This Drug Turns Off Alcohol Cravings (New Research Just Changed Everything)

A study of 600,000 people just dropped in one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, and it found something that no drug, no therapy program has ever been able to claim. A single treatment that reduces addiction across every substance simultaneously. I'm talking about alcohol, opioids, cocaine, nicotine, cannabis, all of them. More interesting than that, that same mechanism that's reducing drug addiction is Also helping to eliminate things like nail biting, gambling, compulsive spending, and skin picking. What this means is it isn't really about addiction at all. It's about knowing how the brain handles wanting things and what happens when that system breaks down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth. I've spent 20 years helping people and families navigate the world of addiction. And right now, what we're seeing in the science of addiction recovery is a tidal wave. Today I have someone who sits at a very rare intersection. She's a physician and a peptide expert, and she's one of us, Dr. Ashley Frazee. Before we get into the science, I want people to know who they're learning from today. You have a very personal reason to be passionate about this topic.

I have a pretty recent history of a very severe gambling addiction. I ended up in coaching with you. And what I ended up doing instead of leaning into gambling cravings was I ended up leaning into making content because I really truly enjoyed it. And then I stumbled into this niche of peptide treatments and therapies and getting excited about that. And so I ended up using creativity and neuroplasticity to change my habits for the better. I haven't gambled in over a year now, and I'm also excited and pretty well studied in peptides now.

It's been an exciting journey getting to watch you go through all this redirecting that addictive energy into building something with purpose. You've helped so many people with all this peptide stuff, and that's why you are exactly the right person to be here today telling us about all this new research when it comes to peptides and addiction. And I think what we want to do is we want to start with that 600,000 people study because What we're going to talk about there addresses what I'm going to call wanting. And then we're also going to talk about peptides that directly impact needing. And then lastly, we're going to talk about peptides that get the recovery processes in healing your brain, getting you back on track. Full spectrum. Let's start because that 600,000, it's actually a study with veterans. It just released last month and it's pretty game-changing.

So they took the veterans with GLP use and noticed a 14% reduced risk of developing any new substance use disorder. And not only that, they showed a 40% reduction in overdoses and 50% reduction in deaths due to substance uses on the veterans who already were using substances.

40, 50%? I mean, that's big.

It's huge. But what it points out is that it wasn't just addiction to food, it was addiction to Anything. And they really used substances in this study. But as we talk more, we're going to learn that it's not just substances, it's, it's any addiction.

Tell us how that works in the brain and how it is that it would target every single one of the addictions.

Basically, this study pointed out something massive, but we've had other studies that deal with GLP agonism in the brain as well. And what we're noticing is that there are 3 different ways that hitting GLP receptors in the brain are downplaying addiction. First, we actually have a study on showing rats hooked on cocaine— when they're hooked on cocaine, they actually have less GLP-1 in their system.

So what you're saying is when the rats were addicted to cocaine, they have less naturally occurring? So something about having the addiction is downregulating this naturally occurring brain chemical.

Interesting, right?

Right. Okay.

No, but that's like— that's a huge source of why this addiction is happening, perhaps, right? So like when you have an addiction, you might Naturally have less GLP-1, which is a very interesting thing. We never thought of somebody having a GLP-1 deficiency.

So that when you say GLP-1 deficiency, what does that mean to us regular people?

So GLP-1 is a hormone that gets upregulated when you eat. For all intents and purposes, when we're talking about things like GLP-1 medications like semaglutide, it gets upregulated when you eat. It helps you feel full and satiated. It helps the gut feel full as well, so it's working in the brain and the gut to do that. It increases the pancreas's output of insulin only when blood sugar is actually high, which is a big deal. And then it also tells the liver not to increase the blood sugar inappropriately, which is something that happens a lot in insulin resistance, which is kind of the, the whole basis of type 2 diabetes.

So it's doing a lot of things. It's hitting gut, the liver, the brain. A lot of things is Is it the brain part specifically, you think, that's impacting addiction across the board, or is it all those things?

I think it's the brain, and here's why. So if you piece together as many studies as you can on GLP-1 agonism in the brain, so we're not only seeing that fullness factor or that satiation factor just with food. What we're noticing is that people and animals are more satisfied in general with things that tend to be addictive or things that you tend to partake in too much.

Makes you feel The word you're saying is satiated or satisfied. So across the board, not just with food.

If you take somebody like me, like even if, even if I were to go into a casino and try to gamble, there's a possibility if I was on a GLP-1 agonist that I could hit a slot machine and just be fine doing it, you know, once, which is, you know, mind-blowing for me. I don't want to tempt it, but, you know, the possibility.

