Research from the University of Southern California in the United States has shown that Semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy, Semaglutide) may help reduce alcohol consumption by reducing cravings and heavy drinking days. One small clinical trial found that patients taking the drug drank less alcohol than those taking a placebo, which provides support for further research into its potential to treat alcohol use disorder.

A randomized, placebo-controlled trial validated side effects that are frequently observed by physicians and patients. A new study from USC suggests that Semaglutide (Ozempic, a commercially marketed drug for diabetes, and Wegovy, a drug for obesity), may also help reduce alcohol consumption.
The study, published in JAMA Psychiatry, found that people who took the drug weekly had fewer cravings for alcohol, drank less alcohol and had fewer days of heavy drinking compared to those who took a placebo.
This finding helps fill a major gap in treatment. According to the U.S. medical director, alcohol kills about 178,000 people in the U.S. each year and is a major cause of liver disease, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers. Although nearly one-third of U.S. adults meet the criteria for problem drinking at some point in their lives, very few seek or receive treatment.
This study confirms a common observation by many patients and doctors since the popularity of Ozempic and similar drugs: people suddenly lose the urge to drink alcohol after starting weekly injections of semaglutide, which is used to treat obesity or diabetes.
Christian Hendershot, first author of the study and director of clinical research at the University of Southern California’s Addiction Science Institute, said this is the first randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial to study the phenomenon.
Medications currently approved for the treatment of alcohol use disorder are not widely available. Hendershott, a professor of population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, said that if semaglutide and other GLP-1 receptor agonists are approved for the treatment of alcohol use disorder, their popularity will increase the chances of widespread adoption of these treatments.
Hendershot added that these results justify a larger study of GLP-1 receptor agonists for alcohol use disorder.
In the trial, researchers recruited 48 adults with alcohol use disorder who did not actively seek treatment. Alcohol use disorder is defined by a range of symptoms that can occur, including the inability to stop or control alcohol consumption despite adverse consequences.
Participant has a history of drinking more than 7 drinks (women) or more than 14 drinks (men) in a week in the past month, as well as two or more heavy drinks (4 or more drinks for women and 5 or more drinks for men).
One week before the first injection, the investigators invited participants to consume their preferred alcoholic beverage in a comfortable laboratory setting for two hours, stating that they could delay it if they wished. The researchers recorded the delay time and amount of alcohol consumed.
The investigators then randomized participants to receive either weekly low-dose injections of Ozempic or placebo for nine weeks. After that, the participants and researchers returned to the drinking lab to repeat the process and observe the changes.
The results, measured by grams of alcohol consumed and exhaled breath alcohol concentration, showed that semaglutide injections reduced weekly alcohol cravings, reduced the average amount of alcohol consumed on drinking days, and resulted in a greater reduction in heavy drinking days compared to placebo. An important finding of the study was that semaglutide had a much greater effect on several alcohol outcomes than existing drugs to reduce alcohol craving, despite the use of only the lowest clinical doses.
In the last month of treatment, patients in the semaglutide group experienced a significant reduction in the number of days of binge drinking. In addition, nearly 40 percent of patients in the semaglutide group did not experience alcohol abuse in the last month of treatment, compared to only 20 percent of patients in the placebo group.
In a small subset of participants who smoked at baseline, those treated with semaglutide smoked significantly fewer cigarettes per day on average compared to the placebo group.
Klara Klein, senior author at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, said: “These data suggest that semaglutide and similar drugs have the potential to meet an unmet need for the treatment of alcohol use disorder. Larger and longer studies in a wider population are needed to fully understand its safety and efficacy for people with alcohol use disorder, but these preliminary findings are promising. “