and strengthen social bonding.

And the funny mistakes children make along the way, such as saying “goed,” instead of “went,” or “mouses” instead of “mice,” are not signs that children are learning language incorrectly. They are evidence that children are actively working out the rules of language for themselves.

Speaking ‘parentese’ to a child doesn’t involve nonsense words. BjelicaS/E+ via Getty Images

What parentese really is

When many people think of baby talk, they imagine nonsense phrases like “goo goo ga ga” or made-up words like “num nums.” But that’s not what linguists and developmental psychologists mean by parentese.

Parentese uses real words and grammatically correct sentences, but with exaggerated intonation, a higher pitch, stretched-out vowels and a slower rhythm. Think of the way a caregiver might naturally say: “Hi, baaaaby! Are you huuungry?”

There is little evidence that occasional playful nonsense words harm children’s language development. But studies suggest that parentese in particular helps babies pay attention to speech, recognize patterns and engage socially.

Adults across cultures tend to speak this way to infants instinctively. Even people who swear they never use baby talk often slip into it around babies.

Researchers have found that infants actually prefer listening to parentese over regular adult speech. The exaggerated sounds and slower pacing make language easier to process. Babies are better able to pick out individual sounds, notice word boundaries and recognize patterns. In other words, parentese helps tune babies into language.

It also strengthens emotional connection. Language learning does not happen in isolation. Babies learn through warm, responsive interaction with caregivers during feeding, play, bath time and everyday routines.

Interestingly, humans are not the only ones who respond to this style of communication. Studies have even shown that cats react more positively when people use a baby-talk voice with them.

Babies are not passive learners

Children do not learn language simply by copying adults word for word. They actively test hypotheses about how language works. That is why toddlers make predictable and surprisingly logical mistakes.

One common example is overgeneralization. A child learns that people form the past tense of many verbs by adding “-ed,” so they produce forms like “goed,” “eated” or “comed.”

These are not random errors. In fact, they show that the child has understood a grammatical rule and is trying to apply it consistently. The problem is simply that English is full of irregular exceptions. The same thing happens with plurals. Children may say “foots” instead of “feet” or “mouses” instead of “mice.” Again, the logic behind these errors is sound.

Linguists sometimes say that children are little scientists, constantly testing patterns and revising their understanding as they receive more input from the world around them.

Why toddlers call everything a ‘dog’

Young children also make predictable mistakes with meaning.

A toddler might learn the word “dog” and then use it for every four-legged animal they encounter. Linguists call this overextension. On the flip side, some children use words too narrowly. A child may use “dog” only for the family pet and not recognize that other dogs belong in the same category. Linguists call this tendency underextension.

These mistakes reveal how children organize and categorize the world around them. They are gradually mapping words onto objects, people and experiences.

Pronouns are another tricky area. Small children often confuse “me” and “you” because these words constantly shift depending on who is speaking. If a parent says, “I’ll pick you up,” the child hears themselves called “you.” But when they try to repeat the sentence, they may not yet understand that the labels switch from speaker to speaker.

This is why toddlers sometimes say things that sound unintentionally cute or confusing. But beneath the confusion is a sophisticated learning process.

Even the Cookie Monster gets it wrong

Children’s speech errors are so recognizable that they often appear in popular culture. Sesame Street’s character Cookie Monster famously says things like “Me want cookie,” while Elmo often refers to himself in the third person: “Elmo wants this.” These speech patterns mirror real stages of child language development. Young children commonly confuse pronouns or refer to themselves by name before mastering forms like “I,” “me” and “mine.”

Despite occasional complaints from adults, there is no evidence that hearing this kind of speech harms children’s language development. If anything, it reflects the natural experimentation children go through.

The Cookie Monster saying ‘Me want cookie’ won’t teach babies and young kids to speak incorrectly. Brian Killian/WireImage via Getty Images

‘Pasketti’ and ‘wabbit’

Pronunciation develops gradually too. Young children often simplify difficult sounds and groups of consonants. “Spaghetti” becomes “pasketti,” “rabbit” becomes “wabbit” and “yellow” may come out as “lellow.”

