The Drug That Made Me Want Less

This article appears in our Out of Body issue, on stands now. Order your copy here.

I waddled into the doctor’s office in the stripmall in Florida with 20 pounds of ankle weights strapped to each leg hidden under my floral Tyler McGillivary sweatpants so that when the nurse asked me to step onto the scale, I could resoundingly—uncomplicatedly—qualify for an online subscription for Ozempic. I’m 5’4’ when my reputation is bad. 5’5’ when I have something to brag about. The BMI I had to hit for this online prescriber for my height is 160 lbs plus. I weighed, at the time, around 130.

I’m 115 now and my life is in every way better.

Something I love and hate about myself is that I’ve always had a pathological compulsion for writing sentences that no one has ever said before.

Sometimes I think about the globe like a video game map. Starting from the first hoot-hollering, rock-smashing neanderthals, imagine that every footstep that every raggedy-hemmed Babylonian peasant—every muddy-speared Roman legionnaire—every plummy-accented, plinth-hatted, explorer has ever taken, had been recorded. Where are the blank spots still left in the world? Where could your own two feet still make the first footprints ever? In this day and age is it even possible to say things that no one has ever said before?

Something I love and hate about myself is that I’ve always had a pathological compulsion for pleasure. It’s ironic, really. I’ve never had an orgasm, but at thirty-four I’ve oriented my entire life around short-term gratification. I get money, I spend it. I get yummy food, I gobble it all up— cookie-monster-manic-pixie-nightmare-style. I have no savings account. I have no regular account. I get invited to parties, I go. I get bored and I fix it and I get offered drugs and I say thank you. Nudge my shoulder after midnight and gift me any substance besides Adderall or cocaine, and I am so very grateful, so completely down, your new best friend! But my favorite drug I’ve been taking lately is Ozempic and I love it precisely because it makes me want less of everything else on earth.

The studies aren’t in yet. Maybe I’ll go blind! Maybe I’ll lose all my hair save a few expensively-balayaged, Gollum-esque, comb-over strands. Maybe by injecting my bruised arms, my thighs, my ever flattening abdomen with the needles that frighten the goddamn bejeezus out of me I’ve already sold my soul to some early-onset dementia-devil. I guess we’ll all find out together as a society in real time. Earlier this year The New Yorker published a huge investigative report titled: “Can Ozempic Cure Addiction? GLP-1 drugs, which have helped some people curb drug and alcohol use, may unlock a pathway to moderation.” This was in addition to three articles already in circulation in The New York Times: “Ozempic Can Curb Drinking, New Research Shows,” “The Breakthrough Drug to Conquer Addiction: Ozempic?,” and “The Drug That Took Away More Than Her Appetite.”

You should read these articles. I haven’t! I’ve already lived the answers. First Ozempic will make you skinny and then being skinny will make the world kinder to you if you’re a woman. And then after that, if you have a hedonistic brain chemistry that skews always towards addiction like a fucking heat-seeking missile, GLP-1’s will subdue you in a way that feels like peace.

Am I allowed to write this? Am I the first? Surely at the very least no one has ever said this sentence before: I had to submit selfies as part of the online application for Ozempic and so I edited them to make myself look chipmunk-cheeked in a way I doubt FaceTune has ever been used before or since.

Was it hard to walk into the Florida strip mall doctor’s office with 40 pounds of extra weight—-20 pounds strapped secretly on each leg? No, I do pilates. Have for a decade and a half. But it wasn’t until I started taking Ozempic that I lost those last 15 pounds that could only be shed by loss of appetite.

For a few days after I bruise myself with a new injection each week, I’m so nauseous I can barely stumble out of bed. I’ve puked on the floor more than once just from this self-induced, mattress-knuckling queasiness. I get up only so my cat doesn’t eat my sick and throw up, too. But it’s just like I always remind myself: It’s either this and being skinny, or a violent hangover, which feels the same, and being 15 pounds heavier. I don’t want to get sober. I don’t want to go to rehab. I don’t have the self-discipline to change my psyche or the lifespan to fix the patriarchy. I’ll run out of time and die before I see the world stop treating thin women with more reverence and gentleness than the averagely plump girl I once was. Something I love and hate about myself is that I will write sentences no one has ever said before even at the expense of my own happiness in real life. I started taking Ozempic to be thin. I keep taking it to prevent myself from becoming an alcoholic. If you’re a girl who lives for fun precisely because once she finally finds it, she can barely feel it, I would recommend you do this, too.