This month’s prompt was: “We’re asking anyone who’s tried taking one of these drugs to help them quit something — Naltrexone, Antabuse, any of the GLPs — to share their experience. Did it work? Were there unexpected side effects? What’s the weirdest thing that happened, or that failed to happen?”

Below, what worked, what didn’t, and how it felt along the way. —TSB Editor

Under the Brutal, Screeching Volume

By The Small Bow Family Orchestra

I did not start taking a GLP-1 to stop gambling, but as soon as I reached a dose where the intended effects of appetite suppression really kicked in, the famous “food noise” reduction arrived with a lot of “gambling noise” reduction, too. 

My last bet was in April of 2025. For roughly 2.5 years prior to that bet, I gambled online daily, with whatever cash or credit I had (or didn’t have), to the detriment of every other part of my life. It was bad! I had many reasons to quit. I was destroying my relationship. I destroyed my finances. I was going to GA meetings, sometimes, and the whole abstinence thing they preached was starting to make a lot of sense. And in the days leading up to my last bet, there was what I hope was the very last come-to-Jesus moment with my partner. 

But it was also like a switch flipped. I went from not being able to imagine not gambling — I did it every possible moment while awake — to not doing it anymore, at all. And while I did think of it sometimes, I never came close to going back out. In my recovery circles, that’s not unheard of, but it’s not common. 

Here’s the part that scares me. I was also on a GLP-1 for a year in the early 2020s. Before that, I liked gambling, but it never consumed me. I stopped taking it when I lost all the weight rather than trying to find a maintenance dose because a discount ended and my insurance never covered it. Over the next several years, I gained about half of the weight back. I also developed my gambling addiction. 

Who knows what role it played or didn’t play? At least this time, if the day comes where I lose access to the GLP-1, I’ll have the program, my sponsor, and my higher power to lean on. I’ll take it one day at a time. Getting fat again is the least of my worries.

I am a longtime alcoholic who has used Naltrexone off and on for a few years now (even while drinking, aka the “Sinclair Method”).

It is a gross feeling to use while drinking, but it certainly takes the “bite” out of your drinking experience. It doesn’t keep you from getting drunk per se, but it deflates the “sittin’ on a pink cloud” feeling you often get initially from drinking without it.

Even taking Naltrexone on a non-drinking day can make one feel a little woozy on its own at first, when you’re not used to it. It’s not a fun medication to have to take to begin with, but it’s been a great tool (when I actually do use it on drinking days) to help dampen my desire to continue piling drinks on. It simply sucks the fun out of the drinking experience. It makes you zoom out and go, “Why am I doing this? Maybe I should stop!”

This dude in rehab guffawed: “If there was a pill to stop drinking, I’d take 10 of ’em!” Mostly to make the point that if you want to be real sober you can’t take a little magic pill to get you there. I file him right next to the people in 12 step meetings who insinuate taking anti-depressants also make my sobriety void.

Maybe it’s because I became an alcoholic after I had bariatric surgery, which likely means that I already had some addiction issues before I was digging quarters from the couch to buy a morning White Claw. And those addiction issues (food, booze, whatever) were probably a little bit genetic (thanks to my alcoholic dad and grandpa), a little bit biological and a little bit emotional.

When I got sober the most recent time (countdown to two years: 15 days), I put my full self and every resource at my disposal into it. That included an outpatient program, daily AA meetings, and a monthly Vivitrol shot. I don’t know which of those things or in what combination got me past the 9 month mark (all of them continued that long) but I know I got there. I’d given each of them a go solo and not seen much success, and I wasn’t willing to do any further experimenting. I dropped the IOP and injections when I was nearing a year of sobriety, and gradually decreased my meetings to the 1-3 a week I attend now.

But I also noticed that 6 months ago, I started getting that feeling again — the one where I have a hole inside myself that I want to fill with something. I started stuffing snacks down that hole and yes, once I realized, I upped the meetings and called my sponsor and started praying — but while the hole got smaller, it still existed and its existence weighed on me constantly. Peanut butter filled pretzels and tortilla chips called to me like vodka had before.

So I called up my doc and I got a script for Tirzepatide and you know what? The hole went away. Or at least my awareness of it did. Yes, I’m eating less, but — and this is what is most important to me — I’m not thinking about filling the hole with food (or booze) all damned day. Maybe I’ve just been playing tag with my demons but I feel like I have a much greater ability to show up in all the parts of my life when I’m not trying to plug up the hole that keeps calling me.

