Did Scientists Accidentally Invent An Anti-Addiction Drug?

Scientists accidentally invent an anti-addiction drug. Christian Hendershot, a psychiatrist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, said that Semaglutide and its chemical relatives seem to work, at least in animals, against an unusually broad array of addictive drugs.

All her life, Victoria Rutledge thought of herself as someone with an addictive personality. Her first addiction was alcohol. After she got sober in her early 30s, she replaced drinking with food and shopping, which she thought about constantly. She would spend $500 on organic groceries, only to have them go bad in her fridge. “I couldn’t stop from going to that extreme,” she told me. When she ran errands at Target, she would impulsively throw extra things—candles, makeup, skin-care products—into her cart.

Earlier this year, she began taking semaglutide, also known as Wegovy, after being prescribed the drug for weight loss. (Colloquially, it is often referred to as Ozempic, though tha...

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