Introducing Hot Shots, a series that examines how Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs have transformed the way we think about our bodies, weight loss, and wellness.
Before Naveini Vasikaran started college last fall, it seemed like all anyone wanted to talk about was the infamous “freshman 15”—the mythic weight gain that’s said to affect fledgling undergrads. Vasikaran found these remarks annoying, but she brushed them off. She was used to hearing other people’s hot takes about body and size. She also recognized that her situation wasn’t totally typical. Unlike most of her peers on campus, Vasikaran was going into freshman year with a prescription for Ozempic.
Vasikaran, who is 18 and in her second semester of a computer science program at Queens University, is one of an estimated 18 million adults in the U.S. and Canada currently taking GLP-1 medications, the class of drugs that includes the brand names Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound. (In this article, I’ll be using “Ozempic” and GLP-1 drugs interchangeably.) Last year, researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School published a report showing that the number of 12- to 25-year-olds getting GLP-1s from U.S. pharmacies jumped from 8,722 in 2020, to 60,567 in 2023, a massive 594.4 percent increase in just three years. Surprisingly or not, women and girls significantly outnumbered boys and men. The gender gap was especially glaring in the 18 to 25 age group; where the number of men getting these medications rose by 481.1 percent, the number of young women shot up by nearly 660 percent.
On college campuses, students and experts say the Ozempic effect is clear—whether the people around them are openly using the drug or not. After a fleeting cultural tilt toward body positivity in the late 2010s, skinny seems to be back in style, a shift that just so happened to coincide with the rise of GLP-1s. But while some college students may long for Ozempic bodies of their own, a code of secrecy surrounds the drug’s prevalence on campuses and in sororities. “Ozempic allegations” are joked about on TikTok, where creators winkingly say they want (or humblebrag about achieving) weight loss so dramatic that others can’t help but presume they had a little extra help. But for the students able to get ahold of GLP-1s—and who may or may not be medically cleared to use these medications to lose weight—actual Ozempic use is a carefully guarded taboo.
To get a lay of the land, I reached out to current students and recent graduates, including two at private institutions and one who belongs to a prominent sorority. I also contacted the on-campus dietitians at two large, private universities, and a third dietetics specialist whose independent practice focuses on a college-aged clientele. The overwhelming majority of students and all three of the dietitians either said they couldn’t speak to Ozempic use among students, backed out of our conversations, or simply didn’t respond to my emails in the first place. I’d be hard-pressed to recount any other time in my 15-year journalism career where the data on a trend’s prevalence so sharply contradicted my ability to find people who could—or were willing—to speak to it firsthand.
The numbers tell a more open story. Last year, overall sales for the four major GLP-1 brands shot up by an additional 73 percent from 2023, according to Sherwood News. It stands to reason that the number of college-aged students currently using these medications also spiked accordingly, exceeding the figures reported in the University of Michigan study.
The experts I spoke with shared theories for the discrepancy that, to some extent, make sense. For one: Ozempic is not cheap. The medication can cost upwards of $900 a month without insurance in the U.S., by the manufacturer’s estimate, which is well out of reach for the average student budget. Access poses another potential barrier. In spite of the fast-growing array of telehealth providers, medispas, and compounding pharmacies that make it easy for just about anyone to nab a prescription for the right price, individual outcomes may vary depending on a GLP-1-seeker’s location and know-how. Vasikaran says that as far as she’s aware, in Canada, where she lives, it’s virtually impossible to get these medications without your primary-care doctor’s approval. But she and others agreed that if their fellow students could figure out a way to get their hands on the medication, they would.
“People ask me how I got on Ozempic, for their own gain,” Vasikaran says. Similar to what we have heard with celebrities and Hollywood at-large, those asking for it are weight-conscious. “The people who have asked me for it are people who are skinny already.”
So if people aren’t shy about saying they want to take Ozempic, why aren’t they coming clean when they are taking it? “There’s definitely a stigma,” says Ilana, a 20-year-old junior at an Ivy League school who asked that we keep her identity and institution private. She knows for a fact that some of her peers are using Ozempic and doesn’t want to breach their trust, let alone spark speculation as to their identity. Ozempic rumors are already everywhere, anyway: “That’s what is considered drama or gossip these days,” she says.
Ilana also tells me that as far as she’s noticed, Ozempic usage is especially common among wealthier groups of students, who seem to face heightened pressure to keep up appearances and have the means to shell out for a quick-but-pricey fix. Her friends at campuses across the country have made similar observations. “People that can follow every single other beauty trend and buy the clothing that fits exactly according to what they want, why wouldn’t they also have the body to match?” Ilana says. “It’s almost like an extension of their capability to have their wealth reflect their style.”
Katherine Metzelaar, a Seattle nutrition therapist specializing in disordered eating and body image issues, says that despite the widespread stigma, many of her college-aged clients feel sheepish for not being on the drug. Now that Ozempic is out there on the table, with its tantalizing promise of the ideal physique, they feel there’s no place for their bodies as they are. “It’s sort of omnipresent right now, truthfully,” Metzelaar says of the Ozempic angst. It doesn’t exactly help that the weight loss-inducing features the drug is so widely praised for—a loss of appetite and gastrointestinal upset—bear a striking resemblance to eating disorder symptoms.
This is especially concerning in light of the relationship between major life transitions, such as leaving home for the first time to attend college, and the onset of body dysmorphia, disordered eating, and full-blown eating disorders. “College students are so vulnerable. They’re on social media, and [are] influenced by each other,” says Sam DeCaro, a Philadelphia-based clinical psychologist and the director of clinical outreach and education for The Renfrew Center, an eating disorder treatment facility. “I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve had, where they can pinpoint the exact day their eating disorder started and, oftentimes, it was in college.”
The prevalence of eating disorders on college campuses may, if somewhat counterintuitively, also help explain the secrecy and stigma around students’ use of GLP-1s. “In the age we live in, where massive weight loss is considered worrisome and problematic, because of mental health and eating disorders, if someone [on campus] were to lose 30 pounds, it would be immediately considered Ozempic or an eating disorder,” Ilana tells me. “No one would be like, ‘Oh look, she must be doing so well.’ It’s one of those things that you’re jealous of, but you’re mad for being jealous of.” In other words, Ozempic encapsulates the paradox of a society that purports to prize self-care and wellness, while also upholding an ideal of ultra-thinness at any cost.
There is also the ultimate catch-22: People don’t want to be associated with Ozempic, but they still want to be acknowledged for losing weight. Even Vasikaran, the freshman on Ozempic, has played along with the #ozempicallegations trend. “Two months at uni and no one has given me Ozempic allegations when I’m on it but I get autism ones every day,” reads the caption on a tongue-in-cheek TikTok she posted in November,
Although weight loss was never her goal, Vasikaran concedes that she’s lost about 10 pounds since she began taking Ozempic. Otherwise, the drug is doing what it’s supposed to—her glucose numbers have never looked better. But when she tells people she’s taking Ozempic, she plays it off for laughs. Most of her peers don’t even realize that the drug was ever meant for treating diabetes. They see it as an out-of-reach weight loss tool and nothing more. Vasikaran doesn’t bother to correct them—she doubts they’d be able to wrap their heads around the idea that someone they know not only has a prescription, but isn’t using it to get skinny. “It’s just not something that people can imagine,” she says.
