I injected 0.25mg tirzepatide at 11 AM. The first day, as expected, I felt nothing. The day after, I also felt nothing initially, so I convinced myself that because it was a microdose, I might not feel anything until 2 weeks in where my blood levels would be higher. But mid-morning, I became ravenously hungry. As this was the exact opposite effect I was expecting, I didn't even associate it with the tirzepatide and before I even realized it, I had eaten the house down, including a ton of high-fat food: peanut butter, bacon, indian curries, even took in a protein shake with psyllium husk (which I later learned you weren't supposed to take fiber). That night, as I lay down to sleep, a sort of gastrointe­stinal horror began: I got waves of nausea, the kind I've only experienced before with psychedelic mushrooms, and mechanical reflux - a feeling of fullness all the way up to the top of my throat - very uncomfortable to say the least. At the same time, I kept feeling downward intestinal pressure that just wouldn't release. I slept very little that night. The next morning, I started doing research and may have pieced together what happened: the ravenous hunger could have been caused by paradoxical GIP receptor activation (or compensatory ghrelin) from only one part of the drug, maybe due to the microdose it deploys unevenly. But once GLP-1 activity engaged in the evening, gastric emptying crashed and my body started rebelling against me for all I had eaten that day. The next day, the diarrhea started, and never let up. My dizziness, a come-and-go Long COVID symptom for me, also came back pretty heavily. Suddenly, my sense of smell became extremely acute -- and in an awful way. Laundry detergent on my clothes, sheets, smells I'd normally filter out became prominent. Food smelled four times as strong. It was hardly bearable. I developed insomnia, and could only sleep 3.5 to 4.5 hours a night for the next few nights. Even trazodone didn't help like it normally did. My fatigue came back stronger as well. As my blood level dropped, thankfully the symptoms dropped in turn. However, two weeks after the first dose, I had two tacos and deveoped diahrrea which crashed and left me bedbound for 3 months and counting. Somehow, this inflamed my gut even two weeks out. I've tried about 30 interventions for Long COVID, and this was by far the worst for me.

I switched from Ozempic which had stopped showing weight loss or weight control. However controlled my T2DM. Zepbound definitely immediately started weight loss but has decreased my appetite so severely that I can barely eat or drink.

I've been using tirzepatide for the last 7 months. It did not seem to have any effect on my Long COVID symptoms, but it did help me indirectly. After my second COVID infection, I developed an intolerance to alcohol. For years, my alcohol intolerance upset me, as I previously enjoyed drinking and I missed the experience. But as soon as I started using tirzepatide, I lost all desire to drink alcohol, to the point where drinking never even enters my mind anymore. I haven't had a single alcoholic drink in nearly 4 months now -- the longest break from alcohol I've ever sustained as an adult -- and it hasn't felt challenging at all. I've also lost about 20 lbs without trying. When I was first starting the medication, I had some brutal pain in my guts that I found almost unbearable, but it passed after a couple of weeks.