If Ozempic is proven to cure addiction, will people still blame the victim?
Two things I'm reading this week, and a personal story.
One of the most astonishing articles I’ve read in a long time came from The Atlantic, about the fact that the diabetes drug Ozempic might actually cure addiction.
Ozempic already bypassed its on-label use when people realized one of its side effects was weight loss. Now, folks without diabetes are taking it.
And one of the weird discoveries is that these people are ridding themselves of addictions and compulsions as well as weight.
Writer Sarah Zhang talked to people who presented anecdotal evidence that their yearning for alcohol or shopping or picking the sores on their back had simply vanished once they started taking Ozempic.
And she cites lab tests on animals that show this diabetes drug might also cure addictions to other drugs - like cocaine or opioids.
This got me thinking about the world we live in, in which we blame the addicted person for being weak. Now it turns out that addiction may be caused by a chemical issue? That can be cured?
Wow.
It also makes me wonder how people who are addicted because of psychological pain will do. Will they be better able to deal with past abuse on this new drug?
If you can read this in the Atlantic, do so. If you are out of free reads for the month, let me know and I’ll email you the piece.
The Attack on Knowledge
One of my favorite Substackers, Jessica Wildfire, wrote a piece this week about how some states are threatening librarians with jail time if they carry books deemed to be sexual or hate-filled in nature.
“They are scared,” Wildfire writes of the librarians. And the fear is making them complicit. There are few people who will willingly go to jail for the principle of free speech - though if I had to pick any group that would be likely to, it would be librarians.
My favorite part of Wildfire’s piece is when she quotes a Utah legislator asserting that if librarians are scared, they know they’re guilty.
No, dumbass, if people are scared it means they are being bullied. The kid who gave you his lunch money in the playground was not guilty of anything. He just didn’t want to get beaten up.
Let’s be clear here. When these bullies say “sexual,” it doesn’t mean pornography, it means “acknowledging that real people have different sexualities.” And “hate-filled” simply means they don’t want to be called out on their own hate.
For some time now I have been troubled and amused by people who have no problem BEING racist, but don’t like to break CALLED racist. This is what all this book banning is about. People who think anti-racism is racism against white people are attacking anything that calls out racism as racism. Even a poem about love. And people who think acknowledging queer people is dangerous are just trying to justify their homo-sexism.
I’m gonna refer to this past Sunday’s column for why I think this is so. (I’ve also linked a preview at the bottom.)
What I want to address here is the complicity with which people - mostly white people - who are anti-racist, and maybe even queer, have had in propping up the racists. Ever since I can remember, it has been verboten to call people or people’s actions racist. Within journalism or on social media, people with good intentions will intone, “Now, there’s no need to start with name calling.”
Which only served to prop up the idea that calling out someone’s racism is bad, and judgmental, that somehow racism is a “side” that we should be tolerant of.
Now, the racists and homo- and trans-sexists are weaponizing that idea. And many of us who are suffering from it have played right into their argument for a few decades now. I’m not surprised this tactic is being used. The racists know it will work. It has been working for some time.
Anyway, read Jessica’s piece. It got me thinking. Overthinking. As usual.
Personal Story: The Day My Aunt Saved My Life
Last week, I wrote the story of my bike accident, back in 1986. Today’s personal story is the aftermath of the accident, when I was in the hospital after surgery.
Remember, my entire experience with the ER was of me trying to make sure my family wasn’t freaked out at the fact that I had been hit by a car. I was clear-headed. The model patient. But after the surgery, I was treated like a problematic patient.
The thing nurses want post-surgery patients to do is get up and move around. But every time I tried, I would pass out the moment I got upright. They interpreted this weakness. That I was being a baby, and didn’t want to deal with the pain.
Seriously folks, my thigh was shaped like a half moon. I don’t think pain was my issue.
My mother kept saying, “This is not her. She’s a go-getter. She works through pain. Something’s wrong.”
One day, when my mom wasn’t there, I kept asking the nurses when the physical therapist was coming. I was determined to get upright so I wouldn’t be treated this way. I begged them. And was ignored.
I started crying, alone in my room. At that moment, my Aunt Irene called to see how I was.
“They won’t let me see the physical therapist!” I cried. “They treat me like I’m a baby. They’ve told me that!”
Her answer: “I’ll be right there.”
Now, my Aunt Irene is a take-no-prisoners person. And my uncle was wealthy and powerful and… well, let’s just use the word “bully” and leave it at that. He was also the chair of the board of trustees for the hospital I was in.
About 10 minutes later, my aunt came strolling into my room, failing to suppress a smile.
She knew one of the nurses, whose son went to school with my cousin. The nurse told her, sotto voce, “Don’t baby her. She needs to get tougher.”
My aunt was like, “My niece is the toughest person I know. She is crying right now because she can’t get anyone to help her!”
Within minutes, the physical therapist and the nurses were hovering around me.
I was still woozy sitting up, but I stayed conscious, which was an improvement.
By that point, my mother had shown up, as did one of the nurses who treated me in the ER a few days before, to check on how I was doing.
The ER nurse was like, “Why is her skin all blotchy?” Then someone realized that I was running a fever.
And that was when I found out I was allergic to morphine.
Actually, I don’t react well to painkillers at all. In subsequent years, when I had my cesarean and my sinus surgery and my breast reduction, I made sure to have conversations with the anesthesiologists to let them know not to mix in too much pain medicine with the anesthesia. After all of those surgeries, I was perfectly fine with ibuprofen.
I haven’t thought about this for years, but looking back, what bothers me most is that the nurses - the people in the caregiving profession - blamed me, and tried to “cure my attitude” with “tough love.”
What also bothers me is that this was not the first time this kind of thing had happened to me. A boy pushed me in the playground? “Carrie! Get up, don’t just lay there like a pussy! You wanna play with the boys, you gotta be tough!”
You get the picture.
What I also find interesting is that my hospital experience is a microcosm of what is going on in society now. We are divided between people who want others to be treated with empathy and understanding, and people who are the descendants of those nurses, who contemptuously use the term “snowflake.”
That is what we’re fighting. Two ways of seeing the world. And I think more of us need to be like my Aunt Irene. Or at least have someone like her in our corner.