The bestselling author of Lost Connections and Stolen Focus offers a revelatory look at the new drugs transforming weight loss as we know it-from his personal experience on Ozempic to our ability to heal our societys dysfunctional relationship with food weight and our bodies. In January 2023 Johann Hari started to inject himself once a week with Ozempic one of the new drugs that produces significant weight loss. He wasnt alone-some predictions suggest that in a few years a quarter of the U.S. population will be taking these drugs. While around 80 percent of diets fail someone taking one of the new drugs will lose up to a quarter of their body weight in six months. To the drugs defenders here is a moment of liberation from a condition that massively increases your chances of diabetes cancer and an early death. Still Hari was wildly conflicted. Can these drugs really be as good as they sound? Are they a magic solution-or a magic trick? Finding the answer to this high-stakes question led him on a journey from Iceland to Minneapolis to Tokyo and to interview the leading experts in the world on these questions. He found that along with the drugs massive benefits come twelve significant potential risks. He also found that these drugs radically challenge what we think we know about shame willpower and healing. What do they reveal about the nature of obesity itself? What psychological issues begin to emerge when our eating patterns are suddenly disrupted? Are the drugs a liberation or a further symptom of our deeply dysfunctional relationship with food? These drugs are about to change our world for better and for worse. Everybody needs to understand how they work-scientifically emotionally and culturally. MAGIC PILL is an essential guide to the revolution that has already begun and which one leading expert argues will be as transformative as the invention of the smartphone.
