Korrie Stevenson had been feeling off for months. She would look at a gorgeous birthday cake or walk outside to a pink-and-purple streaked sunset, but not really enjoy them. The 51-year-old mother of two had similar feelings about sports, something she had loved since she was a child.
But it wasn’t depression, she said. Everything was just “meh.”
“Like you’re trying to be excited about a moment but can’t fully connect to it,” she said.
Then one day, she was driving near her home in Winter Park, Florida, when the thought came to her: Was it a side effect of her GLP-1 medication?
Doctors say they’ve begun hearing similar accounts: a kind of emotional flattening, a dulled response not just to food but to other sources of joy such as reading, listening to music, dancing, and gardening. Online, the phenomenon has taken on a name – anhedonia – and, more colloquially, “Ozempic personality.”
There is, for now, more observation than explanation.
The new class of GLP-1 drugs – built around compounds that mimic hormones involved in appetite and blood-sugar regulation – are generally considered safe. Their metabolic effects have been scrutinized in studies, but their psychological impact is far less understood.
Anecdotally, physicians describe meaningful mental health gains – greater self-esteem, less shame over eating and an overall lift in mood – among their patients. Earlier concerns that GLP-1 drugs might elevate the risk of suicidal ideation have not held up under further study, and the newest studies seem to indicate the drugs could benefit some with severe psychological conditions.
A study published this month in The Lancet involving about 95,000 people found that among those with diabetes or obesity who also have depression or anxiety, semaglutide (the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy) was linked to a lower risk of worsening depression, anxiety, substance use disorder and self-harm – though the results show correlation, not causation. In March, researchers reported in the BMJ that a wide range of GLP-1s, including semaglutide and tirzepatide (in Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound), were associated with a lower risk of substance-related deaths, as well as fewer overdoses and drug-related hospitalizations, based on an analysis of Veterans Affairs data involving about 606,000 people.
But as the use of GLP-1s has expanded, a subtler set of experiences has come into view.
Reports of anhedonia are not widespread, doctors emphasize. But they are appearing with enough frequency – and consistency – to warrant closer scrutiny.
Liz Skrbkova, who leads the U.S. media team for Novo Nordisk, said in a statement that safety is the company’s top priority. The drug has been studied in more than 54,000 participants, Skrbkova said, and “anhedonia is not currently listed as an adverse drug reaction or warning.” Eli Lilly expressed similar sentiments about its commitment to safety and encouraged anyone experiencing side effects to speak with their health care provider or call the company. However, it added, “we do not have any data to share on anhedonia.”
Food noise and the brain’s reward system
Weight loss at this scale doesn’t just change the body – it can reshape identity, habits and social feedback, making it hard to disentangle the drug’s direct effects from everything that follows.
One place researchers are looking is dopamine – the brain’s reward system.
“One simple explanation is that GLP-1s tone down regions of the brain associated with pleasure,” said Daniel Drucker, an obesity researcher with the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. This may be why the drugs appear to quiet “food noise,” the persistent pull toward eating, and may also dampen cravings for alcohol, nicotine and other substances, he said.
But Drucker, a pioneer in the research of the new drugs who advises companies that make them, said it’s possible the effect in some people at some dosages “could go to an extreme,” thereby blunting other reward pathways.
How this might work remains unsettled among researchers.
Zak Krumm, a researcher at the University of Florida, studies how GLP-1 drugs shape dopamine signaling in animals. Lately, his work has centered on rats – running repeated variations of experiments in which rewards are offered, responses measured and shifts in motivation traced.
Rat brains don’t exactly translate to human brains, but Krumm’s work suggests that responses to even high-value rewards are chronically muted. So, he explained, a person offered a chocolate milkshake might not crave it as much.
But in a separate set of animal experiments, at a lab in Michigan, researchers found what appears to be the opposite: a more responsive, or “turbocharged,” dopamine signal. In that case, Krumm explained, the milkshake may still feel rewarding – but the brain registers satisfaction more quickly, so less is needed.
