For nearly ten years, Julie Lord’s nights slipped into a familiar ritual: one glass of Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc, which almost always became the entire bottle.
Life had not always revolved around wine. Julie, 56, from Leeds, built a successful and well-paid career in the pharmaceutical sector, and says her demanding job left little room for regular drinking.
That changed after she opted for early retirement in 2017. With more free time, alcohol gradually became part of her everyday routine — and proved difficult to shake.
It was only after she began taking medication for an unrelated medical issue that Julie noticed something unexpected: she could finally start reducing how much she drank.
‘Everybody knew I liked a drink,’ she says. ‘I drank because it felt enjoyable. I could always find an excuse to open a bottle — friends coming round, sitting out in the garden, enjoying the sunshine. Then suddenly, the bottle would be gone.’
Julie says she did not initially view her drinking as dangerous. She had no major health problems, remained active, loved hiking in the mountains and considered herself ‘super healthy’.
Her GP, however, saw things differently, telling her she was consuming alcohol at a harmful level and recommending support groups that could help her cut back.
For nearly a decade, Julie Lord’s evenings followed the same routine: a glass of Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc that almost always turned into a full bottle
The NHS recommends drinking no more than 14 units of alcohol every week – roughly six medium glasses of white wine.
Regularly drinking more than this, research shows, can raise the risk of liver disease, heart problems, and even cancer.
But Julie was drinking around 70 units a week. Nevertheless, she was resistant to seeking help.
‘I didn’t want go to support group and talk about my problems,’ she says. ‘I didn’t drink because I had issues or was sad – I drink because I am happy and the binges happen when I’m having too much fun.’
Julie did try multiple times to cut back on her consumption. She tried waiting until the evening before opening a bottle. She even gave zero-alcohol wine a go.
However, she says she would always slip back into her old routine.
‘But I’d talk myself out of it. I’d think, “You’re going to die anyway – you might as well enjoy life.” I didn’t have any health issues so I assumed it wasn’t really a problem.’
Then the solution to Julie’s drinking came out of nowhere.
The NHS recommends drinking no more than 14 units of alcohol every week. But Julie was drinking around 70 units a week
Standing 5ft 4in and weighing around 12 stone, Julie had put on weight during the menopause and wanted to shed a couple of stone before it crept further.
After a friend recommended it, she paid £53 for a month’s supply of the weight-loss drug Wegovy and began the weekly injections in May 2026.
The jab, also known as semaglutide, has been shown in studies to cut weight by as much as 15 per cent.
Like the other revolutionary weight-loss jab Mounjaro, suppresses appetite by releasing artifical hormones that convince the body it is full.
More than 2.5 million Britons are now paying for weight-loss drugs and, in the past two months, two weight-loss pills, the Wegovy pill and Foundayo, have become available in the UK.
What happened next surprised Julie. Within a week of taking Wegovy, her long-standing urge for wine had all but vanished.
“I could not believe it,’ she says. ‘It virtually stopped me drinking within a week. It was a miracle. I literally just stopped. I can’t explain it. I stopped craving it, I stopped wanting it, I stopped buying it. I just didn’t feel the need anymore.
‘The first week I had a couple of glasses just because the bottle was open and I finished it. Then I stopped buying wine. I realised I was drinking for the sake of it before. The cravings just all went.’
Within a week of taking Wegovy, Julie’s long-standing urge for wine had all but vanished
Her bottle-a-day habit fell to barely half a glass, she says, and the ritual that once shaped her evenings disappeared with it.
‘Before Wegovy I’d be thinking about what I was doing later because it meant I could have a glass of wine,’ she says. Instead, she began meeting friends for coffee rather than wine, and was able to drive herself home in the evenings.
The change also spared her the roughly £70 a week she had been spending on Sauvignon Blanc.
Experts say that Julie is far from alone in this experience. There is growing evidence that weight-loss drugs can help cut alcohol cravings.
In May, the same month Julie began taking Wegovy, a landmark study was published in the esteemed Lancet medical journal looking at the impact Wegovy has on alcohol consumption.
The Danish study found that Wegovy patients had 40 per cent fewer heavy drinking days than those not on the jabs. These patients also saw their alcohol intake fall by around 70 per cent.
Studies have suggested that weight-loss jabs may have a similar effect on other pleasure-seeking behaviours like smoking, gambling and even shopping.
Many experts believe that the injections have the unintended consequence of suppressing the production of dopamine – the feel-good chemical the brain produces in response to pleasurable experiences.
‘Our brains produce dopamine in response to anything that brings us pleasure, whether that’s food, alcohol, cigarettes, socialising or sex,’ says Dr Alexis Bailey, a neuropharmacologist at City St George’s university in London.
‘The leading theory is that the injections helps dampen these dopamine surges that addicts experience.’
However, despite this surprising positive effect, Julie found that Wegovy did not have the impact she had initially hoped for: She lost less weight than she had expected.
After two months on the medication, Julie had shed only around half a stone – not enough, she felt, to justify the cost of continuing. So she stopped taking it.
However, within six weeks of giving it up, the alcohol cravings crept back, and so did the wine.
Julie found herself back on a bottle a day, though she says it took her several hours to get through it rather than a single sitting.
Determined not to lose the progress she’d made, Julie restarted Wegovy last week – this time with her drinking, rather than her weight, as the target. She says she can already feel the difference returning, with her desire to reach for a glass fading again just days in.
This time, Julie says, she intends to stay on it for the long term.
‘I love having fun and living my best life,’ she says. ‘I just want to have more control over how much I’m drinking. These injections are the first thing I’ve found that can do that. And they’ll save me money in the long-term as I’ll be buying far less Oyster Bay.’
