The 1990s saw a major shift toward daily pill use, with adults taking more prescription drugs and using medications for depression and cholesterol far more often. The 2020s are now marked by a similar transition toward injections. Injected medications have multiplied, with millions using insulin-related syringes and many more using GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro for diabetes and weight loss. In 2025, about 12% of U.S. adults used these injections or similar ones, and GLP-1 shots made up about 7% of all prescriptions. Fertility treatment, Botox, fillers, and cosmetic and wellness injections add further needle-based demand, including self-administered hormone shots and treatments at medical spas.
"In the 2020s, we're living through a second such transition: the dawning of the needle age. For the past five years, the nation's shots have multiplied to levels never seen before. Injected medications were once unusual, and mostly limited to diabetics who needed insulin. Now millions of diabetics use syringes of Ozempic, and millions of other people are on Mounjaro for weight loss."
"In 2025, some 12 percent of all U.S. adults partook of these injections or others in their class. GLP-1 shots were so commonplace last year that they accounted for about 7 percent of all prescriptions in America. Even this is just the tip of the needle."
"Americans' use of IVF has doubled in a decade, and now requires something on the order of 10 million to 20 million self-administered hormone shots a year. By 2024, 10 million rounds of Botox (or other wrinkle relaxants) were given out, along with 8 million filler treatments."
"These are puncture parlors, more or less, and they offer a growing list of services: not just treatments for the skin but also vitamin injections, IV-dripped electrolytes, and minerals delivered through a tube. One needle-forward wellness chain, called JECT, has locations in Miami Beach, West Hollywood, the Hamptons, and, as it happens, right around the corner from my house in Brooklyn."
#prescription-drugs #glp-1-injections #weight-loss #ivf-and-fertility-treatment #cosmetic-injections
Read at The Atlantic
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