The Magic Pill by Johann Hari, published in 2022, is a thought-provoking exploration of how modern society’s approach to mental health, addiction, and social disconnection is contributing to a widespread "epidemic" of suffering. In the book, Hari argues that many of the problems we face—such as depression, anxiety, and addiction—are not simply biological or psychological issues, but deeply connected to how our society is structured. He suggests that the "magic pill" we are searching for in terms of treatment may not be a pharmaceutical solution but rather a shift in how we understand and address these issues at a societal level. It was interesting to see both sides of the issue from the personal perspective of the author--especially how life changes and doesn't change with weight loss. I would recommend for an approachable and accessible way to learn more about the future of health care medicine.

This should be required reading for anyone thinking about, or knows someone who is thinking about taking Ozempic. Johann Hari gives an honest account of his and others experience, the history of this drug and others like it, and a through look at what it means to be obese in modern society.

This book almost read like a journal entry or collection of essays. As the author contextualizes Ozempic has benefits the flip side are all of the concerns obesity and disordered eating comes with. He tries to warn against the benefits without addressing all the other long term barriers is not a sustained solution. I found it bit meandering but still thought provoking.

I have a deep personal interest in books on "magic pills" but this one just felt boring and way too long.

I did not finish unfortunately.

Great book about a topic we ALL need to be talking about, whatever our weight. Thoroughly researched., engagingly written. Hari, once again, took a complicated topic and personalized it and dispelled it down to the level that we all can relate to and understand. So many great questions raised and explored. Reading this book made me want to get involved in changing the food industry in the US and also made me think harder about my own choices. The stakes couldn't be higher. I hope many people read this and speak up. Thanks to Net Galley and Crown Publishing for the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

4.5 stars. Thank you to Net Galley and Crown Publishing for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. I always enjoy the writing style and content of this author and this one didn't disappoint. This book looks at the current trend of weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and how we got to this point. The author has struggled with his weight and decided to try the drug but learns of the many drawbacks and goes into a deep dive into these types of medications, medicine and how it deals with weight issues and as a society how we look at being overweight and the food industrial complex and capitalism that drives our overweight world. The author does a wonderful job of interweaving memoir, history and science to make a compelling story that is a page-turner.

This is an important, timely read. Technically I would qualify for the new GLP-! drugs but have a lot of trepidation. The author has started taking them yet along the way also interviews doctors, the scientists behind the new "weight loss" drugs, as well as reviewing scientific research. He starts out talking about how the food industry over time has contributed to the obesity epidemic in America (and other countries) by using chemicals and heavily processing food that makes us crave more and eat a lot of empty calories with minimal to no fiber. Yet the irony of the situation (as the author points out) is the solution is to use more chemicals created by Big Pharma to address the issue instead of getting to the root cause of the issue. But as he states, this will take a lot longer than our lifetimes to correct and in the meantime, his health is at stake - or is it? One of his friends pushed back on him and said he is losing weight not because of "health" but because he wants to be thinner. No one can blame him though - as much as the body positivity movement (think Dove ads) tried to create a more inclusive world embracing different sixes and shapes of bodies, there is still an incredible amount of fat shaming. People who are overweight are viewed as gluttons with no will-power and there is a lot of self-hatred and self-blame because of it. What if it is more than that -- the idea that diet and exercise will help someone lose weight and then will be able to successfully keep it off for the rest of their lives is a difficult battle as the body reaches its "set point." Even Weight Watchers bought a firm to peddle these new drugs -- realizing that maybe their is a "magic pill" which will be highly profitable to them as well. But most of all, what I appreciated about this book, is his own candid and personal stories woven in. His stories are relatable and made me feel for those of struggling with being overweight - we are not alone.

Thank you to Netgalley and Crown Publishing for an ARC and I voluntarily left this review.

This book covered a wide variety of topics relating to obesity, weight loss drugs, and processed food, and the different viewpoints of each issue, all relating to each other. When I started this book, I had a very loose opinion about how I felt about each topic, but there was so much information shown to me in this book that made me reconsider what I already knew and look at other viewpoints and weigh the pros and cons to each issue. I feel like I have a very good idea now about why things are, and my opinions are now very complex. I know there is really no easy way to deal with obesity, weight loss drugs, and how people view their own, and others, bodies, unless the issue of processed food can be taken care of first. I am so grateful for the author for writing this book and showing the different sides to each overlapping issue, as well as adding a section at the end to how we can work on removing processed foods. I think that, most of all, I have a lot more compassion for people dealing with these problems than I did before reading, as I have learned about how difficult it truly is to deal with the problems that obesity can bring, and how difficult it can be to lose weight. I also have a lot more hatred than I thought I could for the processed food companies and their advertising.