Okay, hold on, wait, that was important. Let's go back to that. Do you think that this medication is going to make it to where people can manage their substance use differently? Like, if you have food addiction, you can't just quit eating.

Right, right.

You have to learn to manage it. Is it going to be that level of targeting, or is— what's your thoughts?

I mean, and I don't want to say that people should just, uh, get a free ride on their addictions, you know, by taking GLP-1s, but what we noticed was when the GLP-1 medications became popular, people were on them trying to lose weight, but it was also coincidental that the COVID shutdown happened around the time when they were getting really, really popular. And so a lot of people got shoved into their homes and they started drinking more, and The ones that were on GLP-1s to lose weight noticed that they weren't drinking as much or they didn't want to drink as much. And so then in my clinic, we were on board with the GLP-1s for weight loss. And so I started getting a lot of people telling me about this, and then I started getting a lot of people coming to me for that reason specifically.

Specifically for alcohol or substance use. That really is pretty significant because I can't tell you how many people I get Now that when I say, when did this start to be a big problem? They say during COVID which makes sense to me from an addiction perspective because when you don't have to, if somebody's already drinking a lot, per se, and now they don't have to go to work, right? And they're working from home, which gives them a lot more flexibility or not working at all. Then now what used to be a gate on the drinking, which was I can't drink during these hours, that gate was lifted. And when the gate gets lifted, it's just kind of a free-for-all. I mean, people would be, you know, having their glass of wine while they're doing their Zoom meetings. And so what used to be in the afternoons after work is now all day. And I'm still getting a lot of people that are telling me this is when it started to get out of hand, was during COVID Yeah.

And I've even had, you know, maybe other people have experienced this as well, but I've had friends on GLP-1 therapies to lose weight, and we'll go out to To dinner and they'll tell me straight up, like, I just don't drink anymore. And I'm like, oh, when did you make that decision? They're like, no, I just don't want to. And it's powerful.

Yeah. This— a lot of people that I see when it comes to different medications they can take to help addiction, you know, because there are other medications out there, some of them have this idea that, like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to take a medication for one of two reasons. It's either because they think they're going to get addicted to another medication. That's one thought they have. And another thought they have is they almost feel like it's cheating. Like, almost like, no, need to do this myself because that's just cheating. Can you speak to either one of those or both of those ideas when it comes to these things?

Well, I'm just a biohacker at heart, and so I'm, I'm somebody who's like, you know, whatever shortcuts you've got, like, it depends on the, the risks versus the benefits for that particular situation, right? Like, for example, if you're using a GLP-1 medication to lose weight and you're, you know, you've been 300 pounds for X amount of years and you've done everything that you could Even if you couldn't just do the diet and exercise, there was a reason why you just couldn't do it, right? I think a lot of people get shamed in that way. Well, this has just been worth it to people to be able to have their life back, to be able to feel good in their skin. So that's one example of like, I'm all for a shortcut.

I'm all for a shortcut. Yeah, if we can make it easier.

Yes.

Let's make it easier.

Well, and I was thinking about you when we were preparing for this video, and one of my favorite things that you've ever said is there's no bad way to quit an addiction, right?

Right. There's no bad reason and no bad way.

Yeah. So this is just if you're somebody who's at your wit's end, you know, I probably would have tried this back in the day if I understood that it could help me quit the addiction. Because I had tried a lot of things and I was pretty desperate at the end. So I definitely would have jumped on this train if it meant getting my life back.

So you wouldn't consider it cheating?

I don't care if it's cheating.

I don't care if it's cheating. I don't consider cheating like with the peptides or even some of the other medications because I'm like, to me, when you're doing everything you can to conquer a problem, that's the opposite of cheating. That's— I'm serious. I'm willing. I'm going to do whatever it takes to conquer this problem. Right. So I see it as the opposite of cheating. I see it as going all in because it's not like they just take a medicine, that's the only thing they do, right? There's other things that have to come into play, but I definitely don't see it as cheating. What about the addiction potential? Is it possible that someone's going to replace being addicted to alcohol with now being addicted to GLP? Like, how does that work?

That makes me think of like, I do a lot of men's hormone therapy. That makes me think of when men ask me, you know, once I get on TRT, am I ever going to be able to come off? And the answer to that is very similar to the answer to this. Like, imagine your life as it is now. If this is something that you're seriously considering to get you from point A to point B, and if point B is so much better because of the help, you might not want to come off of it, to be honest. And that's not to say that you're going to be on GLP-1s indefinitely for the rest of your life, no matter what, if you try them for this reason. I have a lot of people who tried them for For weight, obviously, and and they did come off. It doesn't happen with everybody, but it's a possibility. You work with your provider, you think it through, and you do it strategically. But if you do end up on it forever, I mean, you know, if I were to go back personally, if I could be gambling, I was gambling like thirty thousand dollars a month. Would I rather have that life, or would I rather take a GLP once a week for the rest of my life and and not have that anymore?

