A woman who turned to weight loss injections after struggling with other methods says the medication unexpectedly affected her libido.
Christine Smith-Reed, a salon owner in Columbia City, said she’d spent years trying to lose weight, only to find the results didn’t last.
With many Americans dissatisfied with their weight — a Gallup poll suggests roughly one in 10 feel unhappy about it — she decided to explore prescription options when traditional approaches weren’t delivering long-term change.
Christine ultimately chose to try tirzepatide, the active ingredient used in certain GLP-1 medications, hoping it would help where other efforts hadn’t.
She said the injections helped with weight loss, but came with an unexpected downside: a sharp drop in sexual desire.
“All of a sudden, I couldn’t care less about sex,” she told The Post of her changing libido once on the weight loss jabs.
Married for 17 years, Christine said the shift didn’t just affect her personally — it also changed the dynamic of her relationship.
She explained that once she started the medication, orgasms became difficult to achieve and intimacy felt fundamentally different than before.
“I would participate, but I definitely wouldn’t climax, or if I did, it took a lot of effort. And I feel guilty for that because it isn’t due to poor performance on my husband’s part,” she said. “It’s literally that something is wrong with me.”
Christine also described the emotional strain that followed as their previously active sex life slowed dramatically.
“When you go from having a very active sex life to having a nonexistent sex life, there was a lot of silence,” Christine added, explaining that this ended up causing an emotional impact too, telling the outlet. “There were cold shoulders. There were hurt feelings — probably from both of us.”
While some people taking GLP-1 medications have reported an increase in libido, Christine’s experience highlights that responses can vary widely from person to person.
Dr. James Simon, a reproductive endocrinologist, OBGYN and clinical professor at George Washington University, explained to The Wall Street Journal: “These drugs do work in the same places that pleasure and sexual interest are located in the human brain—male and female.”
In other words, depending on an individual’s biology and circumstances, the drugs may raise sexual interest for some while diminishing it for others.
Christine said her symptoms improved after she moved to a maintenance dose once she reached her weight-loss goal.
“It’s not like [my sex drive] went into overdrive, but I had no problem achieving orgasm. And that happened more than once,” she said. “It was like coming up for air when you’ve been drowning. Like I’m not broken.”