> My conspiracy theory is that a lot of people must be getting this global lowered reward sensitivity from GLP-1s but are ignoring the negative sides of that effect because they like being skinny.
Possibly some of them could also be unintentionally countering the impacts through things like self-medicating with caffeine.
I have no personal experience with GLP-1s but suddenly quitting caffeine after decades of daily use was pretty eye-opening in terms of how much it was boosting my baseline mood. And I'm not talking about being cranky for a couple of days after quitting, I'm talking about a very noticeable sustained change from when I was a frequent caffeine user to when I stopped having it altogether.
Seconding this without straying too far from the topic.
My entire life I have been underweight and also ridiculously hooked on caffeine. At work I would easily go through 5-8 cups of coffee in a day.
I quit caffeine to become a parent a few years ago and suddenly I am able to put on fat and muscle so much easier.
I think the fact that 95% of our society consumes one of the best weight loss drugs (caffeine) anyway really skews a substantial portion of the data.