So in my mind. From the addiction perspective, it's the difference between being dependent and being addicted. And a lot of people think that that's what being addicted is, is being dependent on something. Because we think about somebody who like can't quit smoking or can't quit drinking, or they get sick or they go into withdrawal, right? That is definitely a component of addiction. But addiction is about obsession.

Hmm.

And the difference in like this kind of medication and some of the other ones that are out there that help with addictive things is you don't have an obsession. Like you're not going to want to take more and more and more and more. You're not going to start planning your life around it. It's not going to escalate on you. So you might get dependent on it, especially like if you're using GLP-1 to lose weight or keep weight off or whatever, as in your body needs that to maintain. But I don't see that people are going to need more and more and more, get obsessive about it, start ruining their life over it. It's just a different mechanism.

Right. And I mean, there's also like the side effects and the risks that go with it, and everybody needs to be aware of those before they try anything, obviously. But that's why it's best to do it with a doctor who Who knows what they're talking about? Who knows how to help you with that?

There's actually different ones of them. Should we go into that?

So it's interesting because semaglutide is the pure GLP-1, and they just came out with Foundeo, which is a pure GLP-1 small molecule. So it's not actually a peptide, but it does the same thing. Tirzepatide is GLP-1 mixed with GIP receptor agonism. That's amazing because people tended to have less side effects on that drug. I love that medication. I think it's better overall for most people, not everybody, but it also has less GLP-1 in it. So it's just interesting to think about that.

So it's basically like the semaglutide plus some other things that help to ward off some of the side effects. Okay.

But it still works. And I've still seen people on tirzepatide lose interest in alcohol, for instance. Now, retatrutide is a new drug that Eli Lilly is coming out with. It's not FDA approved, but people are using it all over the place. They're just getting their hands on it. And you'll see forums and people— you'll hear people talking about it, and they're literally asking the question, okay, Who's had experience quitting drinking on redadutide? And people are definitely resonating with it. It doesn't just increase satiety, so that's one way that it's helping with addiction, but it also downregulates dopamine activation when you see something that you're addicted to. So they've demonstrated that, I think, in rat studies. For instance, if you're addicted to alcohol and you see a beer, you just don't want it as much. And that's why the dopamine, that desire to get that or have that thing, is downregulated. And then the third thing that we're noticing is that GLP-1 receptor agonism in the prefrontal cortex here, which is our maturity area, right? It's what develops last.

Mm-hmm.

And that's why, you know, kids have less inhibition, right? So as we get older, the more inhibition we have, the more ability to make good decisions we have.

So we're realizing that GLP-1 So downregulates the big dopamine spikes and upregulates the thinking part of your brain, like the judgment, the reasoning, that kind of thing. That's super interesting because most people think dopamine is a feel-good chemical, but it's actually a desire chemical. The dopamine spikes actually come just before you engage in the substance behavior, whatever it is that you have trouble with.

And so if you can downregulate that, you're stopping addiction before it's like, you know, you're stopping the person from getting the thing or from wanting.

Right. And dopamine is such a tricky thing because it builds that sort of tension, that wanting, that excitement. But then it's— I always say it's always about the wanting and not the having, because then when you have whatever that thing is, it's not nearly as fabulous as your brain thought it would be. It's like a letdown. And so it's always about the wanting. But the wanting stays in place when it comes to it.

When you're treating people with addiction, or when you're helping people with addiction, do you think that you get more people who would rather kind of white-knuckle through it, or would they be more willing to take a shortcut?

I think even the people that I talk to that don't want to take a shortcut, usually it's because they think they're going to replace one drug with another. So after I talk to them, most people, if there's a— if there's something out there that can help, I'm like, Let's do this. It's not— it's going to be difficult no matter what. It doesn't make you any more recovered to do it the more difficult way, as far as I'm concerned.

Well, do you think that if somebody's timeline to recovery was shortened, does it make any difference? Is the timeline important?

I almost feel like you're asking, do people need a period of suffering? I don't think so, personally. I have heard this. This would be my only caveat here. I have heard people say, especially about like opioid detox and stuff, that sometimes it's good for them to have to go through that because if it's too easy to Then it's easy to relapse because then you're in the back of your head, it's like, I just go back to detox. I know it's crazy thinking, but addiction is crazy, people. That's specifically for detox and not necessarily for recovery.