Thank you, NetGalley and Crown Publishing for this advanced reader's copy. This book was a timely read with all the recent news and celebrities taking Ozempic and Wygovy. The author writes on his own personal experiences with weight loss medication as a health journey. The author interweaves how and why these drugs were created and who they benefit, but also some of side effects many people suffer and why some people ultimately go off these medications. He tells of both the emotional and physical experience he has had of the years with the weight loss injections. It was a fascinating tale of how nutrition and the way we eat has changed and how it has affected us and how we may need to change behavior or use medication to help us be healthier.

As with every new drug and "instant" method to solve our health problems, Ozempic is marketed as a miracle pill, but as Johann Hari discovers, every miracle comes at a price. Told with a personal perspective mixed in with findings from around the world, Johann Hari questions the benefits, and consequences, of jumping on the latest fad for weight reduction. I found this book informative as a consumer who has heard of Ozempic for its weight-loss benefits, and its benefits for Type 2 diabetics, but isn't aware of all the consequences, besides the obvious shortage of supply for Type 2 diabetics. If you are interested in understanding Ozempic, I highly recommend this book.

Magic Pill was a Really interesting read and covers a lot of considerations and nuance. I appreciated the inclusion of fat positivity, HAES, and implications for eating disorders.

I really enjoyed this book. It was different than I expected. While the book does discuss the use of weight loss drugs, it is more of a in depth research and discussion on obesity in America and the U.K. I found the studies discussed in this book fascinating and would definitely recommend to anyone interested in learning more about this topic.

I was hoping this would be more of a deep dive into the history and science and current issues around these drugs, which is something a lot of patrons are very interested in learning more about, and less of Hari's memoir-style narrative. (I'm not saying the topic would have necessarily been better served by an author with no personal experience of taking Ozempic--in fact I can't overstate how beneficial it can be to have academics and journalists who have actually taken drugs write about the drugs in question, eg. Carl Hart--just that I think in this particular case the book would be better served and more widely appealing and useful to readers if it were less author-focused.)

