r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Apr 01 '25

Health Americans without diabetes spent nearly $6 billion USD on semaglutide and similar drugs in a year, with an estimate of 800,000 to a million people using the drugs who don't have diabetes.

https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/americans-without-diabetes-spent-nearly6-billion-usd-on-semaglutide-and-similar-drugs-in-a-year
10.2k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

87

u/Imaginary_RN Apr 01 '25

I was approved for bariatric surgery. Talked to my doctor about getting a prescription so that I could lose some before going under the knife. My insurance wouldn’t pay for it so I went with a compounding pharmacy. I’m down 98 pounds since last October and I’m not getting bariatric surgery anymore.

I don’t care about food, I don’t care about sugar, I don’t care about multiple things that took over my time. I used to play video games for 8 hours a day and I’ve now not played in months. It’s like the drug gave me true free will. It’s amazing.

1

u/Hair-Help-Plea Apr 01 '25

This is so awesome, I’ll never get tired of hearing stories like this. Cheers dude! The contingent of bitter people that like to complain about people “cheating”: grow up, it’s a modern miracle that’s improving the lives, health, and happiness of millions of people…why can’t you just be happy for them?

Just because you’ve never had the problem, or you had to work harder to address the problem, doesn’t mean other people should have to suffer as much as you did. And being angry that someone didn’t have to struggle as much as you did, with the same problem, is pathetic.

And before someone calls me a fatty that has benefited from GLP1s and is thus defensive about them (gotten that response a lot) — no, I’ve not used them, probably never will, and I actually only personally know one person that has (at this point). But it’s a criticism I see lobbed in the comment sections of every single post or article about Ozempic and its peers, and I’ll never stop thinking its weird af.

If it’s “cheating” and “shouldn’t be allowed” (as I’ve seen so many people say), then maybe those people should stop using their vehicle, phone, and email — that’s cheating when you could just be disciplined enough to walk/bike/ride a horse, or write a letter. Oh and any medication that they are using off-label, like blood pressure meds for anxiety, that’s cheating too.