- Ozempic users say they're having vivid dreams involving celebrities.
- One user dreamed about attending a cattle auction with Matthew McConaughey.
- An expert said odd dreams may be triggered by users exerting more energy in their sleep.
Ozempic users have reported having strange and vivid dreams involving celebrities, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Ozempic is a form of semaglutide: a drug originally approved to treat diabetes, which the FDA approved for weight loss under the name Wegovy in 2021. Hype has built around the drug, which celebrities including Elon Musk and Chelsea Handler say they have taken it, leading to shortages. Ozempic has become the byword for all semaglutide products, regardless of why a person is taking them.
Dreams people say they have had while on the drug as well as its Eli Lilly counterpart Mounjaro have spanned from attending a cattle auction with Matthew McConaughey to carrying Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's baby, WSJ reported. Another user wanted Will Ferrell to deliver their baby.
Reports of these vivid dreams have lead to the "ozempic dreams" TikTok account being created, which asks users to share the dreams they claim to have had while on the drug.
In one post, a person who said they take Wegovy recalled dreaming of spending the night at Home Depot ordering new cabinets and appliances with the help of salesman Clint Eastwood.
In another, an Ozempic user wrote: "Had my first crazy Ozempic dream, the Kardashian/Jenners were my family and Dinosaurs started invading and I saved us all with essential oils."
Others have shared their dreams on Facebook, the WSJ reported. One dream involved the actor Jonah Hill waiting tables on a cruise. He had changed his name to "Sundaze" and planned to quit acting in order to work in cabaret.
In another dream, an Ozempic user played baseball for a hostile crowd and had to be rescued by Oprah Winfrey in a go-kart.
A spokeswoman for Novo Nordisk — the company that manufactures Ozempic and Wegovy — told WSJ that they'd received reports of abnormal dreams from users. They didn't, however, have enough information to establish whether the drugs actually caused the dreams.
An Eli Lilly spokesperson declined to comment on the reports of strange dreams to the WSJ.
Ozempic probably doesn't cause people to dream about celebrities
Dr. Caroline Apovian, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-director of a weight-loss center at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston, told WSJ that Ozempic may trigger strange dreams because it promotes the production of a gut hormone that has receptors in the brain.
The drug may also make the user expend more energy while they're asleep, which could lead to vivid dreams, she said.
Alternatively, Deirdre Leigh Barrett, a dream researcher at Harvard Medical School, told WSJ that the drug could also be helping the user remember their dreams better than they would normally.
She said the drug probably isn't causing people to dream about celebrities, and posts on social media might be prompting others to share their own stories.