For many people food is one of the few things in life that gives them some form of joy. I won’t ever take any drug that will take that away from me. Life is depressing enough as is.

What we need is a weight loss drug that lets you eat unlimited amounts of food, preferably even suppressing the feeling of fullness, without gaining weight.

Woe is them I guess for their chemical dependence.

Of course we already manipulate brain chemistry in other more direct ways with antidepressants so perhaps any unwanted second-order effects could be minor in comparison to the profile of existing antidepressants .

I had to conscientiously try and find new "fun" things in my life to replace food, which used to be my treat/highlight of my life lol.

I notice a little less joy, pizza used to make me soooo happy lol. Now even if I have pizza- which I still totally can, I just accommodate for it, but it's just like... okay, whatever here's some pizza, cool. I can have 1 or 2 slices and feel fine and not go hog on the entire thing and have it be this amazing fantastic binge.

It stopped me cold and has gotten me almost back down at the lowest I was at after my diet so far and I keep losing at a slower pace but basically without effort.

In terms of pleasure, I'd say mostly no with some caveats. I have fewer snacks, and drink less coke, and I enjoyed both. I don't find chocolate or baked goods as enticing any more, but it's not stopped me from enjoying them on occasion.

It's more that it's stopped me from wanting them as often. I find it easier to tell myself not to grab a snack when I'm already full in particular. Before I might overeat to the point of discomfort.

So when I now actively choose to enjoy those things, I'm more likely to actually enjoy the whole experience.

I'd say the exception is probably coke, which I do find less enjoyable.

That's the best way I can describe it. I could basically always eat before and now I just...don't feel like it lol.

I will say, they are rough when you first start out on them. During the 1st 6-8 weeks I had several instances of maaaaaybe five seconds of warning between feeling nauseated and vomiting.

It settles down after a couple months and it was never bad enough to be a dealbreaker, but it's a fun time.

Think about how we describe contraceptives, medically speaking: a failure rate is tracked and promoted that’s the in the wild rate of failure, not the ideal-use rate of failure (which can be effectively zero!). The diet and exercise equivalent of a contraceptive couldn’t be sold, because its failure rate would be way higher than its success rate.

So “we” (people who’ve paid attention to the science on it) know it doesn’t work (on a population level), like for-sure definitely does not work, but a person reads this assertion of fact and goes “but wait it worked for me, this person must be dumb or something” but that’s not it. It’s two different perspectives on what it means for it to “work”.

However, all the evidence is that the vast majority of people fail at changing their habits in ways that produce lasting weight loss, so it does not generally work as advice for reducing your weight.

So you're technically right, but it is irrelevant, because we don't know how to actually get people to change habits with any meaningful rate of success.

At this point it is downright harmful and wildly unethical to recommend it when we now have a far more successful option.

You can use the drug to loose weight while trying to understand the underlying problem.

For me the pros outweigh the cons, I don't obsess over food constantly, my belt size went down and my watch band closed a few notches and even my dental hygienist mentioned last week my face was thinner. Overall it's a huge win.

I pay out of pocket $450 a month for it and it's worth it. The money I saw from no more online shopping habit and no more doordashing or drinking probably breaks even.

We have decades of research showing this is more in the "excess acid production" realm of things.