Uncontrollable vomiting. Seizures. Throwing up blood.
These are some of the horrifying symptoms people have reported after overdosing on GLP-1 drugs.
Though the drugs have been around since 2005 to manage diabetes, they exploded in use after 2021, when Wegovy was approved by the FDA to treat obesity. Since then, GLP-1 use has quadrupled to as many as 1 in 8 adults taking the medications.
And with increased use, calls to poison centers for GLP-1 exposures also sky rocketed. In 2021, they were managing around 100 related calls a month. It’s steadily increased to around 1000 related calls a month in 2025.
Part of the reason is that GLP-1s are easier to get than ever via telehealth, which is often a one-stop shop that bypasses an in-person doctor’s visit and a trip to the pharmacy. While that makes things dramatically cheaper and faster, it also unleashes largely unregulated medication onto folks looking for help with weight loss.
What happens when you overdose on a GLP-1 drug?
For some, an overdose starts with uncontrollable vomiting, as it did with Karleigh McClain. A month after she was diagnosed with a GLP-1 overdose, she told NBC News, she was dealing with residual side effects of elevated heart rate and vision problems.
Lottie Moss, younger sister of model Kate Moss, also spoke about getting hospitalized for a GLP-1 overdose. She couldn’t keep water or food down, she said, and while in the hospital, she had a seizure due to dehydration.
Leigh-Anne Lagden, a content creator, was also hospitalized after vomiting blood.
With more GLP-1s out in the world, kids can get ahold of them too. A 7-year-old in Indiana injected herself with her mom’s medication, causing her to be hospitalized twice, her family told WTHR News. She was vomiting so often, she also couldn’t keep water down and stopped urinating.
At one point, her parents said she started throwing up “brown chunks,” which doctors said could’ve been her stomach’s lining. The family feared for her life, but she ultimately made a full recovery.
Shawn Rose, a businessman from Chicago, also feared he might not survive after something went wrong with his GLP-1 medication. “At one point, they told me if I wouldn’t have came in when I did, I would have probably died,” he told KING 5 News. “I was so sick that … I thought I was dying.”
GLP-1s can cause low blood sugar levels, causing shakiness, sweating, confusion, dizziness, and in severse cases, loss of consciousness. It can also increase the risk of developing pancreatitis.
The risk of getting GLP-1s online
Both McClain and Moss got their GLP-1 meds through less-than-ideal methods. Moss got it through a friend, while McClain joined a growing number of people who got their GLP-1 prescription via telehealth.
She says she turned to a telehealth company after her insurance stopped covering the name brand medication, so it was dramatically cheaper to get ahold of the drug online.
Better prices, short turnaround times, and fewer questions asked make telehealth an appealing option for many. People also turn to telehealth to get around what they might feel are awkward conversations about their weight.
By bypassing the traditional safeguard of an in-person doctor’s visit, getting GLP-1s is fast and cheap. But that also means the telehealth’s understanding of a patient’s health may be incomplete — reports say some companies don’t require a call with a doctor at all before getting a GLP-1 script.
And less or no time with a doctor means that patients won’t necessarily be getting the spiel about the importance of proper eating, exercise, and follow up care.
One-stop GLP-1 shopping
What’s more, many telehealth companies act as both the doctor and pharmacy, removing another traditional block in the process where a patient might ask questions and address concerns.
But the medicine telehealth companies are offering aren’t necessarily the same thing as the name brand stuff.
In February, the FDA sent warning letters to 30 telehealth companies over their claims that their products were comparable to FDA-approved name brand medications when their products are compounded without any federal oversight.
Through compounding, the pharmacy combines active pharmaceutical ingredients with additives. The FDA says that concentrations of that active ingredient can vary depending on the compounder, and a single compounder may offer multiple concentrations.
Patients are left to navigate the two-pronged issue of inconsistent dosing and little to no doctor oversight.
“Many of the patients who received vials of compounded semaglutide lacked experience with self-injections,” the FDA said in a 2024 report. “Unfamiliarity with withdrawing medication from a vial into a syringe and coupled with confusion between different units of measurement (e.g., milliliters, milligrams and “units”) may have contributed to dosing errors.”
What to look out for
Compounded drugs are not reviewed for safety, efficacy, or quality, so don’t believe marketing that it’s the same as the name brand, the FDA warns.
Some red flags to look out for include too-good-to-be-true pricing, medicine that looks different than expected, packaging that had be opened or damaged, and getting a prescription without meeting with a doctor at all.
GLP-1s can cause nausea, stomach pain, and vomiting normally. But if you can’t stop vomiting and are experiencing extreme pain or dizziness, go to the ER.
