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Wegovy (Ozempic, Semaglutide)1 was found to be extremely effective for safely achieving weight loss and subsequently approved for its treatment in 2021. Since then, it’s enjoyed a level of popularity like no other drug before it. In fact, the whole class of drugs—GLP-1 receptor agonists, or just GLP-1s—has enjoyed skyrocketing popularity. In early 2024, the Kaiser Family Foundation polled Americans about their GLP-1 drug usage and reported that one-in-eight had used the drugs at least once.
With that popularity came shortages: manufacturers simply could not keep up with Americans’ demand for safe and effective weight loss medication. When the FDA declared that there were GLP-1 shortages, that meant that millions of Americans made their first contact with compounding pharmacies, because a shortage meant these pharmacies were cleared to produce and sell their own preparations of these drugs.
When compounding pharmacies started selling their own Ozempic, they definitely alleviated the shortages, and they worked to make the drugs far more available than they would be otherwise, in two main ways:
Several of these pharmacies provided a process for would-be users to obtain prescriptions for GLP-1 drugs. It’s an open secret that this process was more lenient than the typical prescription process that takes place at a doctor’s office.
Compounding pharmacies offered much lower costs for many potential GLP-1 users because insurance coverage of GLP-1 drugs is spotty. These users would have had to choose between paying upwards of $1,000 per month or $300 via compounding pharmacies. At the former price, the drugs were often unaffordable.
But now, the FDA has declared that the shortages are over, so the compounding pharmacies no longer have the right to sell compounded GLP-1 drugs. Ironically, the end of the shortage therefore means greatly reduced GLP-1 access for millions of Americans who came to depend on compounding pharmacies for their access.
But access doesn’t have to be cut off. Plenty of people have discovered that GLP-1 drugs are easy to prepare yourself. While I legally cannot and I do not recommend doing that, those who want to can follow the steps below to accomplish that goal.
Step one in getting very cheap Ozempic is to find a peptide source. There are tons of these online and you can find them by Googling things like “buy Ozempic peptide”. Lots of reliable sources come up on the first page with that search, but if you want to see my preferred source, go to the section after this one. A bottle of Ozempic peptide looks like this:
Using my preferred source, you get 31 weeks of Ozempic using the typical dosing schedule for $501.5 total, or $64.71 per month. After getting to week 17, the per-month price rises to $96.3 per month (assuming a month = four weeks) because you’re using 2.4 mg per week—about one-third what compounding pharmacies were selling for. Do note: It is possible to do better than this price (i.e., $19 per month), but the purity guarantees doing that are inferior, so I cannot say I ‘prefer’ or ‘recommend’ that in any sense. Adventurous people can still choose to do that if they so wish! [Update: My ‘preferred’ source linked below sells Ozempic for $15.47/month.]
Once you’ve found a source and ordered your peptides, let’s talk storage. Before reconstitution, I recommend keeping them in the freezer. This extends their shelf life from months to years. After reconstitution, do not freeze them, but do refrigerate them when you’re not actively trying to use them. If your refrigerator is so cold that it freezes a reconstituted peptide, you’re making a mistake. Now to be clear, you do not need to keep them refrigerated when you’re drawing from your vials either, refrigeration is just for when you’re not preparing an injection.
With peptides in hand, you’ll still need to order a few more things before you can inject yourself. Luckily, those things are cheap, legal, and readily available. You’ll need:
Bacteriostatic water. This is crucial for preparing your Ozempic and you can get it on Amazon, or often enough, from peptide sources themselves. Bacteriostatic water can be kept at room temperature until opened, whereafter it should be refrigerated.
Sterile syringes. These are going to be used for transporting bacteriostatic water and Ozempic. They are very cheaply available in bulk on Amazon, Aliexpress, and through many other online retailers. I recommend getting 1 mL syringes for pulling from your vials and injecting and 3 mL syringes for putting bacteriostatic water in.