Yeah, well, that's interesting because we've— I've got some things to say about that, you know, some kind of tricks, uh, in the peptide space that we could use for that specifically. So it would be interesting if you took that part away with the recovery stick?

I think it's about whether you want the recovery to stick. And I would say that with any medication out there that can help with addiction— and there are different medications, but each one of the ones I know of really target one, maybe two substances. We don't have anything until now that targets all of the substances. Any of this stuff only works if you want it to work. You have to work with it. It's not just magically going to fix it.

Yeah.

Well, I don't know. In some of the studies, when you're saying people that were taking them for a diet magically stopped I don't know if those people would have already been having an alcohol problem or they just drank socially or normally and then just had less want for it. But the thing of it is, is when your brain gets hardwired that this is where your pleasure comes from, even if it's not as exciting, if you don't want addiction to be better, you just try to override that. Like, for example, there's a medicine called naltrexone that people take to help with alcohol cravings. And the ones that are working with it, they want it to work. It works really well. But some people, because it makes It makes drinking, like I say, slightly less fun, which means you don't have that urge to keep binge drinking. Well, some people will be like, this isn't working, I just need to try harder. That's what I mean when I say you have to work with it. Like, they're purposely trying to override it.

Yeah. And so speaking of, because you're talking about people going through detox and sometimes they want to go through that, or they think that that was useful for them, or otherwise they would have come back. But interestingly, we do have peptides now. So something very big just happened in my world, the peptide world, where on April 15th, the FDA decided to pull 11 peptides from the banned list, or the do not compound list, meaning peptides have been in this underground space. They call it the Wild Wild West, basically, because people have been buying peptides on research websites for a long time and putting them into their own body, even though the vials that, you know, they come in say not for human consumption. I just noticed people were doing it anyway, and so I felt this like big responsibility to be like, okay, I see what you're doing, and I'm just gonna at know as much as possible about these things so people can at least—

And make sure you— and make sure the people know what they're doing to some degree, right?

Yeah, know what you're doing and know the risks. And, um, but the problem with it is that I got, I got really hooked on peptides because the fascination and the possibilities and the things that I've been seeing in people, just like the benefits are outweighing the safety concerns in my opinion. That's just my opinion. It's very—

A game changer.

And so the FDA is lifting 11 peptides from this do not compound category and they're reevaluating them right now. So it doesn't mean that they're a free for all yet. What it means is they're reevaluating them. They're looking at each peptide that they chose for specific indications that will allow pharmacies to compound them. Compound pharmacies only, not your Walgreens or your CVS. But there is a peptide specifically on this list. It's called delta sleep-inducing peptide, or DSIP. Now, if you look at the research on this peptide, it's really a sleep peptide. It's really something that helps, uh, your delta or your deep So people get better, deeper sleep when they use it. And it's not the best at doing that, but that's what most of the research on it is for. However, there are 2 studies that I know of in humans back in the '80s where they gave people withdrawing from opioids DSIP. And what it did is it took a cortisol overreaction from people withdrawing from opioids, took it from here down to here. And so it helped with the symptoms from withdrawal. And so the FDA is reevaluating it You mean we had this in the '80s? Yeah.

Okay. And we're just now figuring out that we might need it.

Okay. Yeah. A lot of these have been around for a while, mostly since like the '70s and '80s.

So just in an experience kind of way, what would increased cortisol feel like if you're in opioid withdrawal? So what you're saying is if you're in opioid withdrawal, a lot of things get out of whack. One of the things that gets out of whack is your cortisol goes up.

Yeah.

And so this helps it to not go crazy. What does that mean on an experience level? Like, how's it going to make you feel different?

Upregulated cortisol is a big deal because it makes you feel crazy. It makes you feel jittery and stressed out. Like, cortisol is our stress hormone, so when it increases, we feel stressed. So when cortisol is really high, we have to be able to do something with it. We have to be able to use it. And generally, in the prehistoric times, we would exercise or we would have elevated cortisol because something was coming after us, like a tiger was running after us, our cortisol would spike, which would dump sugar into our bloodstream, which would allow us to run from that, to run or fight against that threat. But these days, and if you want to relate it specifically to something like opioid withdrawal, if you have a maximum amount of cortisol going up because you're feeling threatened and you don't have the ability to use that or metabolize that cortisol, you up dumping a whole bunch of sugar into your bloodstream. It's bad for you. You end up inflamed. You actually end up downregulating your cortisol response if it's held up there chronically. And then what happens is your immune system overreacts and you get chronic inflammation, and it's a whole thing. But it feels like, I don't know what to do with myself, basically.

