Zepbound is one of several new drugs that people are using successfully to lose weight. But shortages have people strategizing how to maintain their weight loss when they can't get the drug. Shelby Knowles/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption Over the past few decades, Jonathan Meyers endured several cycles of gaining, shedding, then regaining weight after attempting Keto, high protein, low fat, and calorie-restrictive diets.
“I’ve had success, up and down, but I always regain the weight,” says Meyers, a digital strategist at an environmental nonprofit. But on Zepbound – the newest GLP-1 agonist drug to launch – Meyers lost 35 pounds and loves feeling free from hunger. Without what he calls “food noise” – the gnawing compulsion to eat – he consumes less and moves more.
But the drug’s been in short supply and very hard to find. Meyers even had family in Maine ship medicine in cold containers to him in Kensington, Maryland. Now, he can’t find Zepbound anywhere, and says friends, family, and people he follows on social media are all in the same boat.
Some, he says, have turned to compound pharmacies selling approximations of the drug online; others tapered their doses, stretching them out. More and more people who started taking the new GLP-1 agonist drugs are now confronting the realities of their limitations; medications like Wegovy and Mounjaro tend to help with sustained weight loss only while people are on them. But because of cost, for example, neg.