Speech-language specialists call these simplifications phonological processes. They are a normal part of development because some sounds are physically harder to produce than others. Sounds such as r, th, sh and ch tend to develop later because they require more precise control of the tongue and mouth.

Most children naturally outgrow these pronunciation patterns as their speech matures. However, persistent difficulties can sometimes signal a speech or language disorder, which may require professional support.

Children don’t learn language by copying adults word for word. They learn through interaction, experimentation and repetition. DrAfter123/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images

Mistakes are part of learning

Parents are often under enormous pressure to do everything right, including helping their children learn to speak a language. But children do not learn language by avoiding mistakes. They learn through interaction, experimentation and repetition.

Parentese helps babies focus on speech and engage socially. The funny mistakes toddlers make reveal that they are actively piecing together the complex system of language and are often signs of normal development. Language acquisition is messy, creative and remarkably sophisticated.

Speaking in an exaggerated sing-song voice to a baby is not something parents and caregivers need to feel embarrassed about.

Far from harming language acquisition, it may help lay the foundation for it.

This article originally appeared on The Conversation. You can read it here.

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Photo credit: Canva – Women enjoy a short walk.

Health, Well-being

People who dread working out are trying ‘micro walks,’ and the results feel great

Why doing less actually leads to more.

Mark Wales

5/15/2026

For many people, working out isn’t the hard part. It’s everything that comes with it: the time commitment, the pressure of consistency, and the feeling that only full workouts count.

That all-or-nothing mindset keeps a lot of people from even getting started. This might explain why a small idea has been gaining traction. Instead of setting aside an hour or two to exercise, people are taking “micro walks” instead.

Two women enjoy a quick “micro walk.”
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“Micro walks” are simple and still provide the benefits

A loop around the block in the morning. A quick break between meetings or events on the daily schedule. Perhaps another lap after dinner. These short walks sprinkled throughout the day might seem too simple to matter.

For a growing number of people, the simplicity is what makes it really work. Doing less at a time, but more often, is what’s resonating. The barrier to entry suddenly drops. People don’t need much motivation. Just a few minutes is enough to get started.

The hidden appeal behind shorter walks

The appeal of a “micro walk” for people dreading a workout isn’t necessarily about peak optimization. The benefits come from gaining momentum. For individuals who have spent years feeling like they’re either all-in or completely off track, this offers a third option.

Short periods of exercise fit into the structure of real life instead of competing with it. Finding the time to set aside large blocks of time can be difficult for many people. Breaking movement into smaller increments makes it far more manageable.

In the end, consistency matters more than perfection. Getting daily steps in becomes something achievable rather than overwhelming.

Research shows that shorter walks work

A 2024 study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a scientific journal recognized for its rigorous reviews, investigated the benefits of different walking patterns. The findings revealed that short walking bursts use more energy than longer continuous walks. Breaking up exercise is more impactful than it seems.

Harvard Health Publishing reported that even brief walks can boost energy and counteract the effects of prolonged sitting. Getting moving has significant heart health advantages, and walking is extremely accessible.

Physical exercise boosts overall well-being

Turning short walks into a mental reset can boost a person’s emotional well-being. Physical exercise stimulates the body, yet it also increases inner harmony. A 2025 study published in Springer Nature found that even a 10-minute walk can meaningfully improve mood regulation. Finding the time for a brief walk can lessen symptoms of anxiety.

A 2024 study published in Nature demonstrated that short activity breaks increase cognitive performance and elevate mood. There are immediate emotional advantages to activities like “micro walks,” not just long-term fitness gains.

Science demonstrates that walking has both physical and emotional benefits. The most common barriers are time and motivation. Shifting from big goals to showing up in small, repeatable moments is what actually matters. “Micro walks” turn movement from something people have to make time for into something that becomes part of how they live. It’s another small step toward finding happiness.

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