I have tried Naltrexone and a GLP-1 in my attempts to quit drinking over the last 5 years or so. Taking Naltrexone has been a trip, only because I had a pretty rare side effect when taking the injectable form of the drug where I had a baseball sized knot in my glute (where they shot in the meds) for over a month that made everything painful and only decreased my want for alcohol a little bit but decreased the pleasure I got from it significantly — so of course I just drank more. When I tried the pill form of Naltrexone I found my urges were very diminished, especially physical cravings, but the allure of numbness was still in play. As for the GLP-1, I started this in April 2026, a very low dose of Tirzepitide, and found more of what I had been looking for — it quieted my thoughts about drinking throughout the day, and further it made other things seem more appealing — what if I did a craft or watched a movie instead of drinking? These thoughts had not occurred to me in years. I had to stop taking the GLP-1 after I lost too much weight, as I started at a normal to thin body type. It was also $300 per month out of pocket, as it is not yet approved for drug and alcohol use. I hope this is helpful — I may still take the GLP-1 once in a while, as I still have some left, after I get my weight to a place where I don’t look like Skeletor. 

“These cigarettes taste like sh—t!!” So I was three years into my recovery from alcoholism and I decided I really needed to quit smoking cigarettes. My company was offering a free prescription to Chantix so I thought I’d give it a try although I am normally an anti-medication type person. For those that know when you’re taking Chantix (this is true also with Naltrexone for alcohol), you can continue to use your substance as part of the mechanism that is unwinding and/or blocking the pleasure associated with the substance. So when the cigarettes started tasting awful my first thought was, I’m gonna stop taking the medication! And then I realized that I had to look at if I really wanted to quit smoking or not, which I did, so thank goodness with the tools of my other program (open mindedness, willingness, and honesty) I needed to look for additional support. So I went online and joined a quitting smoking group, (which surprisingly had a subgroup of people who also had quit alcohol and drugs and were now trying to quit smoking), I stopped drinking coffee in the morning and substituted tea, I began a meditation breathing practice, got some cinnamon sticks to chew on and bought a book called quitting smoking in 30 days. I’m happy to say I am now “smober” for over 18 years! Did the Chantix/medication work? Yes, it did, as did the others change supports I used (and I did go back to drinking coffee after a couple months).

Antabuse and Naltrexone were integral for me in establishing a footing and rootedness in sobriety and recovery. I had been slipping and relapsing for a solid seven years, after my very first visit to an AA meeting. In and out of the rooms, dozens of white chips, and 30-day, 60-day, 90-day chips, and even a nine-month chip I picked up. After my last slip (God willing!), my sponsor sent me to his Addictionologist friend.

The doctor said, “You’ve been doing AA for seven years, and you have proven that it is not enough for you. So, we will add three more legs to your support stool, with AA remaining the first leg. Antabuse taken first thing in the morning, before your daily 5 p.m. happy hour craving hits. Also, Naltrexone, so even if you decided to drink on the Antabuse, you would not feel the pleasant effects. Finally, CBT with a therapist who specializes in addiction.”

I stopped the Antabuse three months later, at ninety days sober, and stopped the Naltrexone after one year. I have kept up with the CBT. As I became more rooted in recovery, I regained my life back, and I added some healthy hobbies and interests, to replace all the hours I wasted in the local bars. I said goodbye to my old bar friends, most of whom were not real friends. Running, reading, which I had always loved, but which alcohol had stolen from me for many years, and meeting attendance, replaced the forty hours a week I used to spend in the bars.

Nine half-marathons later, dozens of 10-K’s, and many, many books read, I am still sober today, coming up on fourteen and a half years. I have a stable career in the arts that I enjoy, and people want me around, for the most part. I wake up every day and see what positivity and service I can inject into the stream of life. “Selfishness and self-centeredness have slipped away,” as “the Ninth Step Promises” tell us will happen.

I drank too much. Then, over a long weekend in Vegas, it caught up with me. I drank continually for three days and took swigs of Tylenol PM to fall asleep for a few hours at night. As I packed up and dragged myself to the airport, I started to feel pain on the right side of my torso. Remembering that acetaminophen and alcohol can be toxic to the liver, I grew worried. It turns out that some ab crunches in the hotel gym were the more likely culprit, but my alarm got me into the doctor’s office.

My primary care physician listened with empathy and without judgment and accepted my goal of moderation rather than lifelong sobriety. He prescribed Naltrexone. I let it sit on my bathroom shelf for a month because I was concerned that it wouldn’t work but also that it would absolutely work, forcing me to reorganize a social life oriented around alcohol.

I promised myself I’d take one tablet, have one drink, and see how it goes.

I was lucky to experience an immediate response. The first drink still felt relaxing, but the ensuing, irresistible drive to drink as many as I could wasn’t there. Or, at least, it was quieter.

I’ll be celebrating my 3 year soberversary next month. Naltrexone was the key to me getting sober finally at age 66. I had not been able to stay sober for 30 days previously in all my adult life. I understand it doesn’t work for everyone but it did for me. 

AA, especially Quad A and the community support, helps KEEP me sober. I went to AA in the 90s for about a year so I’m grateful that I knew about both AA and Quad A this time around. I also knew that alcoholism isn’t “cured” by taking a pill. I initially thought of AA as a belt and suspenders kind of thing with the Naltrexone this time. And yes, the community I found has enriched my life immeasurably. I LIKE the meetings — sober alcoholics can be hilarious too. My two Quad A groups are my primary meetings. I attend a traditional in person AA meeting as well and supplement that occasionally. There is relief to be among like minded people who are sharing their strength. I’ve struggled with feeling isolated throughout my life. That is much better now.

