How to lose weight, infringe patents, and possibly poison yourself for 22 Euros a month.

Introduction

In March 2025, Scott Alexander wrote:

Others are turning amateur chemist. You can order GLP-1 peptides from China for cheap. Once you have the peptide, all you have to do is put it in the right amount of bacteriostatic water. In theory this is no harder than any other mix-powder-with-water task. But this time if you do anything wrong, or are insufficiently clean, you can give yourself a horrible infection, or inactivate the drug, or accidentally take 100x too much of the drug and end up with negative weight and float up into the sky and be lost forever. ACX cannot in good conscience recommend this cheap, common, and awesome solution.

With a BMI of about 28, low executive function, a bit of sleep apnea and no willpower to spend on either dieting or dealing with the medical priesthood, I thought I would give it a try. This is a summary of my journey.

Please do not expect any great revelations here beyond "you can buy semaglutide from China, duh". All of the details here can also be [...]

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Outline:

(00:17 ) Introduction

(01:58 ) Picking a substance and route of administration

(03:03 ) Finding a vendor

(04:52 ) Sourcing bacteriostatic water

(05:47 ) Other equipment

(06:14 ) My current procedure

(08:00 ) Outcome (_N=1_)

The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

January 1st, 2026

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/coLiSHpP338Xwibbp/the-bio-pirate-s-guide-to-glp-1-agonists

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.