Yeah, when you're describing it, the word that's coming to my mind is urgency. It creates a sense of urgency, which I could imagine only contributes to urgency of, I need to go get this drug. Because not only do you feel physically sick in some other ways because there's other things that happen in opioid withdrawal. But the cortisol piece of it is like, like, I gotta go. Like, I can't stand this because you're literally like in fight or flight because that's what's happening. So it's bringing that urgency down.

Yeah. And I remember specifically, like, when I came off of gambling in the early days, I remember going home from work and feeling so spent, right? And I would message you and ask you, like, what is happening to me right now? Like, why do I feel like I worked worked a 12-hour shift at a hospital or something like that, and you're like, this is normal. And I'm like, what? You know? And I don't know if that was cortisol or if that was like neurons rewiring and that was just taxing on the brain. I don't know if you could speak to that.

I mean, I personally think it's because you're using a lot more willpower, because not only are you going through your regular day doing your regular stuff, but you're using willpower all day as you do that. Like, you're having to be mindful about not doing this. You know, there's this don't do it, don't do it, don't do it thing happening And so that I think is expending a lot of energy. Plus, I also feel like whenever you do something new and you change your patterns or routines, like let's say you've been out of school for the summer and now you're back in school in the fall, or if you start a new job, it makes you more exhausted. And maybe you're not doing physically more in that job, but the newness of it, I think, eats through all of our little ATP molecules, all of our willpower. I call it gas in the gas tank. So you do end up a lot more exhausted.

Just experiencing it firsthand, it's true exhaustion, right? Like, just like lay down on the couch for 2 hours. I don't know what to do with myself. Interestingly, there are actually some peptides that have to do with the process of when you start something new. Take that, for example, when you just quit something and you're starting something different. So we talk a lot about neuroplasticity, right? And how that plays into recovery from addiction, right? You have to rewire the pathways in your brain that are used to going from A to B. Well, now they need to go A to C. Like, we need to reroute, we need to take a new highway to work. And there are actually some peptides out there that are being evaluated for increasing neuroplasticity. Dihexa is one of those, and I'm actually surprised to see this peptide coming off of the banned list, but they're, they're reevaluating it for that specifically, for its ability to forge new synaptic connections is literally what they're looking at that for.

What you're saying, it kind of goes into that category of helping your brain heal. In my mind, there's the helping the wanting part, helping needing part, like the physical withdrawal part, and then helping you to sort of move back into balance or, you know, create these new neuropathways and habits, the kind of thing you're talking about.

And I don't know if anybody's ever done any research on this, but I think they should, you know, using things like dihexa and another peptide, Semax. Um, there's another peptide called Selinc, and all of these upregulate neuroplasticity. One does it by increasing something called brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Dihexa—

What does that mean? That sounds advanced.

So brain-derived neurotrophic factor is something that is upregulated when you're learning something new, and so your brain uses it to create those neural pathways. We have peptides that upregulate BDNF, and we have this other one, dihexa, which has been shown to be up to a million times more potent than BDNF. And I'm particularly passionate about neuroplasticity because of my recovery journey. Like, I only have a successful YouTube channel because Because of this, because I learned early on, just kind of based on watching videos that you've done and talking to you about the fact that you can literally rewire your brain. And so when I thought about that objectively, like, I had a gambling habit and I wanted to go gamble anytime that I was overwhelmed or feeling kind of like helpless, right? I had just quit a job and I had started a new business all at the same time. And so that was happening to me all the time when I had just freshly quit gambling.

You were making all new neuropathways. You So when you just stopped this addiction, like, everything in your life almost changed, like, all at one time.

All at one time. And coincidentally, I had just started a YouTube channel, and I caught the bug. Like, I liked it. I liked making content. And so what I chose to do was every time I had a gambling craving, I would make content. I think at this point, we're over a year into me making content. Like, it is so driven into me to make content, but also to really make it— like, make more when I'm feeling overwhelmed. And, you know, I was just talking to to you about this recently. Like, I had a period recently where I was feeling really overwhelmed, and I wasn't thinking that my YouTube content was that good. And then I was having gambling cravings, and you told me, like, you just let the thing that has been giving you all this pride and giving you what you needed— you, you let it slip, and YouTube wasn't giving you that anymore, so you started thinking about gambling. And I was like, oh my gosh. So then I had another period of overwhelm, and that time, just knowing what you said to me that really resonated, I leaned into content, and I had the week on YouTube I've ever had last week because of that.

