Last fall, Miriam set a goal: She wanted to lose two pounds. “It sounds so dumb,” she told me. But at only five-foot-two, any little weight gain was visible on her petite frame, she added. If she wanted to slim down the old-fashioned way, she could have. She had done it before. She knew how to white-knuckle her way through the hunger of a 1,200-calorie day. But, she thought, why bother?
Instead, Miriam paid $195 for a vial of retatrutide — or reta, as she and others call the drug — that she ordered from a peptide distributor she found through Instagram. It’s a newer version of a GLP-1, sometimes called a GLP-3 or “Triple G” because it targets three hormone receptors instead of one. (It’s still considered experimental and is currently in Phase 3 clinical trials.) She loves talking about how she figured out how much to take. “So I knew that the clinical trials started at two milligrams, but this was for people who are obese,” she said. “I’m like, Okay, well, I’m not obese. I’m going to go lower.”
