An alleged “magic pill” for quick weight loss is booming in Russian social media feeds. It’s cheap, works immediately, but can be life-threatening.
November 2, 2025, 2:55 p.mNovember 2, 2025, 2:55 p.m
Anna Von Stefenelli / watson.de
This year, similar clips suddenly appeared again and again on Tiktok accounts: refrigerators full of blue pill boxes, along with messages like “Take Molecule and forget that food exists.” The promise: Radical weight loss without diet or exercise. The pill is called “Molecule” – and it became a viral hype.
Russian teenagers ended up in intensive care because of the Tiktok trend.Image: Shutterstock
Young people, especially girls from Russia, posted their “weight loss journeys” online. They shared supposed success stories using hashtags that romanticize eating disorders. But there is a real danger behind it – and now also several hospital stays.
Russian woman takes pills to lose weight and ends up in the hospital
22-year-old Maria from St. Petersburg also ordered Molecule from a well-known online retailer. Two capsules a day for two weeks – then she realized she had lost control. “I had absolutely no desire to eat, let alone drink. I was nervous. I was constantly biting my lips and chewing my cheeks,” she says in an interview with the BBC.
The side effects had become worse: feelings of panic, nervousness, dark thoughts. “These pills had a strong impact on my psyche,” she says. When the young woman finally took too many, she had to be hospitalized.
Lose weight at any cost? Not a good idea.Image: shutterstock
Today she tries to stop others online, intervenes in forums and writes to girls who want to order the drug. She once even contacted parents of a teenager to warn.
Maria’s case is not an isolated one. According to Russian media and the BBC, at least three minors required clinical treatment after taking Molecule.
A student in the Siberian city of Chita was admitted in the spring because she wanted to lose weight in time for the summer. The mother of another girl told local reporters that her daughter had to go to intensive care after an overdose. A 13-year-old boy from St. Petersburg suffered hallucinations and panic attacks; he had asked a friend to get him the pills because he was being bullied about his weight.
Reports of dilated pupils, insomnia, and tremors are circulating online. But according to the report, the clips still remain online. They are often coded to bypass moderation.
The clips in question can still be found on Tiktok. We deliberately don’t link them here.Image: keystone
“Natural product” of Gen Z? Risk of heart attack and stroke
The packaging shows terms such as dandelion root, fennel or plant extracts, decorated with hologram stickers. Supposedly a “natural dietary supplement”.
In fact, in laboratory tests conducted by the Russian newspaper, the pills contained “Kommersant» another dangerous substance: sibutramine. This is an active ingredient that was developed in the 1980s as an antidepressant and later used as an appetite suppressant. Until studies showed it increased the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Sibutramine has been banned in the EU, the USA, Great Britain, China and many other countries for years. In Russia it requires a prescription and can only be given to adults. “Self-medication with this drug is very unsafe because we don’t know how much active ingredient is contained in such ‘food supplements’”warns St. Petersburg endocrinologist Ksenia Solovyova at the BBC.
Molecule: Cheaper than Ozempic – and hard to stop
The pills sometimes cost the equivalent of less than ten euros for 20 days. This is only a fraction of what legal weight loss products like Ozempic cost on the Russian market. This makes Molecule attractive, despite the risk. And despite government attempts to stop sales.
Online marketplaces deleted listings, but shortly afterwards the product simply appeared under a new name: “Atom”, with almost identical packaging. Dealers deceive the platform moderation by listing the pills as “sports nutrition” or “muesli”.
The origin also remains nebulous. Some sellers show Chinese production certificates, others claim that the pills come from Germany. The BBC found a supposed address for a German manufacturer, but no company exists there.
Kazakh traders said they got the goods “from friends’ warehouses” without knowing the exact origin.
Gen Z: A fight against algorithms and self-doubt
How dangerous the trend is can be seen where it is spreading: in online communities that normalize eating disorders. The BBC reports on posts in which Molecule is specifically advertised to users with restrictive eating habits. Influencer Anna Enina, who used to take illegal slimming pills herself, reacted publicly: «If you’re struggling with an eating disorder… the consequences will be terrible. You’ll regret it tenfold.”
But warnings are quiet in a feed that aestheticizes thin bodies and confuses discipline with starvation. The algorithm rewards before and after pictures more than critical voices. For Maria, every new Tiktok clip is a trigger – a reminder of a pill that made her sick and that millions of people still see today.
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