Sterile needles. These are going to be used for penetrating your bottle of Ozempic, your bottle of bacteriostatic water, and your fat butt2 (or stomach, or arms, or wherever you feel most comfortable injecting). They’re readily available on Amazon, Aliexpress, and elsewhere, like the other ingredients are. I recommend 4mm needles at 30 or 32 gauge for adding bacteriostatic water to your Ozempic and for pulling Ozempic from your vials, and 34 gauge needles (higher gauge = thinner needle) for injecting, but the size of needles you use is up to your personal preference.
Sterile swabs. Any old alcohol swabs will tend to do. You can get these at Walmart and other superstores, on Amazon, Aliexpress, and in so many other places. If you’re the sort of person to own a first aid kit (which you should be), then you probably already have a lot of these in your home. If not, just buy them; they’re extremely cheap.
And that’s all you’ll need. If you’re a judicious shopper, it should cost you about $40 to get all of this in sufficient quantities to go for a year or more. If you’re not good at finding good prices, I could see someone paying $60 for this or more if they’re buying very large quantities of this stuff for whatever reason. Do your shopping right and this should add no more than $3 per month to your Ozempic bill.
Now that you’ve acquired your peptides and all the tools you need, it’s time to reconstitute your peptide. This simply means turning them from a crystallized form to a liquid one that you can inject. You start by getting out one of your vials of your Ozempic peptide and another vial of your bacteriostatic water. They will have caps on them, like the red cap in the illustration below. Take those off. Do not take off the metal cap with the gray plastic on top of it. That’s the sterile barrier.
Now prepare a syringe. Grab one of your syringes and pull back the quantity of air equal to the amount of bacteriostatic water you want to pull from your bottle. This amount will vary depending on how much of the peptide is in your vials, but for the formulation I recommend, I supply quantities in the section below. This information will always be trivial to calculate, but if you’re having trouble, Google it. Put a needle for drawing out bacteriostatic water on it, and grab an alcohol swab. You’re going to use the alcohol swab on your bacteriostatic water vial’s lid before you put the needle through the bottle’s gray plastic part on the lid. Next, push in the air and draw back the required amount of water.
Now that you have your bacteriostatic water drawn into your syringe, take the needle out and use a fresh alcohol swab on the vial for your peptide. Put in the needle with the bacteriostatic water and inject the water before removing the needle and disposing of it and the syringe safely, meaning not letting a needle just lie loose. If you have stable hands, put the cap back on the needle before disposal; if you do not, then don’t bother with recapping it, because you might prick yourself, and that can suck. To dispose of a needle safely, place it in hard-sided container with a lid, such as a food storage box or an empty laundry detergent canister.
Wait a moment until there are no more chunks in your bottle, at most gently swishing around your peptide. Once you just see a clear liquid, you have reconstituted Ozempic! Now it’s time to get it in your body.
Take a fresh syringe and needle and pull back the quantity of air equal to the quantity of Ozempic you want to draw, swab down the top of the vial (do this each time you need to prick it), put your needle on your syringe, and pierce through the top of the vial and draw the quantity of Ozempic you want. Once you’re done, pull out the needle and dispose of it safely, before putting on a fresh needle. Now onto injection.
When you have a prepared needle and syringe, you just need to alcohol swab your injection site thoroughly and put the needle in and inject. It’s that simple, but if you’re not familiar with how to do this, just look it up online. There are tons of video guides to do this. The injection site can be any appropriate subcutaneous fat injection site, but I recommend injecting into belly fat, because for most people, that’s the easiest way to do this. If you’re lean enough that it’s not the easiest site for you, then search around for an appropriate site.
And that’s all it takes! Go store the remaining part of your vial, and you’re done. If you did everything right, you just prepared and injected cheap, high-quality, homemade Ozempic. Congratulations on the biohacking.
If better priced sources than the ones linked below emerge, I will provide links to those as soon as I’m aware of them.
