03/23/2026
We used to shame people for taking antidepressants.
And I don't mean a hundred years ago. I mean in my lifetime.
Prozac didn't even exist until 1988. Before that, if you were struggling with depression or anxiety, your options were limited and the stigma was brutal. There was no widely available, widely accepted medication that could help. You were just expected to deal with it.
"You have so much to be grateful for." "Other people have it worse." "You just need to get out of the house." "Everybody feels down sometimes. You'll get over it."
And even after Prozac came along, it took another decade before people stopped whispering about it. I watched it happen in real time. This was not ancient history. This was the 90s. People hid it. They didn't want anyone to know they were on it. They didn't even want to talk about it with their own families.
And the worst part wasn't what other people said. It was what people started to believe about themselves. That they were broken. That they were weak. That the fact that they couldn't just "snap out of it" meant something was fundamentally wrong with them as a human being. Going on medication felt like waving a white flag. Like admitting to the world that they couldn't handle what everyone else seemed to handle just fine.
So they suffered. Quietly. Some for years. Some for their entire lives. Because the help didn't exist yet, and then when it finally did, the shame kept them from taking it.
And then, slowly, the truth started to break through.
It's not your fault. Your brain isn't producing enough serotonin. That's not a character flaw. That's chemistry. And now, for the first time, we have something that can actually help.
That moment changed millions of lives. Not just the medication itself, but the permission. The relief of finally hearing that they weren't broken. They had a medical condition. And there was no more shame in treating depression with medication than there was in treating diabetes with insulin.
Now? Roughly one in eight Americans takes an antidepressant. Nobody whispers about it anymore. Nobody treats it like a dirty secret. We got there. It took too long, but we got there.
I need you to hear me when I say this: we are standing at that exact same turning point with weight.
Right now, people are doing the exact same thing with weight loss medication that they did with antidepressants thirty years ago. Hiding their medication. Making up other reasons for why they're losing weight. Not telling their friends, their coworkers, sometimes even their spouses. Because the shame is that heavy.
And it's not hard to see why. Go online for five minutes and you'll find comment sections full of people who have never struggled with their weight telling everyone else what they should be doing. "Just put down the fork." "That's the lazy way out." "You're taking the easy road." People who have no idea what it's like to fight their own body every single day have the loudest opinions about how everyone else should be handling it.
It's the same energy as telling someone with depression to "just choose to be happy." Easy to say when your brain chemistry works fine.
I see it in my office every single day. Someone walks in, won't make eye contact, and says some version of "I just feel like I should be able to do this on my own." They've tried every diet. Every workout plan. Every piece of well-meaning advice anyone has ever given them. And they're sitting across from me convinced that the reason none of it worked is because something is wrong with them.
But here's what those people in the comment sections don't understand. And here's what I wish someone had told my patients years ago:
Nothing is wrong with you. Your hormones are lying to you.
We now know that for many people, weight struggles are not a willpower problem. They are a hormone problem. Leptin, ghrelin, insulin, GLP-1... these hormones control your hunger, your fullness, and what your body does with every calorie you eat. And when they're not working right, your brain is constantly working against you, making weight loss feel impossible no matter what you do. You're not failing. Your biology is giving you bad information.
And just like we would never look at someone whose brain can't produce enough serotonin and say "just think happier thoughts"... we have got to stop looking at someone whose hunger hormones are broken and saying "just eat less and move more."
I watch my patients' whole bodies change when I tell them this. Because most of them have never heard it before. Not once. No one has ever told them that this isn't their fault. That their biology has been working against them. That there is a real, medical reason they've been struggling, and there is a real, medical treatment that can help.
GLP-1 medications don't give you willpower. They give your body what it's been missing. They restore the hormonal signals your body was getting wrong. And for the first time, your body can finally work with you instead of against you. The same way an SSRI doesn't give you happiness. It gives your brain the chemistry it needs so you can actually feel it.
That's not a shortcut. That's not cheating. That's medicine doing what medicine has always done.
Twenty years from now, we are going to look back at this moment and wonder why we ever made people feel ashamed for treating a medical condition with medical tools. The same way we look back now and can't believe we told depressed people to just go for a walk.
Let's not wait twenty years.
If you would never judge someone for being on an antidepressant, please extend that same grace to someone on a GLP-1 medication. Weight is a biochemical problem. It deserves real treatment. And the people dealing with it deserve the same compassion we finally learned to give people with depression.
And if you're the person who has been carrying that shame... if you've been telling yourself you're lazy, or weak, or just not trying hard enough... I want you to hear what I tell my patients every single day:
It was never a moral failing. It was chemistry. And you have nothing to be ashamed of.
