Ozempic Is Changing Friendships in Unexpected Ways

Season three of The White Lotus is causing waves, especially for its uneasy female friend group. The three women at the center of the story and their behind-each-other’s-backs criticism of each others’ politics, marriages and face tweaks is missing today’s real friendship third rail: weight-loss drugs. In real life, these women would be opining about each others’ bodies behind their backs, and not altogether kindly. Nowadays, it seems to me, mixing Ozempic and friendship can create a crazy salad bitter enough to make you lose your appetite.

People have lot of big feelings around taking semaglutides, the family of drugs (including Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy) that has become increasingly popular over the past couple of years to facilitate weight loss. Two years ago, I didn’t know anyone who took it, and now a handful of my close friends do. Here’s just a smattering of comments on the matter from my extended friend group over the past few months:

• “My best friend has become an asshole since she started taking Ozempic but maybe it’s her showing her true colors.”
• At a reunion dinner including old friends from out of town and at dinner, one girl took another aside and said “I’m not on Ozempic like those other ones.”
• “So many people are at auditions on Ozempic I think it’s cheating, I can’t help it, but I look at it that way.”
• A friend telling me that in her circles, the new compliment is not “You look great” but instead, saying “Mounjaro?” approvingly with a knowing wink.
• In a parent’s group, one woman’s significant weight loss prompts other moms to comment meanly that she must have used weight-loss drugs. “I know she’s taken it because she has Ozempic face.”

Hoo boy. Not since I imagine the first days of breast augmentation have women’s bodies been commented on so freely by each other in such judgey, loaded ways. I’m not free of it myself, offering up all kinds of non-hesitant commentary about celebs who appear to have undergone dramatic weight loss. I’m a big fan of Adele, but why does that give me the right to announce how I feel about her appearance transformation, and speculate on how it happened?

“Most backlash that people face comes from the incorrect belief that drugs like Ozempic are the ‘easy way out’ which is ‘cheating’ since society treats obesity as a moral failing instead of a lifelong medical condition.”

And truthfully, even though I don’t say it, I have felt pangs of envy when I notice someone appear to magically morph skinnier. It’s like their Ozempic has created a stimulus in my brain that heightens competitiveness, that clichéd and damaging pick-me girl tendency that I’ve tried so hard to reprogram. Old mantras like the thinner is the winner from teen ballet camp resurface, and I have to quiet that sleeping monster inside me I thought I’d long ago vanquished.

“Most backlash that people face comes from the incorrect belief that drugs like Ozempic are the ‘easy way out’ which is ‘cheating’ since society treats obesity as a moral failing instead of a lifelong medical condition,” comments one Redditor. “When you morally fail, you are expected to repent and atone through some degree of suffering. The fact that weight loss medication can make the suffering less or non-existent, pisses people off.”

It’s true that semaglutide drugs are misunderstood by the general public. Listening to the dialogue around these meds, then interviewing therapists and physicians about what taking the drug entails in terms of concurrent nutrition and exercise efforts, I’ve come to understand how the perception of taking GLP-1s doesn’t necessarily match reality. (The drug can potentially impact a lot in a person’s life, with both negative and positive effects to your period, your sleep, your marriage and your butt—and not for the better.) This medicine is just part of a larger wellness plan: Sure, the drug helps quiet the “food noise” that encourages over-eating, however in order to achieve healthiest and most desired physique, doctors strongly recommend muscle-building and protein-ingesting regimens. Taking Wegovy isn’t just a pin-prick, then shopping for size 0 jeans two months later, which is the mistaken reputation.

As for actual Ozempic personality changes, there’s no official evidence of those, however since this drug involves brain chemistry, the serotonin boost can feel good. Conversely, the reduced overall glucose intake means your brain is getting less glucose, the brain’s primary fuel. Dr. Lisa Young, adjunct professor of nutrition at NYU, told PureWow reporter Marissa Wu that this can cause “symptoms like brain fog, mood changes, difficulty concentrating and fatigue.”

Now let’s look at the non-Ozempic-taking friend: I learned from therapists who specialize in body issues that if you’re upset by someone else’s weight loss, the problem is likely with you. “When one partner experiences rapid weight loss, they might feel more confident and attract increased attention from others, potentially creating feelings of jealousy or insecurity in the relationship,” clinical psychologist Dr. Supatra Tovar, PsyD, RD told PureWow.

Adding to the tension, a person who has lost weight may not understand that their transformation is not just theirs alone, but also impacts their friend partnership. One Ozempic-taking Redditor posted about being on the outs with a friend who is not on Ozempic. The woman who is losing weight understands her current friend breakup in a larger context of decades of their mutual and sometimes bumpy life transitions:
“I have been through [a friend breakup over Ozempic] with my best friend of 25 years. When she got pregnant and I couldn't, it was too painful to watch at times. When her marriage ended she had a very hard time being around my husband and me. Now...I don't want to tell her I am on Ozempic because she got denied [insurance approval for it] and was so upset. I have type 2 and got it paid for..I moved away a few years ago, so we mostly interact via calls or text. Despite all of this, we don't give up on each other and understand it's okay to ‘take a break’ from the friendship or even just avoid topics that are painful to speak about.”

Interestingly, I have a friend who is a gay man who is having a profoundly changed life experience to go with his wildly changed bod. I’ve made it a point to be available for him as a sounding board and support for his new optimism, relationship and home, as non-judgementally as I can. When I told him I was working on a story how semaglutides changed relationships, including perhaps ours, he quipped “I don’t know…it’s made us closer?”

My takeaway from exploring this idea of friendships and Ozempic is that the changing social dynamics of taking the medicine can create new frictions as well as freedoms in a person’s life. So, keep your eyes open, and be as kind to everyone as you can, including yourself. A friend who was raised by a body-shaming mom sent me this lyric from a Kasey Musgraves song called “Follow Your Arrow”: to explain her own “live and let live” philosophy:

“If you can’t lose the weight then you’re just fat.
But if you lose too much then you’re on crack.
You’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t,
So you might as well just do whatever you want.”