Ozempic

 

A post about Ozempic is long overdue. 

It'd be easy to write 5k words about it - the miracle diet drug that actually works and is transforming one of the deadliest modern pandemics into something effortlessly curable; its high monetary cost and so far near nonexistent side-effects cost; my history of overweight to morbid obesity from age nine to fourty five; the fact that Ideas have people, not people have Ideas, and the Idea of 'Bell is fat' has been driving me as its vehicle all my life - and what it means to have... that... stop.

What it meant as a life-long struggle was feeling like a hopeless loser, a spoiled, lazy and damaged person. Hold on, this gets happy, I promise.

The doctor put me on it four months ago. I was morbidly obese, with 100kg overweight, a metabolism confused by 30 years of diets, and a history of repeatedly losing and gaining large amounts of weight, always with a method that requires constant effort, willpower, discomfort, time and hunger. I'm not listing those to whine; that's how diets are. That's also how going to the gym or university is; we've all been there. But one can graduate university, while dieting is a daily, eternal struggle.

Ready for the happy part? I lost 15 kgs in three months. Since then I already dropped two sizes on my top; probably 5 or 10 more kgs, this month alone. And it's effortless. I'm hungry twice a day, I am as emotionally and hunger-ly satisfied by the simplest food (egg on toast) as I would be by my favourite former craving (sushi or pasta). I might feel like pasta, but it's about a quarter of the craving it was - and I can sate it, fully, by having two eggs on toast. 

The medicine is very expensive - around 200€ per month - but it saves me that same mount in groceries. 

Hunger became Not My Issue. It doesn't consume time, or mental resources, or craving resources, or money. 

And suddenly there's hope. Sure, I'm almost 50, but in a year or two of this I'll be able to walk freely. Wear trousers. Not be ashamed to be a burden so can join trips with friends. Will fit into bus, train and plane seats. No more isolation. No more fear, embarrassment, misery. This isn't weight loss; it's hope for a quality of life I gave up on ever having. 

Suddenly it no longer feels pointless to care for my body, so I do: I do some skincare, some hair care, I suddenly care about looking neat - after over a decade of wearing tents and letting my hair and skin go untended. I don't mean to dye it blonde and inject Botox; I just mean cut it to a shape that could look more flattering than the current style (Accidental Gravity), and I manually dye the few gray hairs in my eyebrows (no Gandalfs allowed) because it's amazing how it neatens the look. 

This is just one aspect; this is only the beginning. Imagine how immeasurable the effect of this one medicine is, on how many meaningful aspects of my life. 

Yesterday I had to go buy something. Down the fourty stairs in the stairwell, cross the road to dump the trash, and only then I realized how easy it was to move, suddenly. As if, in this past month, the weight loss crossed some threshold beyond which the skeleton and muscles can actually handle the weight they have to carry. Suddenly mere walking doesn't feel dangerous and a great effort. It's just... a thing. Like breathing. 

Can you imagine?

I could cry with joy.

That medicine needs to now be there forever; as soon as one stops, one gains the weight back. I'm okay with that. Anti-depressants on a minimum dose have been keeping my emotional range healthy since 2018. The occasional ADHD pill solves all my scattered attention issues when I wish to focus and Get Things Done; and last year a doctor removed a tangerine-sized chunk of infection from my leg, then made my body grow flesh to fill that hole using a VAC. Adding a miracle, effortless weight-loss medicine to this simply cements my appreciation for modern medicine, flawed and impotent though it sometimes is.

I feel like a lifelong storm of bricks finally settling into what they were meant to be. My dream body isn't a temple; it's a worn cottage, a comfy thing to occupy, hopefully with some nice things about it. And being able to dream of that again, that's incredible.