That's so exciting. And to me, I'm always telling people, if you are a person that tends to get addicted, I don't think that your brain is broken. I think that's the way you're wired. And a lot of, I think, addiction professionals would tell you you need balance in your life. I tell people you just need to direct that into something that makes you feel good because I don't really— people that have addictions, they're not balanced people. And I don't know that they should be balanced, but, but that I call it your obsessive You got to put your obsessor to good use, your superpower for the good. And I love that. That's— your story is a perfect example.

It is the example of what you, what you teach all day long. And, and, and when I heard you say that over and over again, I believed it. And it is, it is me to a T. And it's, it's interesting, right? Like, addicts have a lot of stigma around them for having an addiction. And yeah, I'm embarrassed of what happened to me But, but man, like knowing what goes on up here and knowing that it's— that I just got caught up in addiction, right? Like it, it just took that part that was always in me. It took over for a while. But once we got out of it and I redirected that part of me into something good, I mean, right, endless possibilities.

For you, even, even watching you talk about these peptides or talk about your YouTube channel, you guys can see, those of you that are watching this and not just listening, you can see Ashley's face. She gets lit up. Right? You can see the little dopamine raining down just in your face, like you can see them. And I think it's about for you specifically, it's about you like to learn something new, and you want to understand something, and you want to conquer something, right? And so that you can see that same mechanism that was in the gambling zone, which was about can I beat this system, right? Can I learn this system? Can I beat this system? And now it's Like, can I learn these peptides? Can I learn the YouTube algorithm? And so it's the same mechanism, just pointed different.

Exactly. It's the same exact thing.

Yeah, it's just pointed differently. And YouTube was perfect because it's about numbers, which gambling's about. It's about like understanding how this thing works. And you, you have like mastered it quickly, very quickly.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's— I mean, and I would have never known that, you know. I don't think I would have been as good at it had I not not gone through the gambling, you know, gone through the addiction piece. And I'm not saying like, I, you know, yeah, that's— it's a hard thing to talk about. Like, you know, if I would have never gambled, would I have been as good at YouTube? I really don't think so. It's so— it's just interesting to know that. But it's good to, to learn about yourself and like your superpowers, which is, I think, you know, that's, that's all you do is teach people their superpowers, which is just amazing.

I do think it's, um, it's kind of— I don't know if I'm gonna say I'm glad that happened to me, right?

But I am gonna say something good Out of it.

That's sort of the way I hear it.

We didn't really talk about sleep at all, but I wanted to throw— I wanted to throw sleep peptides in here because—

No, I think it's important.

Yeah, I mean, I'm a traditionally trained doctor, and so we've got medications for sleep, and I'm sure almost any addict who's been in rehab has been prescribed sleep medications. I don't know that for sure.

I used to work in detox, and I can pretty much tell you everyone is on something for sleep because no matter what you're coming off of, you're going to have sleep Yeah, and not everybody wants to be taking sleep medications.

And the problem with a lot of the meds are that they make you really groggy.

Yeah.

Some people will lean on Benadryl or Unisom to sleep, but they mess with your brain a little bit. So like, I used to use Unisom for years, and I would— I wondered why for like 2 years why I was so groggy all the time. Um, and then I started taking Benadryl, and then I have a pretty strong family history of Alzheimer's dementia, and they've linked chronic Benadryl use to Alzheimer's dementia, so I can't do that anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A lot of people A lot of people don't like the sleep medicines because you feel— I don't know, the way I describe it is like you're under this weird gray cloud all day. Like you're pushing through or something weird is the way I describe it. But a lot of the sleep medicines are addictive. So I'm always watching that carefully from my end because there are some, it's like, okay, let's look at these. And then there are others where I'm like, I don't think so.

Same here. And it's hard because when you think about prescribing somebody Ambien, you have to have this long discussion about like, okay, do you really want this? Because there, there are some things that can happen here, and, um, it's just better to take different routes if possible. Yeah, but most men—

it's dangerous whether or not you're an addict or not.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Some things too. Yeah, yeah.

Most people don't want medications, period, you know. And peptides are— you could consider them medications, but a lot of them are just shortcuts to amplify your biology. That's kind of the best way that I like to explain them. And really what they are, because we never explained them in the beginning, really what peptides are are chains of amino acids hooked together. Usually it's less than 50 amino acids hooked together. Amino acids are what make up protein. Anything 50 or more amino acids kind of clumped together and folded in different ways, that's a protein. So, you know, we eat protein all day long, so you can understand that. But peptides are short chains of these amino acids that hit receptors in the body, then allow the body to do something it was already primed to do. So that's how peptides work, and that's what they are. But, you know, if you could use a peptide to amplify the hormones that help you sleep— if you're going through withdrawal from an addiction or really anything hard in life and you're not sleeping, if your cortisol is really high and you're not sleeping right— if you could use a peptide to amplify your deep sleep, that's a big deal. Because not only is deep sleep good for you, but people need to understand that It's, it's what physically recovers you, body and your brain, which is a big—

