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The first days, weeks and months are often the hardest time when quitting a substance. If this drug helps a smoker not smoke for 3 months, by that time the nico

The first days, weeks and months are often the hardest time when quitting a substance. If this drug helps a smoker not smoke for 3 months, by that time the nicotine addiction has weakened considerably. They've gotten past the hardest part. I see no downside to that. Similarly, if a person loses 30 pounds on this drug, then stops using the drug and reverts to normal habits, it will take a while to regain those 30 pounds. And the long term shift of maintaining the new body weight doesn't require any radical changes (unlike losing 30 pounds, which does require sustained radical changes).

justinbaker84 3y ago
That is not what happened to me. I took it for 2 months and then I wanted to get off. I did not go back to normal. Mentally I felt like I needed more food and more junk food than I ever did before using the drug. My hypothesis is that it supressed my body's natural production of whatever chemical in my brain helps me not go overboard with food. With that supressed by the drug I had an uncontrollable desire for food and currently I am fatter than I was before taking the drug in the first place.
- 1123581321 3y ago
  An interaction with leptin? Or are you just feeling hungry after the side effects wore off? You also said it stopped working while you were taking it in another post; are you just talking about satiety or one of the other effects like insulin production or glucagon release? Are you diabetic or just overweight?
- yamazakiwi 3y ago
  This same thing happened to me when I quit smoking without assistance from a drug.
- rolisz 3y ago
  Did you quit cold turkey? Or did you slowly taper it off? I'm taking Rybelsus (pill form of semaglutide) and there are 3, 7 and 14 mg versions. My plan is to take 14 mg for a couple more months, then switch to 7 mg for 1-2 months and then 3 mg for a month before stopping taking it completely.
- Ginden 3y ago
  > Mentally I felt like I needed more food and more junk food than I ever did before using the drug This is consistent with hungry brain hypothesis. Your hypothalamus detects that you have less body fat than amount set on "lipostat" and it tries to get fat content back to this set amount.
raducu 3y ago
> The first days, weeks and months are often the hardest time when quitting a substance. If this drug helps a smoker not smoke for 3 months, by that time the nicotine addiction has weakened considerably. I love(d) nicotine and it was the only substance that I ever was addicted to. I tried dozens of times to quit and the only thing that helped was getting treatment for my ADHD. Quitting nicotine was easy for me on methylphenidate. I only tried combining them and nearly went to the ER, so I quickly learnt that I can't take them both. But when I'm on methylphenidate I just don't crave nicotine that much. It took 2-3 years to completely not get any nicotine cravings at all.
- tonyarkles 3y ago
  >I only tried combining them and nearly went to the ER Could you elaborate on that? I'm currently still a smoker (working on it...) and on Concerta. Your note alarms me :)
  - y-curious 3y ago
    Not the person you're replying to, but what helped me quit was the book "How to stop smoking" by Alan Carr. Highly recommend working through it and taking his point about cold turkey in good faith. Good luck!
    - tonyarkles 3y ago
      I have a fun experience with the Alan Carr book. The first time I read it, I was laughing the whole way through thinking about how much it was written like straight-up brainwashing propaganda, but I had committed to a friend to reading it all the way through. I got to the end where the final bit is something like "now just say out loud 'I am a non-smoker and when I wake up tomorrow I will never have a cigarette again'". I chuckled, thought it was ridiculous, and the next morning I woke up and didn't have a smoke. That lasted about 2 years until I got extremely drunk one night after a rough breakup, had smoked the whole night, and was pretty much instantly hooked again. Ten years later I went through the exercise again, but sadly it didn't work nearly as well as it had the first time around.
mym1990 3y ago
This is what I thought as well, that the habits that drive some of these activities would be dramatically weakened, but it looks like the body is not actually re-aligning to a new homeostatis level, so when a person gets off the drug, the body is trying to get back to the old level. I don't think it all comes back to habits, often your body is working really hard against you to get back a level it feels is right(whether that level is 'healthy' or not).
sneak 3y ago
Nicotine physical addiction is over with in less than a week. The remainder is psychological habit and classical conditioning.
- standardUser 3y ago
  In my experience, different drugs have different effects on different people, sometimes radically so, and overly-generalizing is less than useless when trying to learn and understand how drugs work, both on an individual level and a societal level.

