A Drug For Everything
What if there was a drug that cured all your bad appetites?
Hey everyone - with the Memorial Day Holiday weekend here, I am taking a small break from writing and am revisiting this article in the meantime. In the time since this article was written, the use of weight loss drugs have become even more prevalent - perhaps ubiquitous. Do these drugs transform? In what way? (And will they lead to the zombie apocalypse?)
Paul Ford asks below, after his appetite dramatically waned on these drugs, an appetite that had plagued him his entire life - “Is this who I am?” It isn’t a bad question, one we should all ask.
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Paul Ford is a writer and software engineer who has written about his struggle against his appetite. He described how, a decade or so ago, he lost 100 pounds.
I did it in my web-nerd way—by building a custom content management system using the Django framework in the Python programming language. Every day I would enter calories ingested, calories expended through exercise, my weight, and whatever thoughts occurred to me. It became a job. I produced charts and compared the results of different kinds of exercise. I put it all online at OHLIH.com, which stood for One Huge Lesson in Humility.
It worked very well. For the first time in my life my doctor seemed glad to see me. People noticed. They said: Are you going to open-source this? Sure I was! Of course, I knew that scientists had found, in study after study, that basically everyone who loses weight gains it back, and then some. But there was no chance I would eat my way back to misery. I had a system! And a PostgreSQL database! And I could buy pants in a normal department store! Guess what happened.
You know what happened, he gained all the weight back. Almost a decade later he found himself in a virtual meeting with his doctor, reviewing his course of care. He had been taking Ozempic to help treat his type 2 diabetes. Although that drug is often now used for weight loss, it didn’t slow down Paul Ford’s appetite.
“Well,” my doctor said, “if you’re not losing weight with Ozempic, try Mounjaro.” This one was FDA-approved last May, with an atrocious name. So off I went, from one shot to the other, from Novo Nordisk to Eli Lilly. Whatever.
And his appetite reduced dramatically. And, with it, his weight. He suddenly had to adjust to being a very different person. The daily and nightly “defeats” (in his description) were gone. But this new found victory was disorienting.
I have been the living embodiment of the deadly sin of gluttony, judged as greedy and weak since I was 10 years old—and now the sin is washed away. Baptism by injection. But I have no more virtue than I did a few months ago. I just prefer broccoli to gloopy chicken. Is this who I am?
It is a good question. Who am I without my defeats, my struggles, my brokenness? At some point in God’s providence, by the work of Christ, and in the power of the Spirit, I will find out. But that point still seems quite far off. I can relate to Mr. Ford even though the circumstances of our lives are fairly different. My brokenness is less visible, especially to those not close to me. That relative invisibility allows me to ignore my vices or pretend they aren’t there - but, if I am honest, I know there is a struggle that I am not always winning.
Paul Ford was probably right when he described a genetic predisposition that would have hastened his death without some intervention. And I want to emphasize that I am not calling his inability to moderate his eating “sin” - at least not in the way that word is commonly used. He refers to it that way, but I am including it in a more general category for my thoughts here - brokenness. Which is just things not being the way they should be. Which is something we all share, although each of us exhibits it in our own unique ways. My Christian faith leads me to believe that my brokenness is more than a genetic disorder. It is a spiritual one. And my struggle against it includes surrender, worship, devotion, prayer, community, service, generosity, and other spiritual practices in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the only remediation. The cure comes only after this part of the story is over.
And … good?
Paul Ford struggled to find himself after his appetite changed dramatically. His life changed not only because his appearance changed and his health improved. In many ways, he defined himself through his appetites, or, more accurately, through his unsuccessful struggle against them. Would I know who I am, on this side of eternity, without my struggle?
For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.
(Romans 7:18b-19)
The struggle, such as it is (often there isn’t enough of it), is part of the process by which the Spirit works His remediation. It is the Spirit that does it - I cooperate through the struggle of spiritual practices and actions. And through experiencing failure in the spiritual practices and actions. Perceived (or delusional) success tends toward independence, dependence (and interdependence) comes from failure.
OK - but some of you are not Christians, or some of you are but don’t share the perspective I have just related. Isn’t it still, to some extent, true that struggling against our deficiencies is (or, arguably should be) a part of who we are? Enough of a part that taking away your struggle against pride or anger or lust or selfishness is taking away enough of your experience as to be disorienting? Isn’t it still, to some extent, true that this struggle produces good fruit? Doesn’t it produce good fruit that you can’t really have any other way? Humility, to pick one example, is based in an accurate view of your weaknesses, vices, and shortcomings. If you weren’t aware of these, with an awareness only gained through the only sporadically successful struggle against them, could you really have humility? I doubt it. No offense. Instead of humility, we might have that thing that is worse than pride - a fake humility that everyone knows you don’t really believe.
A number of years ago, a young man who worked for me briefly, sat before me in what appeared to be a state of genuine humility and contrition. He had made a number of fairly large errors in judgment - knowingly, trying to get away with something he shouldn’t have attempted - that had cost us a lot of time, effort, energy, and money. His mistakes were apparent to him and everyone who worked with him. He told me then that he was humiliated. Part of my reply was “don’t waste it.” Humiliation, defeat, public embarrassment isn’t a good thing. But it can bring good fruit in a way nothing else can. Unless we waste it.
… don’t waste it …
There is no drug for what ails me. Probably, very probably, there isn’t one for you either. Good? Good. Let’s not waste it.
Links
A New Drug Switched Off My Appetite - What’s Next? - Wired
