‘Fat jabs left me so depressed it was like having The Deer Hunter theme on repeat in my head'

Telegraph

a day ago

I can say without any doubt that I've never been depressed. So when I began using weight-loss injections three months ago it was a huge shock to find that rather than my usual unhappy-go-lucky self, I sensed something new. Something really bad. I was depressed and I could only assume it was a side effect of the drugs.
Within a week of my first injection I felt a deep despair, seemingly from nowhere. Nothing had happened in my work or social life to trigger it. For a few days I searched for a cause, confused and concerned about where this blackness had come from. Suddenly, to an almost absurd, comical extent, existence seemed bleak and irredeemable. It was like having the theme tune to 1978's war drama The Deer Hunter playing in my head on repeat.
After the initial shock, I had to somehow find a way to recognise this state for what it was: artificially induced – the mental equivalent of fake news.
I have known lots of people with 'real' depression: the kind that keeps a person in bed for a week as if there were a weight tied to their body. The kind that waxes and wanes without reason, making it hard for those around them to empathise. I'd never known that feeling, yet here it was squatting on top of me day after day.
Using weight-loss injections produced no other side effects. I have been sleeping well, I've not felt any nausea and I have undoubtedly lost weight, which was the whole point of this expensive experiment in the first place.
Much of what has been written about the mental health impact of these treatments has been on either the positive effects of losing weight – improved self esteem – and how some who experience ADHD report a heightened sense of focus and concentration.
Nowhere in the literature of the companies that make the treatments, or those who sell it, is there any suggestion that depression is a verifiable risk. Side effects are listed as nausea and vomiting, constipation, diarrhaea, reflux, headaches and fatigue. So much the same as a long stag weekend, rather than a continuous vigil at the edge of the abyss.
The medications in question are known as 'glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists' (examples are semaglutide in Ozempic and Wegovy, and tirzepatide in Mounjaro). They were conceived as a treatment for diabetes and were later found to have beneficial effects fighting obesity. They may also help with cardiovascular disease and even neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's. They work by mimicking the effects of the hormone GLP-1, which helps regulate blood sugar levels and appetite.
Dr Riccardo De Giorgi, Clinical Lecturer in General Adult Psychiatry at the University of Oxford is currently studying the effects of these drugs and admits that it is too soon to know if there is a possible link with depression, but suggests evidence points to a positive, rather negative, impact on mental health.
'The most recent studies available suggest that GLP-1 medications do not increase depressive symptoms or suicidality,' he says. 'These are based on drug trials where the patients were measured for depression 'scores' and psychological wellbeing, and they didn't show a negative effect overall.
'What happens if you are exposed to these drugs and you have a history of depressive episodes? In that regard, we don't have any evidence at all. There are now some more trials pending on depression, but it's very early days.'
I asked around amongst friends and friends of friends (there are so many people using these treatments now that they aren't hard to find), and several reported very similar experiences to my own. One mentioned feeling 'oversensitive and on the verge of tears all the time'. Another said she felt so depressed and exhausted through emotional stress that she had to stop using it. She wanted to start using jabs again but was afraid of reliving her depression. A third said the worst days were 'shocking' but eventually she began to feel better – whether that was because the effects wore off or because she became more adept at coping she couldn't be sure.
For me, the strangest feature of this self-inflicted ordeal was that I couldn't trust my emotions. It was like I was in my own matrix, where what I was experiencing felt real but was actually a simulation I had brought on myself – all while paying a monthly fee for the privilege.
When something bothered me at work, there was no way to measure its real importance, which meant there was no reliable way to respond to it. How could I tell if a crisis at home was trivial, a total catastrophe or something in between? Thinking about the terrible state of Britain and the world suddenly felt deeply personal rather than an essential part of my job. Just hearing the first bars of a John Barry film score or recalling a random memory of my daughters set me off like Adele at an awards ceremony.
I wondered if my new mood was connected to missing food, since I had become a one-meal a day person with no snacking. Maybe giving up eating for pleasure was getting me down? But while I love food like Keir Starmer loves free glasses, not even giving up crisps could make me feel this hopeless.
The accepted routes for treating 'real' depression do not really apply to me since all I needed to do was stop the injections. I could hardly start taking anti-depressants to cope with the artificially induced depression brought on by other drugs.
Therapy to treat it also seemed ridiculous, since it would be treating something that I had the power to stop. That was not a luxury afforded to those unlucky enough to experience the real thing. The therapists I asked about this were none the wiser, expressing confusion about how they might treat a patient who believed their depression had been triggered not by a pre-existing condition or circumstance, but by weight-loss injections. For me, feeling this way was my choice: a trade off for a thinner waist and a current drop of 1st 9lbs.
Dr De Giorgi offered one explanation, yet admits that until he and others are able to conclude further research there is still no clinical evidence of a link between the drugs and depression.
'Some forms of depression are associated with high levels of inflammatory molecules, in which case the anti-inflammatory effects of GLP-1 medications would be helpful,' he explains. 'For other people, who are less prone to inflammation, the drugs might upset the balance in the body that is already in a sweet spot, so the drugs mean you have 'too little inflammation'. A degree of healthy inflammation is needed for the normal upkeep of brain cells. GLP-1 medications seem to be able to enter the brain, so we shouldn't be surprised if we find there are other implications such as mental effects.'
Even if a link was ever proven, which is not likely as things stand, it's hardly going to provide much comfort. Most recently, the icing on this doom-laden cake – the kind a goth would get for his birthday at a Dracula festival in Whitby – was that I began to have nightmares. A mixture of Franz Kafka's brand of horror and Stephen King's It, they were like video nasties in which the lead character shouts: 'This isn't real!' and tries to wake themselves up. After a couple of these, I had to set a deadline to get myself off this stuff. No chiselled jawline is worth this. Kate Moss once famously said: 'Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels', but, for me, it was a case of nothing feels as bad as skinny tastes.