Some GLP-1 weight loss drug users say they’ve picked up an unexpected — and not inexpensive — hobby since they started using the shots: a new infatuation with perfume.They just can’t get enough of sweet, dessert-like fragrances and admit to obsessively buying up dozens of bottles of vanilla and cinnamon perfumes. Katie, a 46-year-old teacher who lives in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, encountered it after she started taking Eli Lilly’s Zepbound in March 2024, after years of unsuccessful attempts to lose weight following a medically necessary total hysterectomy. “I was always mildly into fragrance, but it increased by a factor of a thousand,” she told The Independent. She started ordering samples from sites like Lucky Scent and Scent Split because she felt she needed more variety and wanted to wear a scent every day. “I went from owning a handful of designer fragrances found at Sephora or Macy’s to owning a collection of 50+ full bottles, most of which are from niche houses,” Katie noted. Katie's perfume collection is seen in this shot from her Washington, D.C., home. Her favorite scent, Byredo's Alto Astral, is seen on the middle left shelf at the far right (Katie Noelle)Katie is one of many Redditors to post about the allure of perfume after using GLP-1s, a phenomena nicknamed “Ozempic smell.” People share perfume suggestions and post photos of the small armies of bottles they’ve collected.Katie estimates she has spent around $3,000 on perfume in the last two years. “I’ve realized over the past two years that I love fragrances that are sweet but not edible-smelling, such as woody or spicy vanillas, or musks that lean a bit sweet,” Katie said. Her current favorite, which smells like coconut water and incense, is Byredo’s Alto Astral and retails for $330.People taking GLP-1 weight loss drugs are developing a weird and often costly hobby. They can’t get enough of perfumes (Getty)People on Reddit are reporting that they most enjoy scents that echo foods or have similar notes."I started taking a GLP-1 last May and I’ve gone from owning two perfumes to 24, and that doesn’t include my travel sizes and decants ," wrote one Reddit user. "I’m also a total gourmand girl, I just want to smell like a bakery all the time lol.""I’ve always been into scents … but it became obsessive when I started Zepbound," said user Odd-Guarantee-7571. "I want to smell everything, from soap to dog shampoo-as long as it’s fragranced I’m gonna smell it.""I can smell a gourmand, sweet fragrance and enjoy it without getting ravenously hungry," another user wrote. "This has opened up my world of fragrances significantly."The drugs make the part of the brain that processes smells extremely sensitive to food smells, Leslie Kay, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Chicago, told The Independent. “The drugs could help engage the olfactory pleasure circuits and feelings of satisfaction, hijacking them for non-real food smells, like gourmand and other types of perfumes,” she said. But why is this happening? Experts have some suggestions.Festival-goers sample perfume at an event in Philadelphia in September 2022. Gen Z has helped drive perfume sales in recent years (Getty)”GLP-1 receptors sit on mitral cells, the main output neurons of the olfactory bulb that carry the smell signal onward to the brain, so a drug that reshapes appetite is also acting on the tissue that processes odor,” Paule Joseph, a Senior Investigator at the National Institutes of Health, told The Independent.Hiroaki Matsunami, a professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at the Duke School of Medicine, theorized that the underlying process is happening in the brain — not the nose.He said that GLP-1 drugs affect the brain’s nerve cells, including those related to feeling nauseous.“It is not too surprising that it could also influence odor perception or odor-associated responses,” Matsunami said. The sense of smell is highly affected by our internal states, Catherine Dulac, the Xander University Professor at the Harvard University Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, told The Independent.GLP-1 drugs are known to come with some stomach-upsetting side effects, such as nausea and vomiting. Companies are working to update their shots to prevent discontinuations (AFP/Getty)For example, we are more sensitive to odor when we are hungry and less so when we are full. "Because GLP1 affects so much the organism metabolic state, in ways that we do and do not understand, this is not extremely surprising."So far, it is not a side effect that has appeared in trials and it seems to mainly impact the wallet of those who experience it.Katie said that even going off Zepbound for six months after surgery did not alter her interest in fragrance — and that she’s enjoyed this strange effect of the drugs.“I’ve learned so much, and am fascinated by the whole process — the artistic side of the creation of a scent, but also the sourcing of ingredients, the creation of new aromachemical molecules and the industry as a whole,” she said.