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Comment by arjie | Hacker News Reader

These drugs are a godsend for so many (me included, on retatrutide) but especially for those of us here in America - legal environment broad enough to get them, relatively wealthy enough to afford them, and notably fat enough to benefit from them. The diffusion of this technology through the US might well increase American lifespan in a notable way.

Now all we need is an easy pill that makes you hate opioids.

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Zepbound has been a godsend for me—trying unsuccessfully to lose weight for two decades now…

One weird aspect of it working as well as it has on me is that when I see people who are morbidly obese in public now I have to fight the urge to proselytize GLP-1.

How are you getting retatrutide? Are you in a trial? How is it working for you?

Small peptide suppliers make them. You order by generic identifier & compound yourself. My identical twin & I are running an exponent: I'm on foundayo, he's on retatrutide. I'm down about 10 lbs. he's down 35.

Real gamble, that. You're injecting something that no regulatory body that said was safe and that that supplier is giving you what they say they are? Just like injecting whatever it is they happen to give you?

If you're doing this sort of thing, usually you batch your orders together (ideally with some friends) and randomly lab test a few vials selected from the large batch you receive. The powder form vials you receive before mixing will last more or less indefinitely in a freezer, so you can order multiple years worth of supply at a time.

The potency and purity are typically pretty good but from time to time vendors will be outed for either outright fraud or a bad batch that is underfilled or low purity. Most of the direct vendors (out of China) will guarantee fill and purity, and also give credit on your next order for lab test costs if you share the tests with them for future marketing purposes.

All sorts of risks involved of course, but you can mitigate them fairly effectively. Your risk tolerance may vary. Some folks will buy single vials from US resellers and trust those seller's lab test reports. Others (smartly, imo) don't trust that and do their own testing directly on the product they receive.

This grey market supply chain is remarkably robust these days. Plenty of suburban Facebook soccer moms organizing group buys.

Profoundly stupid shit.

Risky. Not necessarily stupid. I wouldn’t do it. But we’d have to observe the injury rate before being able to conclude anything.

What's the experiment?

"Person A takes Foundayo, Person B takes mystery drug?"

Not sure what you think you're learning from that.

Are you asking if we're learning about the general population, or about ourselves? We're 100% identical twins with nearly identical blood work across a fairly deep blood panel. We're learning precisely what we need to know to maximize efficacy for us.

Supposedly narcan does that. Instead of after an overdose, if you have narcan administered beforehand, opioids are no fun.

Not about to try and get some first hand experience with that tho!

No, it blocks the effects of opioids, but it doesn't remove the cravings or withdrawal

And it only lasts minutes.

There is an injection for opiods that works for a month at a time. It really annoys me because we’re still giving people methadone every day even though this injection exists.

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