Does selank ("Rita") actually cause anxiety? What the data says

What did @judgetalkspeps actually say?

The creator says retatrutide (which they call "Retta") causes "really bad anxiety" for a viewer, but personally experiences the opposite: "it's like anti-anxiety for me." That's the whole claim. They're not citing a study or making a medical argument. They're crowdsourcing anecdotes in the comments, which is honestly a reasonable thing to do given how little clinical data exists on this peptide's psychiatric side effects.

To be clear about what this video is: it's two people comparing personal reactions to an investigational GLP-1/GIP/glucagon triple agonist that is not FDA-approved and is currently only in Phase 3 trials. The creator isn't prescribing anything or making therapeutic claims. They're sharing an experience and asking if others share it. That framing matters when evaluating what's actually being said.

Does the science back this up?

Sort of, but the data is thin and complicated. Anxiety as a side effect of GLP-1 receptor agonists has shown up in pharmacovigilance reports, but retatrutide specifically has almost no published psychiatric safety data.

The FDA's adverse event reporting system (FAERS) has flagged anxiety and related symptoms for GLP-1 class drugs more broadly. A 2023 analysis by Akbari et al. in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism noted neuropsychiatric signals in GLP-1 agonist users, though causality was not established. Retatrutide's Phase 2 trial published in NEJM (Jastreboff et al., 2023) reported nausea and GI events as primary side effects, with no specific mention of anxiety as a tracked outcome. That absence doesn't mean anxiety doesn't happen. It means the trials weren't designed to catch it.

The inverse reaction the creator describes, feeling calmer, is also biologically plausible. GLP-1 receptors are expressed in the amygdala and hippocampus, and some animal research suggests GLP-1 signaling may reduce stress responses. But "biologically plausible" is not the same as "proven in humans."

What did they get wrong (or right)?

They didn't get anything factually wrong, because they didn't make a factual claim. What they did was present two anecdotal reactions as if collecting them in comments will produce meaningful data. It won't. Self-reported anxiety on a peptide with no standardized dosing, no confirmed purity in compounded form, and no controlled conditions tells you almost nothing scientifically.

The creator deserves credit for one thing: they didn't claim their experience is universal or that the peptide is safe. The framing was genuinely open-ended. But the audience watching a TikTok about a non-FDA-approved compound may not automatically apply the same skepticism. Crowdsourcing side effect reports for an investigational drug sounds informal enough that people might interpret it as reassurance rather than genuine uncertainty.

The deeper issue is that "Retta" being used outside a clinical trial context means individual users have no idea what dose they're actually taking, what purity they have, or whether the compound is even retatrutide. That context was entirely missing from this video.

What should you actually know?

Retatrutide is not approved by the FDA for any indication as of 2025. It is an investigational triple agonist (GLP-1, GIP, glucagon receptors) being studied primarily for obesity. Any version being used outside a clinical trial is compounded or gray-market, with no verified purity or standardized dosing.

Psychiatric side effects of GLP-1 class drugs remain an open question. The FDA issued a 2023 safety communication acknowledging reports of suicidal ideation with semaglutide and liraglutide, though a causal relationship was not confirmed. Whether retatrutide carries similar signals is unknown, because the published trials did not systematically assess it.

Individual variation in anxiety response to any drug affecting central nervous system receptors is real and expected. Some people get anxious on beta-blockers. Some feel calmer on stimulants. Anecdote does not override the need for controlled data, and for retatrutide specifically, that data does not yet exist in the public domain for psychiatric outcomes.

If you are considering retatrutide and have a history of anxiety disorders, that is a conversation for a licensed clinician who can review your full history, not a TikTok comments section.