Roxy Jacenko tells of Ozempic overdose while trying to lose weight

PR guru Roxy Jacenko has revealed she almost died after overdosing on diabetes drug Ozempic while trying to lose weight. WATCH the video she made on the day she injected the drug.

• How Roxy Jacenko built her business empire

PR guru Roxy Jacenko has revealed she felt like dying after overdosing on diabetes medication-turned-celebrity weight-loss drug Ozempic.

Struggling to lose the 15kg she gained after using Tamoxifen, a hormone therapy used to treat breast cancer, Jacenko turned to the diabetes drug which has been branded Hollywood’s latest weight-loss trend.

Amy Schumer, Chelsea Handler, Elon Musk and Remi Bader have admitted to administering Ozempic to help trim fat, while Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Kyle Richards and Khloe Kardashian are rumoured to have used it.

“I tried not eating much, I tried cutting out alcohol and I tried exercising. It didn’t work, I didn’t shed the weight,” Jacenko told The Saturday Telegraph.

“I thought, ‘I am reading and hearing about Ozempic all the time. I am trying it’.

PR queen Roxy Jacenko has issued a warning for anyone thinking about taking Ozempic as a weight loss quick fix.

“I went to my doctor and I begged him and he said, ‘Roxy go and look in the mirror’. He made me walk into his room and look at myself in the mirror and he said, ‘I am not giving you a prescription, you don’t need it’.

“So I went somewhere else and I got it. You would be blown away by the number of people who will give you scripts for that stuff.”

Jacenko getting treatment in St Vincent’s overdose clinic.

The diabetes drug has gained TikTok fame. Picture: Getty

Jacenko says she behaved much like a “junkie” when she finally tracked down the injection-based medication six months ago.

“The only place I could find Ozempic was in Nowra,” she said.

“So I paid someone $2500 to drive to Nowra to collect it.

“The only one I could get was a 1 milligram pen. So basically you start on 0.25 and after a number of weeks or months you can transition yourself onto a higher dosage.

“I took the 1ml because it was it was all I could get. I was like a junkie. I was like a proper junkie.

“I thought there was going to be a quick fix for losing these 15 kilos from the breast cancer medication.”

Jacenko collapsed after taking four times the recommended dose.

Despite only being prescribed 0.25ml, a “desperate” Jacenko was so thrilled and intrigued by the drug, she risked her life and took four doses in one hit.

“I thought, ‘you know what, I am desperate’,” she said.

“I had turned into this person who would only wear leggings, trainers and an oversized T-shirt.

“I didn’t feel comfortable, I didn’t feel confident. I couldn’t even do my jeans up.

“I couldn’t wait.”

What followed was uncontrollable vomiting, non-stop “epilepsy type” shaking, and three days in a drug overdose clinic where she was told her organs could have shut down.

“I thought I was actually going to die,” she said.

“I have had cancer, radiation therapy, all of that. It doesn’t even compare to how bad I felt when I took this drug.

“For the first 12 hours I was OK. I vomited four times that morning, once in a hire car and I went to work.

“That’s when I made that video (above). It was funny at first, like a joke.

“That day it got progressively worse where I was to the point where I could not stop vomiting and my whole body was shaking.

“I called an ambulance. An ambulance was going to be an hour away but I thought I was going to die. I went to St Vincent’s. They were amazing there and admitted me straight away.”

Jacenko said she gained weight while taking Tamoxifen to treat her breast cancer.

Because it is a relatively new drug, even doctors at St Vincent's struggled with how to treat Jacenko’s overdose.

“The problem was because it was such a new drug, they weren’t equipped with knowing how to get it out of my system,” she said.

“Also, the doctors said there had been an alert there was fake Ozempic around which had amphetamine in it so they were really worried that’s what I had been given.

“It was from a chain pharmacy so they don’t think it was fake.

“They put me on bags of fluids and then so I would stop shaking they put me on valium.”

Jacenko said Ozempic use among Sydney’s celebrity set was “widespread”, fuelling the worldwide shortage of the medication.

“Everyone is doing it,” she said.

“You would be blown away by the well-known people who are doing it and are saying they are not.

“What happens is you get sucked into the quick fix.”

Her message to those considering trying the pharmaceutical is simple: Don’t.

“Why am I speaking about this? Because if there is one thing about me, I own it. And if this is a lesson to anyone who is trying to get it, then great. It is not worth the ramifications.

“This is the dumbest thing you could do.

“I also think this is pathetic. There is people out there who need this drug and I got so obsessed by the easy weight loss fix, I was willing to do this to myself. It is embarrassing.

“All the people who say ‘I have been going to the gym and have cut this out’, stop lying.

“There is a lot more to life than trying to get back to the 50 kilograms with the six-pack.

“There are people who have diabetes who need this medication and silly people like myself who are so vain are taking this medication away from those people.

“I look at it now and I just think it is pathetic.

“Go to the gym, lead a healthy lifestyle and lose it the healthy way.

“The cost of being in St Vincent’s public hospital for an Ozempic overdose is not worth getting into my old jeans for.”

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