Tianeptine, found at convenience stores, at smoke shops and online, can mimic an opioid. It is among a growing class of substances that are difficult to control.

Often sold as a dietary supplement and promoted by retailers as a mood booster and focus aid, tianeptine is among a growing, unregulated class of potentially addictive products available in gas stations, convenience stores and smoke shops and across the internet. They typically include synthetic pharmaceuticals and plant-derived substances.

Some, like kratom and phenibut, can be addictive and, in rare cases, fatal. They often originate in other countries, including Indonesia and Russia, where they are commonly used, even prescribed, for mood management. But the Food and Drug Administration has not approved them as medicines in the United States.

“Tianeptine is an emerging threat,” said Kaitlyn Brown, clinical managing director of America’s Poison Centers, which represents and collects data from 55 centers nationwide. “We have people who are able to get a substance that’s not well regulated, that has abuse potential and that, in high doses, can cause similar effects to opioids, leading to really harmful outcomes.”

Tianeptine is a drug developed by French researchers in the 1960s as an antidepressant. It is approved in low doses for that use in many European, Asian and Latin American countries.

But at higher doses, it also works much as an opioid does, delivering short-lived euphoria. In the United States, many people take tianeptine under the widespread, mistaken belief that it is a safe alternative to street opioids like fentanyl or heroin, or even a way to taper off using them. On social media sites like Reddit, its merits are hotly debated, with more than 5,000 people subscribing to a “Quitting Tianeptine” forum.

Non-paywall link

    • Altomes
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      10 months ago

      As someone who used drugs for years and is all for the legalization of drugs like mushrooms, acid and MDMA I’m fucking astounded Kratom is legal

      • LufyCZ@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I get psychedelics, but if you want MDMA to be legal there’s no reason kratom shouldn’t be.

        • Altomes
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          10 months ago

          I think MDMA has a higher likelihood to help people through therapy, Kratom is just a way to nod out (imo)

          • LufyCZ@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Kratom doesn’t make you nod out though - it’s actually the oposite, unless you take huge doses.

            It gives you energy, it’s great for productivity.

            As long as you don’t overdo it of course, but that’s true for any psychoactive substances.

            Edit: wanna add, if we’re talking medical, agreed, mdma is more important. If recreational, not so sure

            • fidodo@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              There’s different kinds. I took a strain that helped me sleep too. But that stuff is pretty nasty tasting and you need to take a shit ton to get a strong effect, when I took it it was a pretty mild effect since I didn’t try to take a ton. I think it’d be easier to abuse NyQuil.

            • Altomes
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              10 months ago

              That’s fair, I’m actually an addict so the idea of taking anything not in huge doses is foreign to me, that’s why I had to go to rehab lol

              • fidodo@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                As far as drugs go kratom is super mild though. I think off the shelf NyQuil is way stronger. No offense, and hope you’re managing it, but you being easily addicted is more a you problem than something that laws should be shaped around.

                • Crismus@lemmynsfw.com
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                  10 months ago

                  I agree with you. People seem to think everyone has the addictive response, when people like me have such a muted response.

                  I have spent the last 20 years with Chronic Nerve pain. Morphine doesn’t work with me, and I rarely feel alcohol unless it’s at poisonous levels. I tried to use Cannabis for pain management and spent almost $3K a year for two years of buying the highest potency I could find. I spent those years constantly smoking or vaping every hour to try to control the pain. I ended up damaging my blood vessels in my brain.

                  Even in pain management at the VA they won’t give me the medication that works and just throw massive amounts of buprenorphine at me, which does nothing.

                  I understand that some people have a problem, but for me I wish their voices would stop being amplified over the reality that people need access to opioid pain medication. Tylenol is not what people should have to take for major damage.

              • LufyCZ@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                Heard ppl actually use kratom to taper off of other opioids. It acts on the same receptors mostly afaik, but has the nice feature of being limited by an enzyme you’ve got in your gut somewhere, so it’s hard to overdose.

                • Altomes
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                  10 months ago

                  Yeah, I’ve heard the same, ofc it’s anecdotal but most of the people I know that have done that still wound up using heroin again but yes it’s definitely a plus

          • norbert@kbin.social
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            10 months ago

            I bet a nice light dose of MDMA with a good/group therapist you trust would be incredibly beneficial. It’s hard on the body but once or twice per year (or whatever) isn’t going to hurt an adult. Feeling that connection with others and your own feelings is something a lot of people are missing in their lives IMO.

            I could see kratom maybe having some pain management effects but that’s about it.

      • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        I mean it’s really not as bad as real opiates/opioids. It is pretty impossible to overdose on the kratom leaf, itself. It is addicting, and there are withdrawal symptoms, but nothing like actual opiate withdrawals. It can be a helpful thing for opiate addicts to get off of harder stuff, or as pain management. I have an ex who is clean and sober thanks to that stuff, so maybe I am biased by that experience.

      • TheFriar
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        10 months ago

        But it’s obvious to us all that making stuff illegal doesn’t help anyone except private prisons and sadistic cops and all of the growing number and assortment of private industries profiting off of prisoners (from phone calls to inedible food to companies using prisoners as slave labor), and actually causes way more harm than being proactive, right?

        • Altomes
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          10 months ago

          I’m not advocating that we ought to make it illegal, just a surprise that it isn’t

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Green? Yeah, that makes me whoosy. White works a charm. Red is supposed to slow you down, haven’t tried it.

