I nearly died after taking ‘miracle’ weight-loss drugs

Four weeks after starting Mounjaro, Clare Meadowcroft was hospitalised for 10 days with acute pancreatitis and was told to stop injecting. She recounts her terrifying experience

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I'm the kind of person who never has a day off sick, so I knew something was terribly wrong as I picked up the phone to call my GP earlier this year. Within hours, I'd been admitted to hospital, where doctors warned my partner I could end up in the ICU. In acute pain, I couldn't believe that my desire to lose weight had made me so dangerously ill.

I've always struggled with my weight. I was “big boned” at school, and while I tried every diet, from SlimFast shakes to the F Plan, as I grew older, I couldn't lose any significant amount of weight. By the time I turned 50, I was 20 stone - but accepted that this was just how I was built. And, as a publican, I knew I didn't help myself by eating the wrong food, often takeaways, at the wrong time.

Covid changed things, however, because with my pub shut down during the lockdowns, I was on my feet much less. After finally reopening, my knees and feet were in immense pain. I thought my body had just got out of the habit of standing for so long each day, and knew the GP would only tell me to lose weight if I went. Diets had never worked for me in the past, and when you have a lot to lose, shedding a pound or two each week can feel really dispiriting.

By March this year, however, the chat in the pub was more and more about GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. One of my customers, for instance, was on them because of diabetes and had lost a lot of weight. And as I sat with a group of friends one night, I realised that all of them were on Mounjaro too, which made me think. Might this be the solution? After looking at the NHS prescription guidelines, I was pretty sure I wouldn't be prescribed Mounjaro by my GP because I didn't have any weight-related health conditions like hypertension or sleep apnoea. A friend, however, told me she'd got it prescribed by an online regulated pharmacy, so I filled out a questionnaire, sent in a couple of photos, and a few days later, my first dose arrived.