I started taking Ozempic five weeks ago. I was fearful of the side effects, of which more later. But at my age, it becomes increasingly harder to shift weight through time-honoured means, and my doctor said I should give it a go for the beneficial effects that losing a few pounds (or more) would have on my general health.

Well, it seems to have done the trick. I overcame my queasiness about injecting myself, and indeed the very tangible queasiness you feel as the medicine enters your system, and when I weighed myself this morning, I’d lost six kilos.

But the real transformation in my life has been something more profound, less measurable and largely unrecognised among the much-vaunted attributes of what is billed as the 21st century’s wonder drug. From the very first moment I took Ozempic, I completely lost my taste for alcohol.

It was a total mental shift that seemed to happen immediately. No more was that whisky at the end of the working day a psychological necessity. I found it easy to go to a black tie dinner and have sparkling water. I could resist peer pressure by drinking ginger beer in a wine glass.

One of my major concerns before starting........

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