Around 7 years ago, I did a full spectrum of lab tests that determined that I was close to becoming pre-diabetic. I had gone to a digestion specialist because I was concerned that I might have still been suffering from side effects of h-pylori food poisoning that had given me an ulcer a few years earlier. Instead of addressing this concern, that stomach-doctor was lobbying me to get a colonoscopy and to perhaps to a weight-loss surgery. I had gained around 100 pounds across the previous few years after another doctor had put me on a steroid-spray drug for my light sinus problems. The doctor who ordered lab-tests refused to see me again when I refused to do the invasive procedures he recommended, so I had to research the lab-data myself by searching for what each of the tests (hundreds of data points) was stating about my health. When I researched my weight (248 pounds at the peak in 2016), I realized for the first time that I was classified as morbidly-obese. Back in 2009, when I started my PhD studies, I was at my lowest weight in a while at around 148 pounds. I had not weighed myself outside a doctor’s office almost ever, being entirely unconcerned regarding my weight (except for moments such as when I was seriously considered for an acting role in 2008 at my lowest weight, without having looked in the mirror to check my looks had improved). When I researched obesity in 2016, the answer I found was going vegan, and so I moved rather rapidly in that direction, and lost around 100 pounds, dropping back down to around 148 temporarily by the end of 2017, before climbing upwards to 160-70 and staying at that weight through the present. I have changed my diet occasionally. Eating almost no processed food led to the low-point, as did precise calorie-counting with an app and keeping the calorie-count low to decrease the weight. Aside for my solid will-power, eating large quantities of unprocessed fruits and vegetables through the bulk of the loss kept me from being hungry simply because of the chewing labor involved and the fullness felt after eating such buckets of good food. I have also been hydrating with water and tea regularly, whereas before I almost never drank simple water just to meet a hydration-minimum, if at all. And I have been exercising daily for over an hour with aerobic, weight-training and stretching sets, across these years. I have occasionally eaten non-vegan foods whenever I have traveled to conferences and the like across my diet years, as practically always wins over the rules of this diet. I was conditioned to follow strict food rules from the 4th grade when I was exposed to them at an Orthodox Judaism school. And I have even eaten processed foods like chocolate vegan milk recently, which I would not have touched when I started this diet. The reason I almost immediately went vegan and maintained a diet unflinchingly after reviewing my lab results is because of my terror of needles, knowing that I would have to give myself regular shots if I developed diabetes. I fainted when I had those lab-tests done, and have not repeated any full set of tests since. Thus, if that stomach-doctor had told me in 2016 that the solution was to give myself Ozempic shots it would have been as strong or stronger of a “no”, as his ideas about a colonoscopy etc. being relevant. That stomach-doctor declared bankruptcy shortly after my visit, so this financial pressure must have been the reason for his strange refusal to see a patient to help with solving problems cheaply. Given these facts regarding my own experience, the weight-loss-shot trend is horrifying. If the drug is maintaining the weight loss, then going off this drug is equivalent to me reversing all my pre-weight-loss practices, including not drinking water, not exercising, and eating twice more calories of non-vegan fatty food. Staying on any drug for a lifetime is obviously as damaging to health as being an alcoholic or a tobacco smoker, especially if the drug is designed to fool the body, altering its chemistry, etc. Weight-loss surgeries work because they make people vomit if they attempt to over-eat, forcing adherence to a diet, until the stomach or the like re-expands and can again take in over-sized bunches of food. Because veganism works by over-filling the stomach with food that convinces the brain it is full earlier than compressed processed food would with equivalent calories, somebody who has had weight-loss surgery cannot also go vegan and take advantage of such fruit/vegetable-bulking. Eating half-a-watermelon for lunch would be far safer to make somebody feel full than getting a shot that makes them feel so noxious they do not want to it. I just wanted to insert this public-service-announcement before looking inside this book to warn readers away from this idea: giving this warning was my motive for requesting this book.
The subtitle of this book is at least not a pure puffery as it refers to the extremes of “Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks”. But then the “Contents” page of Hari’s book includes a typo in the subtitle of “Chapter 1… How he Drugs Work”. The first chapter that caught my attention is the one that seems to argue against my previous paragraph: “Chapter 6: Why Don’t You Diet and Exercise Instead?” Hari begins by describing a dinner out he had with a friend when “he shoveled some breaded chicken schnitzel”. I have not dined out (except for during conference trips when all rules are out) since I moved to my tiny house in Quanah in 2017. There are no fancy or semi-fancy restaurants in my region, so dining out means cheap fast-food, which is not appealing, even if I was not vegan. As soon as I realized I was morbidly obese, I decided to avoid such fast-food or minimize it. So I do not understand how Hari is actively eating this stuff, and is contemplating diabetes shots instead of just putting the “schnitzel” down. His friend asks him this same standard question. He answers that since his “late teens” he had “diligently tried” this “usually around once a year.” Why would not eating out, or eating a vegetable once a year be a serious attempt at weight loss? Obviously, whatever anybody does for 1/365 days is