        • Zoot@reddthat.com
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          10 months ago

          Wow, Lemme has an incredibly different view point on Kratom. Id suggest maybe not drinking so much of it? Or atleast having it with liquids. Been taking Kratom for many years now, for chronic-pain. Yes it can help stabilize your mood, however you really shouldn’t rely on any mood stabilizers.

          Kratom is amazing for those with chronic pain. As a recreational drug, its pretty fun to, however like any drugs; You need to know how much you’re actually doing.

  • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    So this has me asking more questions now

    1. Who goes and buys random ass gas station supplements?
    2. is this an opioid or not an opioid?
    3. opioid apparently means nothing to me now wtf did I read opioid too much?
    • poppy
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      10 months ago
      1. Gas station “supplements” are a surprisingly large market; apparently a source of erectile dysfunction pills and energy boosters for truckers
      2. It is not an opioid
      3. Opioid opioid opioid
    • Hexasphertate@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      Lots of people buy random ass gas station “supplements” as some are research chemicals being sold under other names. Unfortunately the real fun stuff no longer pop up after the DEA cracked down on it. Here’s some examples of different RCs that were sold in gas stations.

      2C-B a serotonergic psychedelic was sold as an aphrodisiac under the brand name erox and nexus

      MDPV and 4-MMC two empathogens similar to MDMA where sold as “bath salts” under several brand names including ivory wave, purple wave, and white knight

      Famously a whole bunch of synthetic cannabinoid were sold under the brand name K2 and Spice

      DMAA a stimulate was sold under the brand iced diamonds and many other brands

      • Fades@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Very true, this shit is always happening. Personally I’m waiting for the phenibut hammer to drop, I see it in smoke shops a lot these days. The DEA is already cracking down I heard. Also not heroin lol, closer to a benzo (except the sedation is quite delayed comparatively).

        obligatory do not fuck with bzds, no matter how confident you are it can be controlled. That’s not how the chemistry works, especially when it comes to long term (years) tolerance. Just ask anyone who had a kpin or alpraz prescription long term.

        Anyway i digress, legal 2C-B. Good times, nothin wrong with a good psychedelic. Right there along with 4-ho-met/mipt

        MDMA is where I draw the line, you can do serious harm and waste more serotonin than you’d regenerate for a long time with overdosing and/or overuse (and not much either)

    • MagicShel@programming.dev
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      10 months ago

      Back when ephedrine was a thing and legal, it was really cheap and available at gas stations. Only other place I knew to find it was health food stores as a weightlifting supplement where it would cost way more (probably mixed in with some other stuff).

      I just used it for staying awake when I worked third shift by myself. I’ve never otherwise made a habit of buying anything at gas stations, but it wouldn’t surprise me that shady gas stations are at the forefront of dubious medicines and supplements.

      • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I miss being able to just pick up some ephedrine at the gas station before work. I did 12-hour shifts in a steel fabrication back in this days

        • lingh0e@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          Yeah. I miss Ultimate Energizers. Those things got me through so many shifts at work. And it’s funny that they put ephedrine on the controlled list to prevent it from being used to make meth… because it became easier for me to get meth than ephedrine, and that’s how I became a tweaker. I probably would have had a completely different life trajectory if they had kept ephedrine OTC.

    • Fades@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      It is NOT an opioid. Full stop.

      This article is full of fear mongering and bad info. It shouldn’t be sold/marketed at gas stations and shit but it’s in no way heroin or the like

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      Tianeptine is a tricyclic antidepressant.

      However it’s an “atypical” tricyclic. So it also has some weird properties like activity on μ-opioid receptors. So in high doses you can achieve a very strong opioid high.

      Because it’s not an opoid, but an antidepressant with opoid properties the withdrawal from continuous high dosage usage are rumored to be legendary… and much worse than heroin. On forums users have described it as trying to kick a really bad Benzo addiction and opioid addiction at the same time… I would imagine it would be wise to withdraw with medical assistance.

      • Psythik@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        So I should stick to kratom, then. YMMV, but the only withdrawal effect I get from it is irritability. But I’m always angry so it’s not the end of the world. It helps my depression way better than antidepressants.

      • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        As trying to kick a really bad Benzo addiction and opioid addition at the same time

        That sort of just sounds like most modern antidepressants. Cymbalta and Effexor give incredibly bad and powerful brain shocks if you miss a single dose. I imagine it’s like that, but with physical seizures

        • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          I think your close, just add extremely bad flu symptoms and nausea from the opioid side and you got a pretty close guess as to what hell you would endure.

  • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I saw a VICE episode about this a few months back and this couple out in rural America were hooked on it. They’d eat like 3-6 bottles like every day or two. Neither of them had a car and the dude would walk a few miles to the store and back just to get it.

  • Fades@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    This is simply just more fear mongering, trying to use the heroin/fent epidemic to feed these bullshit articles for click farming.

    Tianeptine shouldn’t be sold in gas stations obviously, but there is a BIG FUCKING DIFFERENCE in so many ways. There’s no need to make shit up and lie, the science is already there but no, these pathetic “journalists” must depend on exaggeration and misinformation (purposeful or no) to carry their stories and that in and of itself is harmful. It lowers faith is journalism (understandable, most of it is generated anyway) and it also misleads people about the drug (which often leads to misuse)

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      As someone who knows nothing about this, which parts are “exaggeration and misinformation”.