Hello! 🙂

[yobculture]

Hello!

I just signed up last week after lurking for a while. My “journey” actually started with my wife, who struggles with obesity. Early last year her medical insurance (Kaiser) covered Ozempic. She had minor success with it. Her doctor then gave her a prescription for Mounjaro, but then Kaiser wouldn’t cover it. Then out of nowhere, Kaiser decided they would no longer cover Ozempic. Lovely! Because I’m worried about her health, I did lots of research on compounding pharmacies, as it seemed to be the only option. (We could not afford to pay out of pocket. Thanks, Kaiser!) We decided to go with compounded Tirzepatide through Mochi. I know a lot of people have strong opinions about Mochi, but we don’t have a lot of money and they were the most financially viable option, because they were one of the only compounding agencies that didn’t increase their price as the dose went up. (There are better options, but they don’t ship to California.)

But, the $300 a month cost from Mochi has been taking a huge hit on us. The cost of living is through the roof, much worse than a year ago, and losing $300 a month is taking its toll. So here’s where I come in.

During COVID, I gained at least 25 pounds that I have never successfully taken off. I’m 60 now and the period during COVID was the first time I had ever gained a substantial amount of weight. I guess I had been lucky most of my life, but it seemed odd that my metabolism fell apart in my late 50s during a pandemic. 🤷🏻‍♂️

My plan is to be sort of a Guinea pig and make tirzepatide peptides my “hobby.” I want to try peptides for a while and see if it’s safe before recommending them to my wife as an option. Right now I am on 2.5 mg of tirzepatide and I’m using Polaris Peptides. They seem to have a good reputation and so far I’m reacting to them well. Unfortunately, their prices hike up drastically as the doses go up. I was hoping that peptides would be a cheaper alternative for my wife, but almost all peptide vendors end up being more expensive than compounded tirzepatide from Mochi as the dosage goes up. Once you go up to 15 mg, the price is unreasonable. (A full dose at Polaris would cost $500 a month, which is far more than Mochi’s compounded tirzepatide.) After tons and tons of research, and searching for more financially viable options, I ultimately found my way here.

I love reading the different posts from different members. 😍 Like all forums, posts range from incredibly nice to incredibly snarky. But that’s the joy of forums. Huge shoutout to @Skidude,who has incredibly helpful comments and seems to genuinely want people here to succeed. @Skidude is especially kind to noobs. 🙏 I’ve learned a lot from their posts.

Even though I’ve read hundreds of posts here, the process has been frustrating. The moment I decide on a vendor, after reading many positive things about them, then someone, usually a moderator, will slam the vendor and then I have to start all over again in my search. I wanted to try Depris to kind of test the waters, but then there were posts stating that doing so might potentially be dangerous. Same with Nexpa. Ugh. And I understand that noobs can be irritating when they ask for help, but we are just trying to find the safest avenue for our “hobby.” In my case, I’m trying to find the safest path for my wife with me as a Guinea pig. If I don’t die, then it’s safe! Haha. 😂 From what I’ve gathered so far, there are safer alternatives, but I’ll have to figure it out myself. It seems to be a big no-no to ask for help here. Which I can totally understand.

It seems my best choices for peptides are the places that only take Crypto, which is incredibly daunting. (I have the disorder formerly known as Asperger’s, so things like navigating through the many dark hoops of crypto is especially difficult for me.)

I didn’t mean for this to go on this long, but I have a feeling that a lot of noobs are having similar experiences. The saddest part is that none of this had to be this way. Greedy pharmaceutical companies are clearly making comically large profits by hiking up their prices to the point where only rich celebrities can afford to use their products. If I can potentially buy 10 vials of 30 mg tirzepatide for $200, which would be a 5 month supply at full dose, then something is clearly wrong. (In contrast, the same dosage for the “real” thing would cost up to $6,000. That’s insane!)