And so if you're in early recovery and you're not getting sleep, which sleep disturbance is a withdrawal symptom from all the different things, you're not starting your day with a full willpower tank. And let me tell you what, you need a full willpower tank because you're running through it like crazy when you're early and you're building these new habits and neural pathways. That's why you're so exhausted. You need that tank full. I have a friend who got sober back in the '80s, and his sponsor would always say, lack of sleep never killed anybody. So he would always tell him like, no, you're fine, who cares? But I say, yeah, it might not kill you, but it might relapse you. So let's deal with it. Let's address this.

Yeah, it's a big deal. I mean, sleep is one of those things that it's like the bane of my existence as a physician, to be honest. Like, when somebody can't sleep and I can't help them sleep, it is the worst because they just drag and they hurt, you know, they're not recovering. So one of the things that I think is really important for people who can't sleep. It's like, first of all, they need to track their sleep. They need to make sure they don't have sleep apnea. But at that point, if you are tracking your sleep, this is just a biohack. This is like a tool, life hack, right? So like, if you're tracking your sleep, like I have an Oura Ring on right now and this tracks my sleep and I can tell how many minutes of deep sleep I get every night. Well, I've used the peptide sermorelin. When I don't use the peptide sermorelin and I've had kind of like a lot of, uh, you know, physical activity is getting the best of me or I'm really stressed out, I tend to get around 50 minutes of deep sleep on average.

How many How many minutes do you need? So we have a comparison, what are you supposed to get?

I prefer people to get over an hour regularly. Yeah, because that is when you physically recover brain and body. But when I take Sermorelin, my deep sleep goes from on average 45-50 minutes to an hour and 50 minutes.

Dang, that's like more than double. Wow.

Yeah, and I feel great, you know what I mean? And so you can go on my channel and look up the benefits of growth hormone mimetic peptides, which is what Sermorelin is, and there are pros and cons it, they're mostly theoretical cons, honestly, because we haven't proven that it does anything bad. But the pros to getting good sleep, which is the first thing that people on Sermorelin tend to tell me about—

Even for me, who's always struggled with like food and stuff, if I don't get sleep, I crave sugar immediately all day. And so it's almost like my body's trying to compensate because the gas tank didn't get—

That's exactly right. That's what you're doing. That's what your brain and your body are doing, is when it feels depleted, it tries to get energy and some Some people try to get that energy from sugar. They used to stock our residency room with donuts and we would just eat donuts all night long because we're so tired.

Yeah. The sleep that— it's called DSIP, right? Okay. So the DSIP helps with the cortisol and it helps with the sleep. And I think what you were saying was there's some studies specifically about opioid withdrawal, but it would make sense that even though they've only studied it with opioid withdrawal and sleeping D-SIP is important in all addiction withdrawal and it's always impacted. There's probably crossover.

Oh yeah. And I'm not going to say D-SIP is like the main thing. It's just one of the peptides that's getting a lot of attention right now because it got pulled from the banned list. But like, I mean, if you want to go from like top to bottom, like we've covered a lot, but GLP peptides, there's semaglutide, there's tirzepatide. They're coming out with retatrutide. They have an oral semaglutide now version. Then there's peptides for regulating cortisol, anxiety cortisol. So there's DSIP peptide, but then there's Selinc, which helps people manage cortisol and anxiety. And then there's C-Max, which also helps regulate cortisol. There are also peptides.

You guys, look at how excited Ashley's face looks. This is what dopamine looks like, you guys.

I can just go on and on.

I love it. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I just want people to see that. Like, this is it, right?

Yeah, I found my thing. But I mean, come on, who can't get excited about that could potentially, you know, change people's lives. I could go on and on and on. So like neuroplasticity peptides, iHexa, Semax, and then sleep peptides. Let's talk about the growth hormone peptides. Let's talk about DSIP. They're also pulling off 2 other peptides that might help with sleep called pinealon and epithalin. And so the world of peptides is quite amazing. There's not as much downside as we're seeing with some of the traditional medications. And I think addiction— nobody's talking about peptides and addiction right now until this GLP study came out, but it's Yeah, that's the exciting thing is there seems to be a lot less side effects or downsides as compared to traditional old school medications.

Why is that?

