On a weekday morning in Dublin, a group of patients walked into a weight-loss clinic hoping to shed pounds. What they didn’t expect was to also lose their taste for alcohol.
A new study has found that people prescribed the blockbuster weight-loss drugs semaglutide and liraglutide — best known by their brand names Wegovy and Saxenda — dramatically cut their alcohol consumption within months. The finding could signal an unexpected breakthrough in the treatment of alcohol use disorder, a condition that causes over 2.6 million deaths worldwide every year.
“The exact mechanism of how GLP-1 analogues reduce alcohol intake is still being investigated,” said Professor Carel le Roux, one of the study’s senior authors at University College Dublin. “But it is thought to involve curbing cravings for alcohol that arise in subcortical areas of the brain that are not under conscious control. Thus, patients report the effects are ‘effortless’.”
A Surprising Side Effect
The research, presented at the European Congress on Obesity and published in the journal Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, tracked 262 adults with obesity at a Dublin clinic over a 15-month period. Most had a semaglutide or liraglutide prescription for weight loss.
Of those who drank regularly before starting treatment — defined as more than 10 units per week — alcohol intake plummeted by 68% on average, from 23.2 units to 7.8 units per week. That’s a drop comparable to the effectiveness of nalmefene, one of the few medications approved in Europe to treat alcohol use disorder.
For patients drinking less than 11 units per week at baseline, alcohol consumption still fell significantly — from 5.5 to 2.5 units per week. No participants reported an increase in alcohol use during the follow-up.
Notably, the drugs weren’t administered with the goal of reducing drinking. They were prescribed to help with weight loss. Yet four months into treatment, people reported turning away from alcohol — not because they had to, they just wanted less. Some patients said they no longer enjoyed the flavor of alcoholic drinks. Others reached their limit sooner or reported worse hangovers. One common report was feeling “too full” to drink after meals.
Taming Two Cravings
Drugs like semaglutide belong to a class of medications that act like GLP-1, a natural hormone produced in the gut after eating. These drugs lower appetite, slow digestion, and stabilize blood sugar. But they also appear to tap into brain circuits involved in reward and craving — circuits that are hijacked in addiction.
Alcohol addiction affects these same brain areas, particularly the mesolimbic dopamine system — a pathway that reinforces pleasure and can, over time, fuel compulsive behavior. Preclinical studies have shown that GLP-1 drugs reduce alcohol-induced dopamine release in this circuit. In theory, this blunts the rewarding effects of drinking.
Although this isn’t the first study to hint at this possibility, it’s among the largest and most rigorous conducted in real-world conditions. “This research points to a potentially new pharmacological treatment paradigm for alcohol use disorder which could yield enormous benefits for society,” le Roux told The Telegraph.
The findings also align with a growing body of research exploring how weight-loss drugs affect the brain beyond food cravings. Earlier studies in rodents found liraglutide reduced the desire to seek alcohol, while human trials are still in early stages. In a 2024 paper in Nature Communications, researchers found an association between semaglutide use and reduced incidence and relapse of alcohol use disorder in large populations.
In the Dublin study, a weak but positive correlation emerged between weight loss and reduced drinking — an expected link given alcohol’s high calorie content. Participants lost an average of 7.7 kilograms over four months. Still, the reduced alcohol use seemed to arise independently.
Important Caveats
Like any study, this one has limits. It was observational, meaning it can’t prove causation. There was no placebo group. And researchers relied on patients to self-report their drinking habits, which can lead to underestimates.
About 28% of participants were lost to follow-up, and alcohol intake data was quantifiable in only 33% of the entire cohort. Still, among those who provided complete data, the effects were statistically robust.
Males and females experienced similar reductions in alcohol use, suggesting the effect is not sex-specific. Whether the changes persist beyond four months remains to be seen.
Medical experts are intrigued but cautious. “Millions of our patients struggle with both obesity and alcohol consumption,” said Professor Kamila Hawthorne, chair of the Royal College of GPs. “There is clearly a lot of potential… however it’s also important that medical interventions aren’t seen as a silver bullet.”
Dr. Riccardo De Giorgi, a psychiatrist at the University of Oxford, added that the drugs “might reduce reward processes associated with food intake,” and possibly alcohol — but emphasized the need for larger randomized trials to confirm.
For now, the research offers tantalizing clues that drugs designed to treat obesity could do double duty in treating addiction.
