It's Disturbingly Easy to Get Ahold of a Powerful Opioid-Like Drug

You might not be familiar with the drug known as tianeptine, but if you’ve spent any time at gas stations or convenience stores, you may well have encountered a substance containing it being sold over the counter. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a number of warnings about tianeptine over the years, beginning in 2018 and continuing as recently as last month.

The latest of those warnings notes that “reports of bad reactions and unwanted effects involving tianeptine are increasing,” and reminds readers that the FDA has not approved the substance in question for any purpose. (It is approved for use — and, just as importantly, sold in much smaller quantities — in some other countries.) Last year, poison control centers in the U.S. dealt with 350 incidents involving tianeptine, up from just four in 2013.

Right about here, it’s probably worth mentioning that tianeptine has earned the nickname “gas station heroin.” In other words, not something you should be putting into your body.

An earlier FDA warning pointed to tianeptine’s addicticve properties — which is especially worrisome considering that some products containing this drug tout its ability to treat opioid use disorder. Earlier this year, the FDA issued a specific alert focusing on some of the brand names of products containing it, including Neptune’s Fix, Pegasus, TD Red, Tianaa and Zaza.

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Writing at the Associated Press, Matthew Perrone explored the science behind tianeptine, noting that it is not an opioid itself but has a similar effect to them due to the regions of the brain that it bonds with. Last year, NPR’s Bill Chappell pointed to another way that tianeptine can put people at danger: its availability at gas stations can lead to drivers consuming it before going on the road, thus impairing their driving.

Again: “gas station heroin.” There’s a reason state and national health authorities have been raising the alarm about tianeptine for years, after all.