Semaglutide and related peptides are extremely popular. Polling suggests that as of this month ~18% of Americans have used GLP-1 agonists (for ease I’ll refer to these as GLP-1s), primarily for weight loss, which a 6% increase from even just six months ago. They have positive secondary effects on all kinds of medical conditions, like cardiovascular risk, and they’re so popular they are going to covered by Medicare and Medicaid.
While there are many legal sources of GLP-1s, they all require a doctor’s prescription, and are anywhere from 2x to 10 more expensive than grey market sources. Also, only a government simp sticks to the FDA approved sources. Real patriots buy chains of amino acids from Chinese factories, sold through a middleman website that also offers novelty t-shirts.
Research chemicals are the identical (or, at least supposed to be) peptides manufactured for research, and not-for-human-consumption. They are shipped in a dry powder form, and the end user mixes them with water, measures the appropriate amount, and self-injects. For “research”.
Anecdotally half of the Bay Area is on some form of GLP-1s. I wanted to get an accurate estimate of how common the research chemical version of GLP-1s are, and some kind of baseline for how many people are slurping those sweet Pep-tis (no one says this) off label.
I started by Googling and Gemini Deep Research - I didn’t turn up much. The best source was a survey detailing the willingness to buy from non-pharmaceutical sources:
“The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center reveals 1 in 4 (25%) of 1,006 adults surveyed would consider using an injectable weight loss medication without consulting their doctor.”
So, I ran my own Survey! Prolific is an online platform where you can ask a pool of respondents simple, one to five question long surveys. I took the plunge and crafted a simple survey asking 100 Americans whether they had 1.) every taken GLP-1s and b.) where they sourced them.
My guess was a 1% prevalence rate - one respondent - would say they had taken research chemicals.
But in fact of the total 100 responses, 43 people responded they had used GLP-1s now or in the past, and of those, four said they had acquired it through a research chemical/peptide vendor, and another four from third parties (aka friends). This means 18.6% of the people who use GLP1s acquired them outside normal medical channels.
That is *insanely* high, both in terms of number of people using GLP-1s and those who had sourced them from non-traditional channels. What’s going on?
Perhaps the people on Prolific are very online, and thus more aware of the availability of GLP-1s and research chemicals?
I had considered doing a ‘representative sample’ that would select survey respondents proportional to US population, but it would have required 300 responses and I started small.
The study name I chose, not realizing it would be public, was “Survey of GLP-1 Peptide Usage” - this probably selected for people who have used GLP-1.
I asked two questions but I didn’t set up the survey properly to include an N/A for the second question for, if they have not used GLP1s; perhaps this caused people to lie that they had so they felt like they could finish the survey?
Lizardman constant - answering yes and saying research chemicals or friends is more interesting?
OK, fair enough, lets take this from the top. I set up a second survey, this time with 150 Americans (no, I’m not sure why I chose 150), asking a single question “Have you ever purchased GLP-1s (such as Semaglutide or Tirzepatide) from an online “Research Chemical” or “Peptide” vendor”. I titled the survey “Online Supplement Sourcing”.
This is looking slightly more realistic - out of 150 people, seven reported purchasing GLP-1s from an online vendor, and four said they used them but someone else purchased them. 11 / 150 = 7.3% prevalence rate, with a margin of error of 4.2%.
I had hoped that the third option - “No, I only use prescribed versions (from a pharmacy, doctor, or telehealth clinic)” - would capture people using legally prescribed GLP-1s, but my guess is people didn’t make that connection.
And, this is still high enough that I don’t believe it’s not biased. I’m again not using a representative sample, and suspect that we’re getting sloppy answers. But lets say you wanted to halve the range because of overreporting - that would still imply that at the the average Bay Area house party with fifty people, one to five are on the Chinese Peps (nobody calls them this).
At this point, I’ve spent $51 on surveys, I’m still not very confident in my estimates, and I’m wondering why I didn’t just run a representative survey from the start. But, I did learn a lot about how not to shoot myself in the foot when making a survey, and I feel like it’s time to run a real, 300 person, all Americans from every class and demographic, survey.
I get it ready, launch it with an appropriately vague title… and my account is put on hold.
Prolific perhaps thought I was being too prolific with peptide related inquiries? Despite my best efforts, I can’t get out of account jail:
So, to stay ahead of the steamroller that is the Inkhaven publish deadline, and before I blow my money on more information about peptides, instead of cool peptides themselves, I decided to call it there. If my account is unfrozen perhaps I will update the post with a larger survey result!
omg the shirt