My name is Louise, and I am addicted to Mounjaro. I’ve been injecting myself weekly for the past six months and have lost nearly two stone in weight, slowly shrinking from a puffy post-menopausal size 18 to a muscly size 12 and I feel amazing – super healthy, energised, and happier in my skin than I have for decades.
While weight-loss drugs aren’t addictive by design, I’ve just discovered I can’t live without them now.
Every morning, I catch sight of myself in the bedroom mirror and marvel at the quite remarkable powers of this miraculous medication, say a silent prayer of gratitude to whoever invented it, and pull on my skin-tight sports gear before heading to the gym.
Just a few more pounds to go and I’ll be back to my pre-children fighting weight and perhaps even rocking up to Pilates in a crop top.
More importantly, I’m off blood pressure medication, the sleep apnoea has disappeared, and my arthritic joints are pain-free.
I’d found a cunning way to keep the cost down by ordering injection pens from my ‘dealer’ (a low-cost online pharmacy which asks few questions), requesting large doses (a 10mg pen) each time and making each pen last twice as long by injecting a half-dose weekly fix (5mg) into my shrinking belly, and buying extra needles online.
According to my back-of-a-napkin calculations, my ‘fix’ costs less than £3 a day, which I consider to be a bargain when my childlike appetite means our food and wine bill is down by at least £10 a day.
Louise Atkinson has been using Mounjaro for the past six months and has lost nearly two stone. She now feels happier in her skin than she has for decades
When my weight finally hits the healthy BMI green zone (at 70kg/11 stone for my 5ft 7in frame) I plan to stay on slim street for the rest of my life with a little ‘bump’ of MJ every few weeks as a kind of sharpener.
I thought I had the whole thing under control. Then, earlier this month, disaster struck. In the space of one afternoon, Eli Lilly, which manufactures Mounjaro, announced they’d be hiking their prices by 170 per cent from September 1 and I got an email from my dealer refusing my request for my next 10mg mega-pen.
They’d queried the two-month gap since my last order and, stupidly, I’d told them the truth about my devious cost-saving methods.
Big mistake.
Suddenly I found myself facing the possibility that I might not be able to get my hands on my next fix.
To my surprise, my stress levels started to bubble and by evening they’d spiralled out of control. Fear of returning to my old life pre-MJ put me into full fight-or-flight mode.
My mind flashed through all the hideously draconian diet plans I’d cycled through from the age of 12 – F-plan, cabbage soup, Dukan, Atkins, fasting – and memories of the gnawing hunger, the agonising cravings. I felt waves of visceral fear about the prospect of having to go back to feeling perpetually hungry and deprived, and living in a state of self-recrimination because I had never been able to make the weight loss stick.
All of this was completely out of character. I’m normally completely level-headed and pragmatic, but I was properly panicking. I simply couldn’t countenance the idea of getting through the next week without MJ, let alone the next month.
Without thinking, I started tapping into online pharmacies, saying ‘yes’ to horribly expensive subscription schemes that tempt you in on an offer (£150 for a 10mg pen) then sting you on a monthly basis thereafter (£250 a pop), lying about my weight because – quite rightly – no one will prescribe to a new customer with a BMI nudging on ‘healthy’. When one asked for a photo I’m ashamed to admit I changed into baggy joggers and clamped my legs together to disguise my lovely new thigh gap, pinning my chin to my chest in an attempt to replicate the chin rolls I was so delighted to have lost. I was behaving like a crazy lady.
But that’s what addiction does to you.
I know I’m very lucky I can afford to pay for this drug on private prescription – even with the proposed price hike – but my irrational and uncharacteristic behaviour stemmed from the fact that I was no longer in control. And I didn’t know where my next fix was coming from.
Louise shrank from a puffy post-menopausal size 18, seen above, to a muscly size 12
Every morning, when she catches sight of herself in the bedroom mirror, she marvels at the quite remarkable powers of miraculous Mounjaro, as she pulls on her skintight sports gear before heading to the gym
No matter how much I massaged the ‘girl maths’ (the finely honed technique that allows you to justify the investment in an expensive item of clothing by dividing the cost by the number of times you’re likely to wear it) a threefold price hike is MUCH harder to justify taking out of the household budget, when, in theory, all I have to do is eat a little less and move a bit more.
My heart really does go out to those Mounjaro users stuck on the highest dose, which was eye-wateringly expensive even before the proposed price hikes, who are caught midway through their journey with stones still left to lose. I don’t know what I’d do.
The online support groups are full of heartfelt stories of hardship. Multiple posts lament the financial strain and worry over relapse if treatment ends.
One woman confessed to being in ‘instant panic’ after hearing about the price rises. She said she would even consider putting herself into debt by using credit cards or payment plans.
Another, a pensioner, wrote: ‘I just wanted to not be fat for a while and this was my last shot. We gave up lots of things to pay for this drug and I’m not sure we can give up much else to continue taking it.’
The online forum, Slimrchat, was overwhelmed with panicking jabbers saying: ‘I’m stuck! I don’t want to quit, but I don’t know how I’ll afford it’. Others said ‘it’s making me feel sick’ and grumble that ‘it feels as if we’re being priced out of our own health’.
One sad story read: ‘I cried when my partner offered to help me pay for Mounjaro. I’m not rich, but I’m fat and scared for my health and mobility, I always felt hopeless and embarrassed but MJ gave me hope and happiness. Today I feel like crying again because these changes mean I can’t afford it anymore.’ It seems very unfair.
Like me, desperate jabbers have been trying to stockpile supplies to build a buffer before the price hike. So somehow, I’ve become like one of the loo-roll hoarders I tutted at during lockdown.
The online pharmacy Chemist4U claims to have been hit by a 5,000 per cent increase in demand for Mounjaro prescriptions in the 48 hours that followed the announcement.
Inevitably supplies are running out and some pharmacies have stopped taking orders while they deal with the backlog.
Luckily (for me) my out-of-control stress levels soon simmered down and sanity has now returned, prompted partly by a very welcome pen delivery from my ‘dealer’, who gave me a mild telling off, begrudgingly acquiesced and accepted my £150.
I now know I’m safe from the food noise demons for another month. But I’m horrified and embarrassed at the way I reacted.
When the jabs first went mainstream, I scoffed at the way they represented the perfect Big Pharma storm – a drug billions of people would need to take for life. I thought I was sensible enough to fight that. But clearly I’m not.
I’m angry with Big Pharma and their chemist acolytes who lure you in with cheap entry-level doses. You could start your Mounjaro journey for less than £100, but the cost escalates as you’re marched up the doses, and before you know it, you’re hooked.
With luck, Wegovy prices won’t be hiked to match Mounjaro, and I’d have no hesitation about switching. Wegovy is just Ozempic with a different brand name and if Ozempic has been good enough for Oprah, it’s good enough for me.
Chemist4U says it’s seen a 1,500 per cent increase in Mounjaro patients requesting to switch and a 2,000 per cent increase in Wegovy prescriptions too – all in the space of that first 48 hours.
Also, in the longer term we addicts can look forward to GLP-1s in tablet form – the pills might not promise the same rates of weight loss, but they do at least promise respite from the cacophony of food noise and offer the same raft of previously unrecognised health benefits.
Thanks to GLP-1s, I’m feeling super fit and healthy for 61, and I don’t want that to change. I plan to skip through my 70s and 80s on low-dose HRT and a little trickle of GLP-1. I may be addicted, but as long as there’s an injection pen in my fridge I’ll be happy.