justinbaker84 3y ago

That is not what happened to me. I took it for 2 months and then I wanted to get off. I did not go back to normal. Mentally I felt like I needed more food and more junk food than I ever did before using the drug. My hypothesis is that it supressed my body's natural production of whatever chemical in my brain helps me not go overboard with food. With that supressed by the drug I had an uncontrollable desire for food and currently I am fatter than I was before taking the drug in the first place.

1123581321 3y ago
An interaction with leptin? Or are you just feeling hungry after the side effects wore off? You also said it stopped working while you were taking it in another post; are you just talking about satiety or one of the other effects like insulin production or glucagon release? Are you diabetic or just overweight?
yamazakiwi 3y ago
This same thing happened to me when I quit smoking without assistance from a drug.
rolisz 3y ago
Did you quit cold turkey? Or did you slowly taper it off? I'm taking Rybelsus (pill form of semaglutide) and there are 3, 7 and 14 mg versions. My plan is to take 14 mg for a couple more months, then switch to 7 mg for 1-2 months and then 3 mg for a month before stopping taking it completely.
Ginden 3y ago
> Mentally I felt like I needed more food and more junk food than I ever did before using the drug This is consistent with hungry brain hypothesis. Your hypothalamus detects that you have less body fat than amount set on "lipostat" and it tries to get fat content back to this set amount.

raducu 3y ago

> The first days, weeks and months are often the hardest time when quitting a substance. If this drug helps a smoker not smoke for 3 months, by that time the nicotine addiction has weakened considerably. I love(d) nicotine and it was the only substance that I ever was addicted to. I tried dozens of times to quit and the only thing that helped was getting treatment for my ADHD. Quitting nicotine was easy for me on methylphenidate. I only tried combining them and nearly went to the ER, so I quickly learnt that I can't take them both. But when I'm on methylphenidate I just don't crave nicotine that much. It took 2-3 years to completely not get any nicotine cravings at all.

tonyarkles 3y ago
>I only tried combining them and nearly went to the ER Could you elaborate on that? I'm currently still a smoker (working on it...) and on Concerta. Your note alarms me :)
- y-curious 3y ago
  Not the person you're replying to, but what helped me quit was the book "How to stop smoking" by Alan Carr. Highly recommend working through it and taking his point about cold turkey in good faith. Good luck!
  - tonyarkles 3y ago
    I have a fun experience with the Alan Carr book. The first time I read it, I was laughing the whole way through thinking about how much it was written like straight-up brainwashing propaganda, but I had committed to a friend to reading it all the way through. I got to the end where the final bit is something like "now just say out loud 'I am a non-smoker and when I wake up tomorrow I will never have a cigarette again'". I chuckled, thought it was ridiculous, and the next morning I woke up and didn't have a smoke. That lasted about 2 years until I got extremely drunk one night after a rough breakup, had smoked the whole night, and was pretty much instantly hooked again. Ten years later I went through the exercise again, but sadly it didn't work nearly as well as it had the first time around.

mym1990 3y ago

This is what I thought as well, that the habits that drive some of these activities would be dramatically weakened, but it looks like the body is not actually re-aligning to a new homeostatis level, so when a person gets off the drug, the body is trying to get back to the old level. I don't think it all comes back to habits, often your body is working really hard against you to get back a level it feels is right(whether that level is 'healthy' or not).

sneak 3y ago

Nicotine physical addiction is over with in less than a week. The remainder is psychological habit and classical conditioning.

standardUser 3y ago
In my experience, different drugs have different effects on different people, sometimes radically so, and overly-generalizing is less than useless when trying to learn and understand how drugs work, both on an individual level and a societal level.