not going to have any meaningful impact on our weight. The obstacle that stopped him after this vigorous day was “hunger”. What? Not eating out for a day makes him hungry? Is he going from eating a wagon-of-fat to nothing, maintaining the near-zero calories until he is starving and then returning to the wagon? Why isn’t he snacking on fruits, or nuts or anything reasonably low-calorie throughout his diet days to make sure to avoid feelings of hunger preventing slide-backs? Then, he goes to a clinic for an “intestinal cleansing therapy”. The colon etc. is self-cleaning: everything in it comes out eventually somehow. If special cleaning is necessary due to constipation, eating half-a-watermelon is more likely to “clean” it thoroughly than over-the-counter drugs, or the invasive stuff that can happen at an over-priced clinic. The more fiber we eat, the faster the “intestinal” stuff is going to exit. Just a basic tip in case Hari is going to ponder the options in the future. Hari then describes that he was served “stale” bread deliberately at this clinic to teach him “to chew”. Amazingly, Hari remained in this facility, and listens with amazement to an absurd lecture on chewing technique and silent eating. At this point I realize that this chapter is supposed to be about simply exercising and eating less, and instead of just trying this, Hari has taken on a money-wasting exercise that has him having “tea” for all his meals, without meeting the caloric minimum necessary to avoid the extreme-hunger he was afraid of at the onset. When he is refused food days in, he stages an “uprising” by eating “pizza”, and leaving without his deposit. Those who run that facility know that everybody will fail and either will have paid in advance, or will return again after hunger forces them to binge after a stay. The scientists at these facilities spend their time investigating how to make people pay as much as possible, while having to provide as little food as possible, and maximizing recidivism. They win if their diet-plan fails. The simple advice is, eat less and exercise, not starve and meditate in silence. The reason 95% of dieters fail is because the diet-industry makes billions if most diets fail, whereas it would make no money if they gave advice that led to success. For example, telling a patient to go vegan and to eat as much as they want has been proven by studies to lead to significant weight-loss, which continues if veganism is maintained. It would take a few seconds for a doctor to tell a patient to go vegan and to thus increase fruit-vegetable-bean-bread-oats-etc. fiber consumption. Since this can happen during an unrelated appointment with a non-specialist, this doctor would make $0 extra for this medical prescription of good food. The patient can then lower their grocery bill by maintaining this diet. In contrast, any wellness guru who can give nonsensical advice that does not work can pocket hundreds or thousands for continuous streams of nonsensical lectures, and then this patient is forced to seek out another nonsense-lecturer or servicer who makes even more to make sure than 95% of clients fail and keep paying into this system. Weight-loss-shots that cost thousands are an example of extreme profit-margins, as the production of this drug costs pennies, and if 25% of a population were on these drugs this would equal the cost of 25% of the population having entirely unnecessary surgeries annually.
In “Chapter 7: The Brain Breakthrough”, Hari begins by reporting that he has started taking Ozempic, but while he believed (without reporting the numbers) that he was losing weight, he started feeling that his “mood was strangely muted. I didn’t feel as excited for the day ahead… I felt a little listless…” Only when he was facing clinical depression did he then begin researching “the brain effects”. He writes that the drug is supposed to work because “They are an artificial copy of a guy hormone—GLP-1—that tells you when you’re full. The real hormone lasts for a few minutes and then vanishes; the replica lingers for a whole week.” It is “boosting fullness and slowing digestion.” One of the most-frequent pieces of advice for weight-loss is increasing metabolism, which means speeding up digestion, and yet this drug performs the opposite function. Additionally, Hari realized that GLP-1 is produced in the brain, so the reduction in appetite really happens by manipulating the normal chemistry in the brain. He then cites a study that claimed that GLP-1 injected into the brain causes a “cut back on” specifically “junk food”, and the consumption of the same amount of “normal” food. This is absurd because there is no rat “junk-food”, as rats are fed rat-food… He goes on to speculate that this drug can dampen addiction, but this is entirely a false argument because he started this digression by explaining that GLP-1 is a hormone that the body releases specifically when somebody has eaten too much to signal fullness, and to slow digestion because there is too much food to process. The Mayo Clinic explains it thus: “When blood sugar levels start to rise after someone eats, these drugs stimulate the body to produce more insulin. The extra insulin helps lower blood sugar levels.” They are used by diabetics in combination with insulin because they have a parallel effect on blood sugar levels. This process can only be making somebody noxious instead of full because a drop in blood sugar level should stimulate new natural hunger to bring the blood sugar level to a stable level. If there is an artificial chemical constantly lowering the sugar level, this must be an enormous risk towards developing diabetes, just as giving somebody who is non-diabetic insulin can trigger the start of diabetes. This is all extremely disturbing. Every time I hear somebody talking about a trend towards widespread usage of these drugs, I am horrified, and reading this conversational account explains how people who fail to look up definitions on Mayo Clinic (at least) are fooled by such personal-narratives.
I hope nobody reading this review will try these drugs, nor read this book. Just listen to my free advice: exercise and eat more fiber in real food.

