In 2026, roughly one in eight American adults is on a GLP-1 like Ozempic, Wegovy, or Mounjaro, more than double the rate of eighteen months earlier. They were originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes; Ozempic won FDA approval for that in 2017, well before anyone thought of it as a weight-loss drug. And, funny enough, the whole class owes its existence to an unlikely source: the Gila monster. Researchers found that a peptide in the venom of the desert lizard mimicked the human hormone GLP-1 but lasted hours instead of minutes, and that durability is what eventually made a once-weekly injection possible. Now, the US obesity rate is falling for the first time in decades, the global market has cleared upwards of 130 billion dollars, and the shot has become as much a cultural fixture as a prescription. It’s now on red carpets, in group chats, in ads, commercials, and in nearly every conversation about wellness right now.
Part of why it went mainstream so fast is that famous people spoke openly about using it. Oprah got candid about using a GLP-1 and reframed weight as biology rather than willpower. Serena Williams, now a spokesperson for the telehealth company Ro, credits Zepbound with helping her lose 31 pounds and improve her health markers after her second pregnancy. Meghan Trainor, Chrissy Teigen, and Amy Schumer have all shared their results. These success stories, and the openness around sharing them, gave millions of people permission to try it too.
The popularity of this trend highlights a bigger story around the optimization era as a whole. GLP-1s are peptides, the same category now driving the entire longevity movement. Peptides like BPC-157, alongside NAD-based protocols, have evolved from bodybuilding forums to mainstream longevity clinics, and biohacking has grown into a booming global industry of labs, supplements, retreats, and large conferences like Dave Asprey’s upcoming BEYOND Wonderland, happening in Austin, TX on October 13-14. The overarching goal has extended beyond just fitting in your clothes better. It’s about building an optimized self, with more energy, a longer healthspan, better aging, and even cheating death, the literal mission of Bryan Johnson, the controversial tech entrepreneur whose entire movement is named “Don’t Die.” He takes more than a hundred supplements a day and spends around two million dollars a year trying to reverse his own biological age.
After the Body, the Self
For decades, weight loss was a wall most people never got over no matter how hard they pushed. Peptides like the GLP-1s turned that wall into a door almost overnight, a near-miraculous shortcut past a struggle that used to define entire lives. But the same kind of breakthrough is possible on the inside, too.
That is exactly where plant medicine comes in, and the greater trend is showing that the same people optimizing their bodies are realizing the inner work is just as crucial. You can perfect your labs, have single-digit body fat, and look like a million bucks but still feel unwell in the ways that matter most.
Psychedelic therapies, including the plant medicine ayahuasca, have surged in popularity right alongside the GLP-1 boom for that reason, offering the inner counterpart to all the outer optimization. For the longevity-minded, it has become the missing piece: not just living longer, but living with clarity and purpose.
Ketamine clinics have opened in nearly every major city, and states like Oregon and Colorado now offer legal, supervised psilocybin therapy. Those are the accessible on-ramps, the treatments you can book on a lunch break, but ayahuasca sits at the top of that hierarchy. It is the one people cross borders for, the destination experience reserved for those ready to go all the way in, and the results people report have a permanence the other modalities seem to miss. A line you’ll hear again and again from those who have sat ayahuasca is that a single week with the medicine can do the work of ten years of therapy. Where traditional therapy and pharmaceuticals had failed them, people describe treatment-resistant PTSD, addiction, depression, and anxiety finally loosening their grip.
A Quick, Necessary Word on Safety
For anyone on a GLP-1 or a serious supplement regimen, understanding contraindications is not optional, it is one of the most important parts of preparing to work with psychedelics, especially ayahuasca. A contraindication is any substance or condition that makes a given treatment unsafe. Ayahuasca acts powerfully on the brain and body, which means a number of things that are perfectly safe on their own can turn risky the moment an interaction goes awry.
Ayahuasca is a powerful MAOI, so it cannot be combined with SSRIs, SNRIs, or other serotonergic drugs without risking serotonin syndrome, which can be dangerous and occasionally fatal. Reputable centers will ask you to taper off those medications well in advance, typically two to six weeks depending on the drug’s half-life, always under a doctor’s care and never cold turkey.
The longevity compounds are a different conversation, because most of them, including BPC-157, NAD and its precursors, and the usual recovery peptides, are not serotonergic and carry no documented dangerous interaction with ayahuasca the way antidepressants do. The honest caveat is that these compounds are newer and far less studied than people assume, so the rule is simple: disclose every single one and let a medical professional have the final say.
GLP-1s are the exception, because they change your physiology in a way that matters in ceremony. They slow gastric emptying, which does two things: it can blunt or delay the experience, since the brew lingers in your stomach longer, and more importantly, it means your stomach can still hold contents when you are certain you have fasted, which becomes a concern in a setting where purging is part of the process. There is a blood sugar layer as well, because GLP-1s lower blood glucose, and since ceremony usually means fasting beforehand and purging throughout, there is little food on board while the drug is still working, which can drop blood sugar too low. In an altered state, those warning signs are easy to miss or mistake for the medicine itself.
For weekly GLP-1s like semaglutide or tirzepatide, the current thinking is to pause roughly one to two weeks ahead so the stomach can return to normal, with the newer data leaning toward the longer end. Daily formulations clear the body faster and usually only need to be paused a day or so beforehand. Either way, stopping a GLP-1 affects your blood sugar, so the timing should be planned with your doctor, not left to guesswork.
Why Rythmia Life Advancement Center Is the Go-To Center for the Longevity-Minded
Rythmia Life Advancement Center is the only medically licensed plant medicine center in the world, holding a General Medical License from the Costa Rican Ministry of Health. Every guest is medically screened before and upon arrival, and the center has an on-site clinic and a 24/7 clinical team of doctors and nurses. For anyone considering doing this work on a GLP-1, a peptide protocol, or any longevity regimen, that level of oversight is precisely why they are ranked #1 in their category on TripAdvisor, and have a reputation for being the go-to center for ayahuasca with many guests self-reporting a miracle after their stay.
Beyond the ratings, testimonials, and licensing, there is the location. Rythmia is located in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, one of only five Blue Zones on earth, the rare regions where people routinely live past 100 and are measurably happier and healthier as a whole. Those communities teach the one lesson the biohacking world often overlooks: the longest, healthiest lives are not built on supplements, cold plunges, and red-light therapies alone, but on a deeper sense of purpose, real connection, and belonging to a community of like-minded people. Those are exactly the things people describe finding through plant medicine, the breakthrough that becomes part of the miracle.
That is what makes Rythmia the best place for longevity-focused people to do this work. It is the one destination where modern medical safety, the science of life advancement, and the oldest healing tradition we have all co-exist in the same place. You can optimize the body almost anywhere, but Rythmia is where you optimize the soul, too.
If you want to go deeper on where Western medicine, plant medicine, and human optimization meet, Rythmia’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Jeff McNairy, is speaking on exactly that at BEYOND Wonderland, the conference we mentioned earlier, this October 13-14 in Austin, TX. It is the perfect place to keep exploring everything we’ve touched on here, continue the conversation, and connect with other like-minded people on a similar path.