I think it's because peptides, again, are just chains of amino acids that enter the body and then they hit receptors and get broken down and metabolized out. A lot of medications are— I like to call it jimmy rigged, right? Like they're designed to stay in the body for X amount of time and they've got to be absorbed in a certain way. Got a lot of additives in them. And a lot of the medications that are out on the market, they do things and they're trying to downregulate things, or they're trying to stop the body from certain processes. They're trying to stop you making cholesterol, and then we have all these downstream effects from that. Like, people are like so anti, like, statin medication now because of that. But there, there are just so many medications with side effects. And peptides, I'm not saying they don't have side effects, they do. For like Melanotan 2, that's— this is another peptide that we didn't talk about today. Uh, Melanotan 2 increases your melanin production And we're seeing a lot of people— well, I think we're seeing a lot of people come down with melanoma after using that peptide. And so there are things that you have to be aware of with each and every peptide. This is why the Wild West of peptides is coming. They're trying to get everything back into prescribers' hands so that we can learn the risks and the safety concerns and be able to pass those on to people versus people just purchasing peptides on the internet and using them willy-nilly.

So like the difference in street drugs and— yeah, yeah, because there's just more danger. involved, especially when you're figuring it out yourself, right? And you just don't have all that training. If people are interested in these kind of things, which ones of these are available now and where can they get them?

Well, the GLPs are available, right? So yeah, you have to have a prescription for semaglutide, tirzepatide. Like I said, sarmoraline, that's one I personally use, and that's because it is compoundable right now. It's— it was never banned from prescribing. A lot of the other ones So what it is, is it's a growth hormone releasing hormone analog, which basically just says that if you take it at night, your pituitary will get prompted to pulse out more growth hormone than it was doing already.

Okay.

And that's growth hormone.

What does growth hormone do?

It's a recovery hormone. And so it basically tells the liver to make something called IGF-1, or insulin-like growth factor 1, and it allows for recovery of muscle and all connective tissue. It basically allows you to recover faster. to recover physically better. It also helps mobilize fatty acids for oxidation or use. A lot of people get a little bit leaner when they're using these peptides like Sermorelin.

GLPs you can get, they're prescription. The Sermorelin, is, is that a— that's a prescription too?

Yes, it's, uh, it's not something that you'll be able to get your insurance to approve. But if, again, if you can find doctors or practitioners who are a little bit outside the box, maybe they don't practice in the insurance world, that's kind of my thing. Then you can get it.

And aren't there, there's some of these things that you can just order like you would a supplement or something like that. Is that right?

You can, but you're not supposed to.

Oh, you can, but you're not supposed to.

Yeah.

You can't tell us the secret for that 'cause you're not allowed to.

Right, yeah.

Okay.

But this is like, this is why now is the time to talk about it though, because again, the FDA pulled several of these, actually all, I think all of the ones that I talked about today got pulled from the do not compound list. And so very soon they're gonna be prescribable again.

Okay, so if you can't get it right now, the ones you talked about, You're going to be able to in the very near future. All right, good deal. And where can people find more about all this peptide stuff?

I'm not tooting my own horn here, but probably one of the best resources right now is my YouTube channel, which is This Is Not Covered, Dr. Ashley Frazee. I just have video on video about peptides, and a lot of it's, you know, based on research. This is what we see. And so I can't really say like, hey, everybody's doing this and you can do this too, but if If you want to learn about peptides, it's a good resource.

Well, I'll toot your horn. You guys go over to This Is Not Covered, the YouTube channel, listen to Dr. Frazee, nerd out. Because even if you're not struggling with addiction, this is just biohacking stuff, right? That you can use just to have what? Better, a better life in general. Like you can function better. It's going to help you in a lot of different ways. And there are a lot of them out. So you got to go over there, check out her videos so you can get ahead of the game. When these things come out, you're going to be ready.

Yeah.

Okay, and if you want to watch Dr. Frazee's full addiction recovery story, I'm gonna link it up here for you. So all you have to do is click the link. I'll put it in the description as well, and you can hear all about the journey.

I was only 6 months in recovery, and I remember saying in the video that, hey, I just like, I just hit 1,000 subscribers on YouTube. I just hit 6 months of sobriety. Yeah.

Yeah, and now we're 1 year sobriety, and how many subscribers do you have?

I have over 150,000.

You guys, I want y'all to know how amazing that is. 150,000. That's why addiction, obsessing, thinking, it is a superpower. You just need to use it for the good. You know how long it took me to get 1,000 subscribers and 100,000? A lot, lot longer than that. So I love that you're using your energy to help so many people and that you get so excited about it and it gives you a sense of passion.

I could have done it on my own, but the fact that you do what you do, I mean, I can't say say enough good things because, because you cheerleaded me along the entire way, right? So I think the power of, you know, we're talking biohacking today and peptides, but like the power of having somebody in your corner and that connection piece and all of that.