I Did 90 Days on GLP-1. Here’s What Nobody Warned Me About.

I’ve been on semaglutide for 90 days. I lost 18 lbs. That’s not the story. The story is that I stopped drinking, my anxiety went quiet, and I stopped eating my feelings — and nobody warned me any of that would happen.

I didn’t start this journey looking for a transformation. My doctor told me my blood sugar was trending in the wrong direction. I was 43, tired in a way sleep didn’t fix, and I’d been using food and wine to get through every single day for longer than I wanted to admit. I just didn’t want to end up sick.

What happened next surprised me more than anything I expected.

The Night I Put Down My Wine Glass

Week three. Friday night. I poured myself a glass of wine the way I had every Friday for years.

I took one sip. Put it down. Never picked it back up.

I wasn’t trying to quit drinking. I hadn’t made a decision. There was no white-knuckling, no willpower moment. The craving just wasn’t there. I stood in my kitchen staring at the glass like it belonged to someone else.

Later I found out this isn’t rare. GLP-1 receptors exist in the brain’s reward system — the same pathways that drive cravings for alcohol, food, and other substances. Two major studies published in 2026 found GLP-1 medications linked to a 47% lower rate of substance use disorder care. I was apparently a data point.

When the Food Noise Stopped

If you’ve never experienced food noise, you might not know you have it.

It’s the constant low hum in your head. What am I eating next. Is there dessert. Can I have more. Should I finish this. It’s there when you’re working, when you’re trying to sleep, when you’re in the middle of a conversation. You learn to live around it without knowing it’s not normal.

By day 30, it went silent.

I remember the moment I noticed — I was in a meeting and realized I hadn’t thought about food once in two hours. I cried on the way home. Not because I was sad. Because I didn’t know it was possible to just… not think about food. That silence had been available to other people all along, and I hadn’t known what I was missing.

My Therapist Noticed Before I Did

Week six. My therapist asked what I’d changed recently.

Nothing, I said. Life’s the same.

She looked at her notes. “You seem lighter. Something’s different.”

I hadn’t changed my antidepressants. Hadn’t started meditating or exercising more. My life circumstances were identical. Just the shot.

The same research that found the addiction link also found a 44% reduction in depression risk in people taking GLP-1 medications. The brain effects of these drugs are only beginning to be understood — but my therapist noticed before I did.

Let’s Be Honest About the Hard Parts

This is not a before-and-after story with a neat bow on it. Weeks one and two were rough — nausea every morning, and a relationship with food that suddenly felt strange and foreign. Week four, fatigue hit me out of nowhere and I canceled things I’d been looking forward to. Week seven, clumps of hair in the shower drain.

It’s not easy. Anyone who tells you it is hasn’t done it.

And the people who say “you took the easy way out” — I’ve thought about how to respond to that. I’ve injected myself every week. I’ve ridden out nausea at 2am alone. I’ve cried watching my hair thin. I’ve had to learn, at 43, how to feel an emotion without immediately reaching for something to numb it.

But I’d do it again. Without question.

The Weight Is Almost Beside the Point

Eighteen pounds in 90 days. People notice. They ask what I’m doing, and when I tell them, some are supportive and some go quiet in a way that says more than they mean it to.

But the number on the scale is the least interesting thing that happened to me.

What changed is that I don’t use food to manage my emotions anymore. Stressed? I used to eat. Lonely? Fridge. Bored? Chips at midnight, standing in the kitchen in the dark. Now I just feel the feeling. And it passes. I genuinely didn’t know I could do that. I’m still learning who I am without food as a coping mechanism — and that’s a stranger, more interesting journey than I expected.

If Any of This Sounds Familiar

If you read “the eating to cope, the wine to unwind, the anxiety that never fully goes away” and thought that’s me — you’re not broken. Your brain is doing exactly what brains are designed to do when they’re trying to manage stress and discomfort without enough tools.

GLP-1 medications aren’t magic and they’re not for everyone. But for some of us, they’re giving our brains a quieter baseline to work from — and that changes everything downstream.

Still going. Still surprised by who I’m becoming.