I just wanted to introduce myself in my long winded way and say how much I appreciate this forum. 😊 Even though I have my frustrations, I am thankful that this place exists. Hopefully, someday I’ll be able to figure this all out and get my wife (and me) on the safest path without going into financial ruin.

Thanks for letting me be part of this forum! 🫡

 

[Calm Logic]

Welcome 🙂

Randomly picking a vendor that is discussed often and having one of the vials in a kit tested for $300 would be one option. But very few of us do that, so we all find our different ways to make sense of these criminal enterprises we call vendors and their white-powder products.

 

[Skidude]

I appreciate the shout out and know the feeling of struggling to make cost make sense, when I first found my way here there was a big scare we were all going to get cutoff compounding as a result of there no longer being a shortage, I absolutely had to find a way to avoid that... I was on a mission to get healthy and was committed to finding a way- Good Luck on yours!

Some key points-
There is very little difference form Compound vs Grey, other than the obvious possibility of purity and fill which can be mitigated with 3rd party testing.
You may have a bad time but as long as you "actually" get Tirz you should be ok. (this is where testing is important)

Recommending a vendor has many challenges, as they can be great until they are not.. So you never know, day to day, who is safest/best to recommend.

I have a background in IT and still found crypto a bit confusing, but there are places that teach it pretty easily.
Let me try to make a simple example:

I use strike to get my funds- its like if I wanted to use BofA for my bank account but did not want to pay from there.
In strike I buy BTC. lets say i wanted a few hundred dollars, i buy it in strike and once it arrives I can then send it somewhere else-
I transfer/send it to exodus for my purchases, think of exodus like a gift card i bought- not directly linked but trackable to my BofA (strike account)
Once the BTC is in exodus I can then send it to whomever i buy from.
Easy peasy.. (a little more to it, but easy to learn)

Try it with a few bucks until you feel comfortable, you will be amazed how easy it is once you practice.

Keep in mind your first few transactions will take longer and never send more than you are willing to lose.
You got this

 

[yobculture]

Thanks so much, Skidude! Your example really helped a lot. I had already downloaded Exodus, so your additional tips are super helpful. I’ll figure this out eventually.

 

[Calm Logic]

You may have a bad time but as long as you "actually" get Tirz you should be ok. (this is where testing is important)

And if it isn't tirz, it could have zero peptides or be something else like reta. (So though such incidents are rare, I think it's best to try a low dose when trying a new kit for the first time.)

The kits are labeled at some point, but the vials are not. So that is an accident waiting to happen, especially when some vendors sell synthetic opioids and even worse.

I would love to throw Nexa under the bus as the most expensive group buy possible, but Nexa has affordable prices for preorders, like their current pre-order of T60. The Nexa option is understandably popular among newbies who need something sooner than later.

Mislabeled kits and other potential problems are mentioned here:

Post in thread 'Trusted Vendors'

May 12, 2025

She's annoying every comment she makes on here is negative .

There are portions of the GLP-1/peptide/etc. community that heavily cater towards people new to the space and have all sorts of guides, resources, and discussion around people getting their start in the grey market.

This is not one of them. The expectation is a certain level of self-sufficiency, because the philosophy here is that this is an area where you are dealing with injecting yourself with health altering substances being sold by drug dealers in another country where we have no legal recourse if anything goes...

• hexagonal

• 
• 

 

[yobculture]

And if it isn't tirz, it could have zero peptides or be something else like reta. (So though such incidents are rare, I think it's best to try a low dose when trying a new kit for the first time.)

That is really scary. 😳

 

[yobculture]

Recommending a vendor has many challenges, as they can be great until they are not.. So you never know, day to day, who is safest/best to recommend.

🎯

This is what I’ve been gathering after reading hundreds of posts. It’s frustrating.

 

[zpped]

It's a good reminder that if you didn't personally test one of your own vials. The safest thing is to sit on it for a couple months to see if there are any issues reported by others. This is also why it's good to participate in group testing.

 

[Calm Logic]

I read that you are on 2.5 mg of tirz, but what dose of tirz is your wife on now? 15?

