Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight Loss Drugs – Hari Johann (2024)

In this revelatory book, Johann Hari examines the new drugs transforming weight loss, shares his personal experience with Ozempic and explores whether they can help heal society’s dysfunctional relationship with food, weight and our bodies. In January 2023, he began injecting himself with Ozempic once a week, joining a growing number of people using drugs that can produce significant weight loss. While around 80 per cent of diets fail, people taking one of these new drugs may lose up to a quarter of their body weight in six months. Supporters see them as liberation from a condition that greatly increases the risk of diabetes, cancer and early death, but Hari remains deeply conflicted. Can these drugs really be as good as they sound, or are they a magic solution—or a magical illusion? His search for an answer takes him from Iceland to Minneapolis to Tokyo, where he interviews leading experts on the subject. He discovers twelve significant potential risks alongside the drugs’ substantial benefits, and learns how radically they challenge what we think we know about shame, willpower and healing. Scientifically, emotionally and culturally, these drugs are poised to change the world for better and for worse. This book offers an essential guide to a revolution that has already begun, and which one leading expert compares in significance to the invention of the smartphone.