"The change was immediate: I lost all desire to drink alcohol on Mounjaro."

From more than a dozen drinks a day to zero overnight.

At CASPR, we’re working to address the addiction crisis at scale by advancing breakthrough medicines, research, and policy. We have been particularly focused on the near-term possibility of GLP-1s (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound) to revolutionize addiction treatment. The scientific evidence is growing every month and the experiences that patients and providers are reporting are incredible.

This story comes from a 50-year-old male who works in a senior technology management position at a financial services firm in the United Kingdom. Mounjaro helped him go from a dozen or more alcoholic drinks a day to none, virtually overnight.

If you’d like to tell your story, whether you are a patient or a provider, please reach out.

I have known for many years that I was at high risk for addiction. My mother suffered from addiction to alcohol and painkillers, and eventually passed away. I have other family members with alcohol addiction, too. For most of my life, I monitored my alcohol intake and avoided painkillers at all costs. Until last year, I thought I was lucky to have avoided addiction.

Before the COVID lockdown, I’d have the occasional pint at home or at a restaurant. During lockdown, I started drinking a bottle of wine a night. One bottle became two, with beer and cocktails added into the mix as well. In 2023, I lost several friends to cancer and my mother in-law was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It was very hard seeing my wife go through the pain of knowing her mother did not have long to live. In December 2023, my mother in-law passed away. My alcohol use skyrocketed to help alleviate the pain. 

My heaviest drinking took place between October, 2023 and April 1, 2024. During the work week, I didn’t drink once during business hours. But as soon as the clock hit 5 p.m., I was at the pub for 3 to 4 pints, usually with double shots of whiskey accompanying each pint. When I got home, I would have wine with dinner followed by a minimum of 4 pints later in the evening. My goal would be to get that completely numb feeling, then I would usually turn to whiskey or tequila so I could just pass out in bed.

Plans on the weekends, whether home or away, revolved around where I could drink. I would usually start no later than 11 a.m., often making excuses to go out for a late breakfast or early lunch. Drinking continued until late in the evening before eventually going to sleep. I chose vacation destinations based on availability and ease of access to alcohol.

I also gained a lot of weight. I had been an active marathon runner but repeated stress fractures forced me to stop about eight years ago. My weight jumped from 180 lbs to 250 lbs at the start of lockdown. As my drinking increased, I continued to gain weight. In late 2023, I researched Wegovy for weight loss. Knowing that I had to quit drinking, however, stopped me from starting.

From lockdown in 2020 through 2024, I talked about quitting alcohol but always made excuses to continue. It was always tomorrow when I would quit drinking.

By March, 2024, I was in a very dark place. I weighed 320 lbs with a BMI of 43.7. I could barely walk without knee, hip, and back pain. Not only was I openly drinking, I was sneaking hard liquor into the house and hiding it so that my wife and son were not aware. 

I got an email from a pharmacy advertising Mounjaro, which had recently been made available for weight loss in the U.K. through pharmacies. The email landed in my spam folder and I nearly missed it. I’m so glad I didn’t. There was not much information about Mounjaro available in the U.K., but after reading U.S. medical websites, I became intrigued enough to keep digging. I found the Reddit sub communities for Mounjaro, and I spent days reading as much as I could about the experiences of others. I started to see people report that they no longer had any interest in alcohol. This intrigued me but also made me concerned. What if the medication did not stop me from drinking? What were the dangers of drinking while on GLP-1’s? The risk of acute pancreatitis nearly turned me away from starting. I am embarrassed to admit, but I did not tell my provider that I had an issue with alcohol.  

In late March, I decided to give it a go. I picked up my medication on the Thursday before Easter and used the four-day weekend to eat and drink as much as I could. I started Mounjaro on the afternoon of April 2. My wife emptied our house of all alcohol. She didn’t find the tequila and whiskey I had hidden.

The change was immediate: I lost all desire to drink alcohol. The first evening after my injection, I did not have any craving for alcohol. April 3 was the first day in years that I did not wake up feeling like garbage. It was about a week after starting that I noticed that I no longer liked the smell of wine or beer. The smell of red wine still makes me nauseous.

Before starting Mounjaro, alcohol is all that I had thought about during the day. Now, I have zero desire to drink alcohol. I haven’t had an alcoholic beverage since April 1. I have no interest in zero percent beer or wine. I can happily and still frequently visit my local pub to catch up with neighbors and friends or go out to restaurants and drink still water. It’s a bonus if they have San Pellegrino.

I have not had any bad side effects. There are foods that are considered healthy, like bell peppers, that I can’t eat or digest. As I increased the dose, there were days that I felt nausea. I never had a day where I felt too sick to do anything. My knee, hip, and back pain stopped within days of starting Mounjaro. My wife’s favorite positive effect is that I stopped snoring. She is now sleeping better than ever.

Mounjaro hasn’t helped with nicotine. I have not smoked in more than 20 years, but I wear nicotine patches. I was hoping that GLP-1s would stop that addiction. Sadly, I am still wearing the nicotine patch. 

I’ve gone from 317 lbs to 199 lbs. My goal weight is 165 lbs, and I hope to reach that this summer. The medication has been life changing. I am a far different person: I am no longer in that dark place, my anxiety has eased, and I am training with both my wife and son for a marathon later this year. 

Articles you may have missed:

• “Wegovy rewired my brain. I have no desire for cigarettes and minimal desire for alcohol.”

• “Overnight, the alcohol noise was gone.”

• “It was an immediate obliteration of alcohol and opioid cravings.”

• How an addiction medicine doctor has made GLP-1s like Ozempic central to his practice

• How an addiction medicine doctor has used tirzepatide to transform his own life, and translate that experience to benefit his patients.

We will be publishing more patient and provider stories soon. Please be in touch if you are interested in sharing your story.