If you moved out of California, you could probably afford name-brand Zepbound 😀 Or at least be potentially eligible for the compounding pharmacy Brello Health, which is what I used previously and is still $499 for three months.

 

[yobculture]

I read that you are on 2.5 mg of tirz, but what dose of tirz is your wife on now? 15?

If you moved out of California, you could probably afford name-brand Zepbound 😀 Or at least be eligible for the compounding pharmacy Brello Health, which is $499 for three months.

She is only on 5 mg of tirz so she’s only been doing it for a short while. But my hunch is that she will need the full 15 mg because she was on the highest dose of Ozempic until Kaiser abruptly cut her off. Then her weight came back with a vengeance. Because it’s likely that she will need the full dose, we needed a vendor that didn’t go up as the dose went up. Mochi was one of the few that kept their price the same no matter the dose. But for us, $300 a month is a lot of money. Brello was one of the vendors that seemed doable, but, as you already mentioned, they don’t ship to California.

I really appreciate all of your thoughtful responses. I didn’t quite expect this level of kindness. The post you linked from @hexagonal was pretty remarkable. Brutally honest and potentially life-saving. Thank you so much for linking it. It definitely made me rethink everything and take a deep breath before plunging into something too rashly. I came so close to ordering from Nexa last week, but I’m glad I stopped myself. I clearly need to take this verrryyy slowly.

 

[zpped]

🎯

This is what I’ve been gathering after reading hundreds of posts. It’s frustrating.

It might help if you understood why we shit on vendors. There is no perfect vendor. If no one has anything negative to say about a vendor it's probably because they haven't been around long enough. We need people understand the downsides of each vendor, because none have a perfect track record.

Read through some of the longer threads shitting on specific vendors and you'll hear about names of vendors people recommend. But the best deals come from vendors that only take crypto so that is a hindrance to a lot of people.

We encourage people ask for help with specific things they read but don't understand. We discourage asking for things that don't have an answer, like who the best/safest vendor. The answer to that is Eli Lilly. We discourage asking questions that show you haven't put the least amount of effort into learning first. Things that can be found in 5 minutes with the search bar. It takes a minimum of weeks of commitment to reading posts to even begin to start understanding things around here.

 

[Calm Logic]

She is only on 5 mg of tirz so she’s only been doing it for a short while. But my hunch is that she will need the full 15 mg

This still blows my mind, that there are 120-mg vials of tirz now (which would last for 8 weeks at 15 mg/week; or 80 weeks of 15 mg for the whole kit):

https://glp1forum.com/threads/tirz-120mg-vials.3280/

My doc tells his patients that they will probably need to be at least on 10 mg at some point.

 

[MadisonB]

I appreciate the shout out and know the feeling of struggling to make cost make sense, when I first found my way here there was a big scare we were all going to get cutoff compounding as a result of there no longer being a shortage, I absolutely had to find a way to avoid that... I was on a mission to get healthy and was committed to finding a way- Good Luck on yours!

Some key points-
There is very little difference form Compound vs Grey, other than the obvious possibility of purity and fill which can be mitigated with 3rd party testing.
You may have a bad time but as long as you "actually" get Tirz you should be ok. (this is where testing is important)

Recommending a vendor has many challenges, as they can be great until they are not.. So you never know, day to day, who is safest/best to recommend.

I have a background in IT and still found crypto a bit confusing, but there are places that teach it pretty easily.
Let me try to make a simple example:

I use strike to get my funds- its like if I wanted to use BofA for my bank account but did not want to pay from there.
In strike I buy BTC. lets say i wanted a few hundred dollars, i buy it in strike and once it arrives I can then send it somewhere else-
I transfer/send it to exodus for my purchases, think of exodus like a gift card i bought- not directly linked but trackable to my BofA (strike account)
Once the BTC is in exodus I can then send it to whomever i buy from.
Easy peasy.. (a little more to it, but easy to learn)

Try it with a few bucks until you feel comfortable, you will be amazed how easy it is once you practice.

