Influencers are pushing suspicious peptides. How much are you willing to risk?
This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent every Friday from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they're going to change your life. Optimizer arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 10AM ET. Opt in for Optimizer here.
On TikTok, it's disturbingly easy to find videos of influencers reconstituting vials of powdered peptides. In most, influencers hold up a vial of gray-market retatrutide, an unapproved weight loss drug colloquially known variously as GLP-3 (because it adds two extra agonists, glucagon and GIP), reta, and ratatouille. The other supplies on hand are alcohol swa …