What Happened to My Drinking After I Started Tirzepatide
Written by Dan Cripe, RN, BSN
When I started tirzepatide, I was drinking heavily.
That's important to say because otherwise what happened afterward doesn't mean very much.
I had tried to cut back before. More than once. I knew drinking was affecting my weight, but by then it was affecting a lot more than that. There were periods when I had difficulty functioning at work because I was experiencing alcohol withdrawal, and there were times my drinking contributed to me calling in.
By the weeks leading up to May 10, 2024, I knew I needed to change.
I just hadn't been very successful at doing it.
Alcohol Was Tied Into Almost Everything
Drinking and my weight weren't separate problems.
I would almost save calories for alcohol. Then I'd drink, get hungry, and eat whatever I wanted late at night. If I drank enough to feel bad the next day, I wasn't going to exercise.
Working nights made everything worse. I sometimes ate at work just to stay awake, and when I wasn't working, I spent a lot of my free time watching TV or movies. Drinking, eating, being tired, and not exercising all fed into each other.
I knew that.
Knowing it didn't make me stop.
I'd tell myself I was going to cut back on drinking, and then eventually I'd be drinking again. By the spring of 2024, it had gotten to the point where I wasn't happy with how I looked or how I was living.
The weeks leading up to May 10th were dark for me.
I Was Actually Nervous to Start Tirzepatide Because I Was Drinking
Marcia was the one who first started researching GLP-1 medications. I did my own research after she told me about them, and eventually I decided I wanted to try tirzepatide too.
But I was nervous.
Part of that was because I was still drinking. I remember wondering whether this medication was even going to work if I kept drinking the way I had been.
I think part of me was also trying to use starting tirzepatide as a line in the sand. I needed to lose weight, but I also needed to quit drinking and start living my life again.
On May 10, 2024, Marcia and I gave each other our first 2.5 mg injections.
I expected the medication to affect my weight.
I wasn't expecting what happened with alcohol.
Within a Week or Two, I Didn't Want It the Same Way
My memories of the first few days on tirzepatide are fuzzy. I sort of remember being less hungry and staying full longer, but I can't tell you exactly when those things started.
What I remember more clearly is what happened with drinking.
Somewhere around a week or two after starting tirzepatide, I noticed that I didn't want alcohol the way I had before.
It wasn't that I suddenly decided alcohol was bad for me. I already knew that. It wasn't that somebody had finally convinced me I should stop. I'd already tried telling myself that plenty of times.
The desire itself felt different.
That was probably the strangest part.
For a long time, cutting back had required me to try not to drink. Now there were times when I just didn't particularly want to.
I wasn't expecting that.
I Could Feel Something Change Toward the End of the Week
There was another detail that made the whole thing even more noticeable to me.
Toward the end of the week, when it seemed like my tirzepatide dose was wearing off, I sometimes noticed alcohol cravings returning.
I wasn't measuring this or keeping a journal. I wasn't trying to conduct an experiment on myself. This is simply how I remember the pattern.
But I noticed it.
Earlier in the week, I could have very little interest in alcohol. Later in the dosing interval, that old desire could start showing up again.
At the time, I didn't know what to make of that. I just knew my relationship with alcohol wasn't behaving the way it had before I started tirzepatide.
Then I Tried Drinking Again at Our Cabin
A few months after we started tirzepatide, we went to our family cabin up north.
Camping and drinking had always gone together for me. This wasn't some unusual situation where I randomly decided to have a drink. It was exactly the kind of place where I normally would have expected to drink.
I had the same cheap rum I always drank.
It tasted terrible.
I also remember feeling like it didn't have the same effect I expected. I drank less than I normally would have.
Then the next day I vomited and had a pretty rough hangover.
None of that was particularly enjoyable, obviously. But the part that really stood out to me was what happened next.
I didn't want to drink again the following day.
That was unusual for me while camping.
The Bad Experience Started Competing With the Craving
That cabin trip didn't mean every alcohol-related trigger disappeared forever.
There were still times when I could feel that old pull toward drinking. Certain situations could still bring it up, especially things I had associated with alcohol for years.
But now there was something else competing with it.
I could remember how terrible that rum tasted. I could remember being sick the next day. I could remember that drinking hadn't even felt the same while I was doing it.
Sometimes that memory was enough to override the craving.
That's very different from saying I never thought about alcohol again.
I did.
It just didn't have the same hold on me that I remembered it having before.
Was It Tirzepatide?
This is where I have to separate what I experienced from what I can prove.
I started tirzepatide on May 10, 2024. Within roughly a week or two, I remember noticing that I didn't want alcohol the way I had before. I sometimes noticed cravings returning as I got closer to the end of the weekly dosing interval.
A few months later, I drank again and had a very different experience with alcohol than I was used to.
Those things happened.
I can't tell you from my experience alone exactly why they happened.
I was also trying to change my life. I had reached a point before starting tirzepatide where I knew drinking was a problem. I wanted to quit. That matters too.
What makes the experience interesting to me is that wanting to quit wasn't new.
I'd wanted to cut back before.
What felt new was not wanting the alcohol.
There is a difference.
This Wasn't the Change I Thought I Was Signing Up For
When I agreed to start tirzepatide, I was thinking about my weight.
I was around 220 pounds. I had a belly and love handles, skinny legs, and was wearing XXL shirts. I wanted to lose weight and feel better about myself.
I hoped getting healthier might help me change some of the other things in my life too.
I didn't expect a medication I was taking for weight loss to coincide with such a noticeable change in my desire to drink.
The weight eventually came down. That mattered.
But when I look back at why I started in the first place, I remember thinking that I needed to quit drinking, lose weight, and start living my life again.
Those things were all tangled together.
So was tirzepatide responsible for what happened with alcohol?
My experience can't answer that question.
What I can tell you is what happened to me.
Before May 10, I had repeatedly tried to cut back and struggled to do it.
After I started tirzepatide, alcohol started feeling different.
And for me, that became a much bigger part of this journey than I ever expected.
Sources
This article is a first-person Journey account based on Dan Cripe's recollection of his life and experiences before beginning tirzepatide on May 10, 2024. It does not make clinical claims about tirzepatide or establish that the medication caused subsequent changes.
Continue the Journey
Dan's experience with alcohol is only one part of a much larger story. He and Marcia started tirzepatide on the same day, but what happened next wasn't identical—and neither was life after the weight came off.