This was a very interesting book about using GLP-1 for weight loss. I decided to read this as my husband is using one of the drugs and I though this book would be more about the how to use it, nutrition and things you could do to prolong the weight loss when you stopped taking it. However it was about the authors journey using this type of drug for his own weight loss journey. It was interested to read about the way it made him feel and the side effects he endured. This book also has a lot of information from interviews, the history of how this drug came to be and he talks about the stigma of using these meds rather than “healthy exercise and diet” which we should all know doesn’t work for everyone.
Very interesting and with a read if you want to know more about this medication that is helping so many people.

Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for the arc.

With the current state of injectable weight loss drugs being a hot topic in the media, I wanted to read more about the subject.

Enter Johann Hari's "Magic Pill"

This book details Hari's journey into his own weight issues, his eventual journey into taking the new weight loss drugs as well as his thoughts and research into how we got into this state of obesity in the first place. This was a fascinating book into the culture of weight and medicinal tools. Even though a lot of the book is information that is well known in regards to the obesity epidemic as well as solutions to curve it, I found myself more interested in Hari's journey into taking the weight loss medications.

Overall, it was an enjoyable read to see one man's journey into this unknown territory!

Wow. This book feels like a must-read in our current times. I have been a fan of Johann Hari since first seeing his TED Talk on addiction back in 2014. I have since read a few of his other books and have always enjoyed the subject matter he focuses on. Magic Pill was no exception. Hari is able to explore the topic of Ozempic and its related weight-loss drugs both from a first-hand experience, as well as through investigative journalism. I always appreciate when a book is able to meld the two perspectives in a way that clearly explores a topic with the reader. I was captivated by Hari's exploration of his own upbringing with food (farm-life dad and urban mom) and how eating ultra-processed foods ultimately created a coping skill of sorts in his adult life. I found it very relatable that he had a mom who viewed a microwave as a godsend.

As an American, obesity is a huge problem in our country and I think so many people would feel both validated and educated in reading Magic Pill. I also enjoyed the look into ultra-processed foods and how this is shifting our society as a whole, regardless of health or exercise status. I learned a lot in reading this book and have a greater empathy for those struggling with both diabetes and living with excess weight. I think these "magic pills" are going to be something our society will need to grapple with as they become more accessible and move from injection to pill form. Reading this book feels like a wonderful first step in making lasting lifestyle changes that can create a longer and healthier life.

Thank you to NetGalley, Crown Publishing, Crown, and the author Johann Hari for the ARC of this wonderfully explorative and informative book!

Deeply fascinating read for those learning about GLP-1s, although many of the language choices discussing plus size people were unfortunate. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free advance copy.

Ozempic, and its semaglutide sisters, is certainly a hot button topic lately. These medications have been highly successful in terms of their promised outcomes as well as the profit they have amassed. I was curious to learn more about how these drugs work, the downsides to taking them (the author cites 12) and the long term impacts. The book’s author actually bases the book, in part, on his own personal experience plus much in depth research and analysis. I found the book to be quite balanced and it provided great arguments in favour of these drugs but also important points that countered these. Plus, the author takes a big step back and looks at the macro implications of these drugs and if they will truly solve the larger issues caused by the predatory food industry and cultural eating habits.

I found this book to be really informative and captivating. I particularly liked the chapter that explored Japanese culture and delved into what the Japanese are getting so right in this realm, and how their habits can factor into making meaningful and long term change in Western society.

The one thing I would have liked to hear in this book is a medical perspective on these medications, in addition to that of a journalist, albeit one that did thorough research.

I had read Johann Hari's previous book, Stolen Focus, so I was intrigued to read this one. He is a journalist, so this book is not a full medical treatment of obesity or weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic. Instead, it is his memoir of personally taking Ozempic for weight loss, as well as a look at the obesity epidemic and other ways to treat it. According to Hard, food-caused illnesses are estimated to be the leading cause of death, when you consider that heart disease, cancer and dementia all have a strong diet and lifestyle component. Over 42% of adults in the US are now obese, so it is incumbent on us to figure out why this happened and how to cure it. Hari looks at much of this in the book.
He looks at how Ozempic and related drugs works, as well as its benefits and side effects. Unfortunately no one knows that long term side effects of taking these drugs and once started, they usually need to be taken for life or else the weight returns. Hari suggests, and I agree, that we need to radically change the foods we eat. Our diet needs to consist of substantially more whole foods and very few processed foods. One chapter looks at the Japanese food and health culture. Japanese people have the longest life span of anyone on earth, and they remain healthier longer with many fewer heart attacks and cancers. Their society has many factors that help them reduce obesity and improve health. Unfortunately it may be difficult for the US to implement many of these changes because the processed food industry has a huge influence over both government and media.
The pharmaceutical industry also holds a huge sway over both government and media. They have a financial interest in keeping people sick and tied to medications for a lifetime. As a nutritionist I do not recommend that people use weight-loss drugs until they have exhausted the diet and exercise means available to them. I highly recommend this book to everyone interested in health and nutrition.
I received a complementary copy of this book from the publisher via NetGally.