Different mechanisms, in other words, that may lead to a similar result: reduced desire for more.
“There’s a tendency to think dopamine just drives us to seek pleasure,” he said. “But it’s really about how valuable a reward feels.”
Physician Spencer Nadolsky, an obesity specialist whose large online following gives him an unusually broad window into patient experience, said he began hearing reports from patients on GLP-1s of a subtle loss of motivation about a year and a half ago. “It stopped feeling like coincidence,” he said.
Most cases, he noted, appeared to resolve when someone’s dose is reduced, often as quickly as within a few weeks. For more persistent symptoms, he turns to bupropion (Wellbutrin), an antidepressant that enhances dopamine activity and may counterbalance the effect.
Nadolsky and Krumm are now compiling case studies – roughly 100 patients, drawn from thousands treated – to better characterize the phenomenon. The work is preliminary, and both emphasize how much remains unknown: whether the effect is pharmacological, psychological or some shifting combination of the two.
The aim, ultimately, is calibration.
“We want enough dopamine to still enjoy the things we enjoy,” Nadolsky said.
‘OMG this might be me’
Summer Kessel, a registered dietitian who works with Nadolsky, first heard about the issue of feeling off from her clients who were on GLP-1s: “They would just report – and this is so juvenile – that they’d just want to ‘bed rot.’ And that’s not them.”
At first, she suspected they weren’t eating enough or eating appropriately. But when she analyzed their nutritional intake, it appeared adequate. One thing that struck her: a number of them started gravitating toward intensely flavored, high-reward foods – specifically sour gummy candies – that they had never previously liked.
Then, late last year, she started having similar feelings after being on GLP-1s herself for 3⅓ years.
In early January, the 39-year-old sat down to put on her shoes for a workout, which was typically the highlight of her day. But she had trouble getting motivated to get up. An hour later, she was alarmed to find herself still on the floor, still scrolling on her phone.
Kessel dropped her GLP-1 dosage from 15 milligrams a week – the highest dose of Zepbound – to 10. She lasted only three weeks before going back up to 15. “I was so hungry,” she explained.
Still, something shifted. Her motivation came back. She’s now training for a Hyrox race (a high-intensity competition that blends distance running with strength and endurance challenges) in Miami in the coming weeks, she and feels largely like herself again. Looking back, she isn’t sure what to credit: the brief change in dosage, the transition from winter to spring, a new gym or some combination.
“Many people don’t know it’s a thing until they hear somebody else’s experience, and then they say, ‘OMG this might be me,’” she said.
Stevenson said she began to notice shifts in her emotional state within months of starting GLP-1 drugs in 2023.
She didn’t realize how bad things had gotten until 2025, when a police officer pulled her over to let her know her registration was expired – six months earlier. On the drive home, she burst into tears. The emotional flatness she had been feeling had deepened into something closer to apathy, and she feared she was at a crisis point.
“I love being organized and people to count on me, and nothing ever went by the wayside. I couldn’t even relate to what I had become,” she said.
She was taking the highest dose, 15 milligrams of Zepbound – but felt stuck because her insurance would not cover a lower one. Unexpectedly, her insurer announced it would stop covering the drug altogether. What seemed like a setback became a turning point.
On Jan. 1, she began paying out of pocket and reduced her dose to 12½ milligrams a week. Within two weeks, she said, she had started clearing through the foot-and-a-half stack of bills that had piled up – and more importantly started feeling joy again. She is convinced the change was tied to the drug.
While Stevenson said GLP-1s have been “modern-day miraculous for her” – before starting it, she struggled with high blood pressure, sleep apnea and weight – she said people should be aware of possible emotional changes and address them early.
“It’s a serious side effect,” she said, “and a lot of people just think they became lazy people, but that’s just not true.”
(c) 2026 , The Washington Post · Ariana Eunjung Cha
