Writing
Translating the research.
Plain-language readings of my work, and the questions underneath it.
Insomnia · Patient experience
Patients describe waking up paralyzed on these sleeping pills. The FDA has never required a study of this side effect.
The DEA wants to move Dayvigo and two similar sleeping pills to its lowest tier of control because it says they do not cause dependence. The agency leaves side effects out of that judgment and has called them a matter for the FDA. In the 260 reviews of Dayvigo behind a study I led, the side effect that most strongly set apart the people who quit or considered quitting was sleep paralysis.
GLP-1 · Patient experience
People don't quit Ozempic because it makes them sick
The story we tell about why patients stop these drugs is wrong, and it is about to decide who gets to keep them.
Binge eating · Patient experience
Binge eating's only drug is a morning pill for a nighttime disease
Patients named the problem years ago, in their own reviews, while the experts argued about something else. Now, as Ozempic promises to quiet the same hunger, we are about to repeat the mistake.
Compulsion · Neuroscience and stigma
We treat one craving as a disease and the other as a weakness. The brain draws no such line.
Compulsive eating and compulsive drug use lean on overlapping reward machinery, and a diabetes drug is quietly underlining it by quieting both at once. So why do we still give one our sympathy and the other our contempt?