Gas station Heroin epidemic poisoning communities across the country
America is in the grip of a deadly new drug epidemic involving tianeptine – a highly addictive substance so widespread it’s known as heroin at gas stations. RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Marketed as dietary supplements, tianeptine products are legal in most states and have become an over-the-counter hit among teens and young adults looking for a quick mood boost, increased mental agility, nutritional aids or to help manage chronic pain.
Their eye-catching packaging has become ubiquitous at gas station checkouts, vape shops and convenience stores across America, and is sold under brand names such as Tianaa, Neptune’s Fix, ZaZa, TD Red and Pegasus Silver.
The substance, which stimulates the same brain receptors as opioids such as heroin, oxycodone and fentanyl, can be addictive, say experts who warn it can also cause respiratory depression and severe sedation – and can be fatal at higher doses.
Users reported euphoric effects and pain relief similar to those of opioids, but said these benefits are quickly overshadowed by painful withdrawal symptoms such as insomnia, tremors, nausea, anxiety and even seizures.
“I’ve been told that this addiction is harder to break than a heroin addiction,” says Dr. Bob Baker, coroner in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, who recorded the drug’s first fatality in April.
“Whatever you buy,” Baker said, “we have no idea how much is in it.”
The Food and Drug Administration has issued multiple dire warnings about tianeptine as well as anecdotal reports of its deadly and devastating toll.
From June 2023 to early 2024, New Jersey was rocked by 41 tianeptine overdoses. Shortly afterwards, Neptune Resources – the maker of Neptune’s Fix – launched a voluntary nationwide recall.
On November 5, 2023, Chris Haggarty died of an OD after purchasing a bottle of tianeptine elixir from an Ohio gas station that was selling it illegally, as the state is one of twelve to have banned the drug.
“I miss him very much,” said Haggarty’s grieving mother, Karen. “Fifteen dollars a bottle. How many people bought it besides my son? It was for sale at the gas station, right next to the lottery tickets and cigarettes.’
In 2019, Johnathon Morrison, a 19-year-old student at the University of Alabama, fatally choked on his own vomit after purchasing a bottle of Tianaa to treat migraine headaches at a local gas station that did not have Excedrin.
His mother, Kristi Terry, and 15-year-old sister found him dead in his bedroom the next morning — next to the nearly empty bottle on his bedside table.
“He had no idea what he was taking,” Terry said. “They told him it was all natural, plant-based and it was like high-potency Tylenol.”
Before 2014, tianeptine was little known in the US, despite being used in France since the 1960s to treat depressive disorders. Today, 60 countries around the world prescribe the drug under the direction of a doctor.
In America, tianeptine is not banned by the Drug Enforcement Administration nor regulated by the FDA.
Sources said that without federal guidelines, its use has exploded — especially among junkies and recovering addicts — with poison control centers across the country reporting an alarming 1,200 percent jump in tianeptine emergencies between 2015 and 2023.
In 2018, Michigan became the first state to ban sales of the drug and categorize it as a Schedule II controlled substance — the same designation as cocaine and fentanyl. Bipartisan federal legislation to classify tianeptine as a Schedule III drug was introduced in 2024, but has yet to be passed.
Advocates and those affected by the tragedy have called for a nationwide ban in the wake of cases like Mobile, Ala., man Chris Ricks, who spent a week in the hospital in 2021 after overdosing on four bottles of ZaZa.
Ricks, who has been sober since the incident and has spent as much as $80,000 on tianeptine products in one year, recalls, “Within a month of taking those, I looked in the mirror and said, ‘You’re either going back to rehab or you’re going to die.'”