I tried the Sinclair Method — Naltrexone about an hour before you drink; the idea is that it extinguishes the reward effects of alcohol. The rewards for drinking for me are more behavioral than chemical. I love being disinhibited, so I just kept right on drinking. Naltrexone reduced my pleasure from sex and food and was a long-term libido killer.

I have a Topiramate prescription now. It absolutely silences my internal arguments about whether or not I’m going to drink, and that’s a huge relief. But it also silences a lot of my other inner monologue, and I have a hard time finding words when I take it. I’m a professional smart person who needs to be fluent and articulate for work, so the tradeoff isn’t worth it most days.

I have been on Naltrexone for over 2 years. I’m sure I had malinformed opinions about it when it was first suggested to me — to be perfectly honest there’s a lot I don't remember about my lowest point and the beginning process of trying to climb out (again and again and again . . .). But the bottom line was: Everything I was trying was failing in my recovery and I made the decision to try anything. Because I was running out of chances and it was either get sober or die. I wouldn’t say it was solely the meds — there was a combination of things that got me sober. But I believe fully in MAT and in harm reduction. Stigma and judgement towards them is dangerous. There’s no arguing it saves lives. 

I started taking GLPs because as a middle aged person, I’d had a nagging inability to lose about 25 pounds, which was mostly down to low impulse control with food and yes, when drinking alcohol, classic binge behavior. The GLPs completely took that binge impulse away: for all things. Drinking feels stupid and pointless. The life changing part of GLPs for me is they have had a positive domino effect; first the weight loss, which encourages wanting to be more physically active, which encourages better self esteem and helps mental health. What I would say about my personal experience with GLPs though, is they don’t work right away. I started with a low dosage and had to be on them for a while before I saw and felt a change. The best way to take them is to use them as a support tool for other things you want to improve in life.

For years, I shared in 12-step meetings that my experience of addiction was one of deafening mind-noise that tortured me when I wasn’t able to quiet it. It’s probably why meditation became one of my most transformative tools of recovery. When I started recovery, in 2006, I was prescribed Suboxone, which at the time, was pretty early-days of the medication being offered to ordinary junkies like me. I was desperate to find a life that seemed worth living, and while I was skeptical that a little orange, chalky pill was going to aid in that pursuit, I was willing to do just about anything someone told me might help. (Reiki and yoga and acupuncture and hypnosis and step-work and therapy and running and reading and breaking up with people I loved all made the list of desperate to-do’s.) I followed directions.

For the next two years, I dutifully took my Suboxone and my life utterly transformed. I achieved a laundry list of previously impossible feats — life long goals that are legitimately very difficult for anyone to accomplish (like publishing a novel, starting a business, eventually earning motherfucking tenure), let alone a person who had previously spent most of their time committing credit card fraud and hoping to die. 

All of that happened because the brutal, screeching volume of my mind’s obsession had subsided and when it was quiet, I was able to hear all of the urgent, interesting, complex, hilarious ideas I hadn’t been able to hear over the all-encompassing racket of dope. Suboxone is a miracle drug, I told anyone who was open-minded enough to listen and not kick me out of the clean-clique that insisted I had traded one drug for another. And so what if it had, I thought? The results of my life were all I cared about. And I’d built a life, day after day, that I loved. 

I tapered down, and lived the next fifteen or so years doing normal-life: good stuff, bad stuff, boring stuff, exhilarating stuff. There was only one problem. The eating disorder I’d had since I was 11 was still following me around, rearing its head when I went through periods of extreme stress or grief. I tried to apply all the recovery tools I’d learned to tame it, and they worked to varying degrees, but I was still dragging around my first, worst dance partner. 

Enter GLP-1s. A few years ago, the Instagram accounts and news features started. I scrolled for hours, listening to ordinary women who breathlessly talked about what was happening in their grainy homemade videos. They all used a phrase I’d never heard before: food noise. And all of them reported, poof, it had vanished. They ate when they were hungry and stopped when they were full. They weren’t obsessed with what they’d just eaten, when they were eating next, desperately calculating a never-ending ledger of food-math. 

I immediately told a friend from recovery that GLP-1s were “food Suboxone.” It was obvious to me from the very early days of listening to these women that they were experiencing the same exhilarating peace I’d found in 2006. And because I trusted myself after almost two decades of painstaking responsibility to my daily care and maintenance, I listened to my instinct that these medications would turn down the volume on the food noise for me too. I’ve been taking a GLP-1 for two years now, and I was right. They’ve done exactly what Suboxone did for me twenty years ago. The distracting noise of my food neurosis is muted. And in its place, it turns out, there are still lots of new, tender, important whispers I’ve finally been able to hear.

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