While Candide is recovering from death, his wisecracking friend Martin says, “I remember I fell ill in Paris on my first visit; I was very poor, so I had neither friends, nor devotees, nor doctors, and I recovered.”
That’s how it is in Silicon Valley right now (I’m sure it’s not the first time). The rich and their henchmen are indirectly in danger because of the illusion of wealth prevalent in their area.
There’s a New York Times article this weekend about techies who buy vials of powdered amino acids made in China, attach syringes to them, and shoot them into their bodies, all because they’ve heard vague promises from podcasters and chatbots that, Ultimately, you can hack your blood waves and achieve optimal efficiency in your physical codebase. Health claims about peptides range from the reasonable, such as weight loss, to the fantastical, such as that they cure autism.
You really need to see a photo from Jason Henry’s article to process what’s happening. This is a photo taken at a “Peptide Rave” in San Francisco, of a man wearing a white lab coat and black shoes, holding a familiar orange and white syringe, demonstrating the process of turning a powder into an injectable liquid, familiar to all heroin addicts. Their audience is a small crowd of blurry people carrying boxes of White Claws in their hands. On a table at their demo station is a piece of printer paper with a QR code and the word “waiver” written on it.
If anyone has died from doing this recently it’s not in the article, but this craze is apparently still growing. Jasmine Sun, the author of the article, says, “According to US customs data, imports of hormone and peptide compounds from China almost doubled to $328 million in the first three quarters of 2025, from $164 million in the same period in 2024.”
Peptides themselves are not that expensive. The piece points to a form of off-brand Ozempic, an example of a peptide, which costs about $200 a month. But the kind of peptide habit that tech founders and influencers Sun describes isn’t just a matter of getting the powder, reconstituting it, and shooting it up.
For example, the co-founder of a bleak-sounding B2B AI startup started his peptide habit by “microdosing semaglutide,” and then added an additional five peptides: “MOTS-c, Epitalon, GHK-Cu, Ipamorelin, and Kisspeptin-10.” She then pays an additional $250 per peptide to send her powder to a purity testing laboratory in the Czech Republic.
Another outspoken business leader – the CEO of a kind of rationalist version of Burning Man called “Vibecamp” – takes BPC-157, TB-500 and rettrutide, but at one point he accidentally took too much of the last and experienced a rapid heartbeat and his hair started falling out. She uses an app, monitors her vitals while she sleeps, and gets regular blood tests.
Can you guess that Brian Johnson – the guy who’s famous for being very open about the fact that he, like everyone else, doesn’t want to die, but has responded to that universal experience by turning himself into a one-man media circus, and posting lots of terrifying photos of himself on social media, where his translucent-looking skin looks wet and thin, as if blowing on it from across the room would hurt him – is in a tank of peptides. Is it?
You would be right to a large extent, but I think it speaks volumes that when asked about them he preached caution, saying that he likes them for their hair and skin, but it’s that “Research is limited for many peptides, so it is difficult to make any clear statements about them other than to do your research, measure, and use a reputable supplier.”
Of course, you could argue that he’s saying this because he doesn’t want to get sued (he’s already being sued). But, again, he doesn’t want to do that Diefolks.
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