Desperation is the mother of invention

All of the weight loss drugs put out with so much hope have pretty much turned out to be total busts. The weight loss is pretty moderate, and the side effects range from life-impairing to fatal. This is not really surprising--with something as central to survival as eating, you'd expect to find a lot of redundant mechanisms supporting it, and some of the mechanisms by which you target it are likely to be mission critical for some important organ.

And of course, with something as central to survival as eating, you'd expect people to have trouble controlling their urge to eat--appetite is a signal akin to pain, and we don't expect people to be able to function normally when they're in constant pain. With growing evidence that moderate excercise doesn't actually make you any thinner (your body just ups your appetite), that leaves people who want to be thinner in search of a miracle cure.

Apparently, they're turning to "off label" uses of various drugs whose side effects are a reduction in appetite: stimulants like adderall, Wellbutrin, and Provigil. Taking stimulants you don't particularly want or need seems like it would be worse than being fat--but of course, that's easy for me to say.