Dhruv Khullar, at The New Yorker, touches on one of the most interesting potential impacts of GLP-1s: resetting how society views addiction from a moral failure to a neurobiological difference.
On some level, I’d already understood addiction to be a treatable disease, not a personal failing. Still, these scans helped me appreciate how deeply addiction is rooted in neurobiology. A mere photograph of alcohol—to say nothing of a sip—was enough to send a person’s reward centers into a frenzy. Our decisions still matter; the red circles are known to grow brighter when they’re conditioned by repeated use of a drug. But it was counterproductive, even biologically incoherent, to shame a person for having overwhelming cravings. If GLP-1 drugs prove successful, they might reset not only people’s addictions but also society’s perceptions.