March 05, 2026
josh Morgan/Imagn Images
GLP-1 weight loss drugs seem to quiet 'drug noise' the way they quiet 'food noise,' a new study finds. Researchers say they may help reduce overdoses and prevent substance use disorders.
Weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic may become the new frontline warriors in treating and preventing drug and alcohol addiction, a large new study shows.
The research, published Wednesday in the BMJ, found the medications not only lowered the risk of drug overdose and death, but they also helped prevent people from developing substance use disorders of any kind. The study involved 600,000 veterans on GLP-1 weight-loss drugs for diabetes.
MORE: Women's pain often lasts longer than men's — that's not just a perception
The study is the first to look at how GLP-1s help quiet cravings and combat addiction to alcohol and drugs of all categories, including nicotine, and holds promise for battling the addiction crisis nationwide.
"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," Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, the study's lead author, wrote in The Conversation.
Al-Aly is a clinical epidemiologist and chief of the Research and Development Service at the VA Saint Louis Health Care System.
Fatal drug overdoses fell 21% across the country in 2025, statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show. Locally, overdose deaths are also down. As of late December, there were 747 fatal drug overdoses last year in Philadelphia, the lowest number in nearly a decade.
The reasons for the drop in drug deaths are complex. Officials primarily have pointed to increased access to medications for opioid use disorder and the wider availability of the opioid reversal medication Narcan. Decreased amounts of fentanyl, a deadly opioid, in the illicit drug supply also is playing a part, research suggests.
But medications for opioid use disorder – the gold standard for treatment, along with counseling and other measures – remain underused. Drug overdose fatalities are still high. So finding ways to curb cravings across the board – not just for food but also for cigarettes, alcohol, cannabis, cocaine and opioids – could transform the addiction treatment landscape, researchers said.
After finding the GLP-1 drugs caused rodents to drink less alcohol, consume less cocaine and show less interest in nicotine, Al-Aly and his team sought to learn if these results would translate to humans. They designed a large study based on data from veterans who were using GLP-1s to treat diabetes. The findings were "striking," Al-Aly wrote in his Conversation piece.
For veterans with substance use disorders, taking GLP-1s was linked to 50% fewer deaths due to substance use, 39% fewer overdoses, 26% fewer drug-related hospitalizations and 25% fewer suicide attempts. Over the three-year course of the study, there were 12 fewer "serious events" per 1,000 people on GLP-1s and two fewer deaths.
Additionally, veterans taking GLP-1s who had no history of addiction had an 8% lower risk of developing alcohol use disorder, a 25% lower risk of opioid use disorder and a 20% lower risk of cocaine and nicotine dependence, Al-Aly said.
"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," he wrote in The Conversation.
These findings call for a need for clinical trials examining the potential of GLP-1s to treat and prevent addiction, Al-Aly said.
"People taking these drugs for obesity often describe a quieting of 'food noise,' the persistent preoccupation with food that drives overeating," Al-Aly said in a news release. "What our study suggests is something broader: GLP-1 drugs may also quiet what I call 'drug noise,' the relentless craving that drives addiction across substances. That cross-substance signal points to a shared biology underlying addiction, and it opens the door to a fundamentally different approach: not treating one addiction at a time, but targeting that common biologic signal, that common craving across addictions."