Keep in mind your first few transactions will take longer and never send more than you are willing to lose.
You got this

Thank you for breaking down crypto this way, wish it *still* didn't make my brain melt.

 

[syndet2x]

welcome aboard yobculture. had my therapy cut short as company moving out of Cali down to Texas. I can state based on my own experience (albeit i'm 65+) that staying close to EL step up at least up thru 10mg should yield fairly steady progress, and that helps a whole lot in the psychological domain. my doc held me at 10mg for a couple of months...he likewise considers it a likely "sweet spot", had just bumped to 12.5mg when SHTF.

its the "spin" of retraining what is eaten and when that puts control front and center, and after that...you can begin adjustments 'outside' the pharma single shot per week, further improving command over your journey. i grabbed a Trezor (hardware wallet) and planning to move into crypto soon (after finally moving in to the place i've lived in for 18mos 🤦‍♂️ nature of the beast in tech)

as far as the glp-1 "buy", i used scamsite for a kit. there are other vendors with better pricing (non-domestic warehouses) many requiring crypto. keep in mind its not always about the buy...shipping comes with a price tag of both cost and delay (and the shadow cast with uncertainty). as pointed out, the active compound is going up in volume, so maybe a full kit (10 vials) is a deferable decision that will provide some time to acclimate to single vial reconstitution and administration. i pin IM TC, but actually like pens for peps: i can pin 6 in under 5 mins. sure could have lined up insulin syringe preloads, but i'm ex-pipe puffer and like the ritual. some really really thoughtful threads up here on pro/con "details" that are worth it: filtering, syringe vs pen, and as you surmise: vendors.

this is a super community. use search. mods are guardians, share any enthusiasm with discretion

 

[yobculture]

welcome aboard yobculture. had my therapy cut short as company moving out of Cali down to Texas. I can state based on my own experience (albeit i'm 65+) that staying close to EL step up at least up thru 10mg should yield fairly steady progress, and that helps a whole lot in the psychological domain. my doc held me at 10mg for a couple of months...he likewise considers it a likely "sweet spot", had just bumped to 12.5mg when SHTF.

its the "spin" of retraining what is eaten and when that puts control front and center, and after that...you can begin adjustments 'outside' the pharma single shot per week, further improving command over your journey. i grabbed a Trezor (hardware wallet) and planning to move into crypto soon (after finally moving in to the place i've lived in for 18mos 🤦‍♂️ nature of the beast in tech)

as far as the glp-1 "buy", i used scamsite for a kit. there are other vendors with better pricing (non-domestic warehouses) many requiring crypto. keep in mind its not always about the buy...shipping comes with a price tag of both cost and delay (and the shadow cast with uncertainty). as pointed out, the active compound is going up in volume, so maybe a full kit (10 vials) is a deferable decision that will provide some time to acclimate to single vial reconstitution and administration. i pin IM TC, but actually like pens for peps: i can pin 6 in under 5 mins. sure could have lined up insulin syringe preloads, but i'm ex-pipe puffer and like the ritual. some really really thoughtful threads up here on pro/con "details" that are worth it: filtering, syringe vs pen, and as you surmise: vendors.

this is a super community. use search. mods are guardians, share any enthusiasm with discretion

Thank you for the info! At first I was confused by the word “scamsite,” but then realized that a certain vendor’s name has been replaced with that across this forum. Pretty amusing. Again, thanks for all the helpful tips!

 

[indolent]

Thank you for the info! At first I was confused by the word “scamsite,” but then realized that a certain vendor’s name has been replaced with that across this forum. Pretty amusing. Again, thanks for all the helpful tips!

Is it amusing?

 

[Calm Logic]

Huge shoutout to @Skidude,who has incredibly helpful comments and seems to genuinely want people here to succeed.

He's in Texas, so he has a lot of free time on his hands 😀