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Harm Reduction Near FATAL overdose with Tianeptine

J

Jb90210

Greenlighter
Joined
Jan 23, 2016
Messages
4
I'm making this post to let members here know of the potential dangers of tianeptine overdose. Like many people, I thought it was basically not possible to overdose on this drug. This is NOT the case, and if it were not for family members and EMT's reviving me, I would be dead from a tianeptine overdose.

I currently am not opioid dependent, however up until 6 months ago I had a hefty IV opioid habit and would take intravenous tianeptine at very high doses (300-400mg many times a day) in order to stave off withdrawal when not using conventional opioids.

Fast forward to several weeks, ago, I had not use any opioids in many months, and decided stupidly to experiment with tianeptine again. I had pure tianeptine sodium, and mixed a shot with several hundred milligrams. Taken IV the effects were quite strong. About 90 minutes later I decided to make another shot of approximately 300mg...

The next time my eyes opened I was on a stretcher in an ambulance. What was later relayed to me by family and the docs at the hospital was that I was found by my family on the bathroom floor where I had taken the shot. I was motionless, hypoxic, no respirations and NO pulse. My family called paramedics and my father administered chest compressions while waiting for EMT.

When the EMTs arrived I still had no respirations or pulse. They worked on me for approximately 12 minutes and after administering massive amounts of Narcan and continuing compressions, I began to breathe again and pulse resumed.

I will not go into the rest of the details, but fortunately I did fully recover without any residual problems. The important thing for everyone to learn from this is that with NO other drugs involved, IV tianeptine was able to precipitate an overdose complete with total respiratory and cardiovascular collapse that would have been fatal had i been found minutes later.

Like everyone else I did not believe tianeptine was capable of causing such consequences. I would love to hear from others who might shed some light on the mechanism of the overdose. My best guess is that since tianeptine is an opioid at high doses, the fact I had no tolerance at the time, coupled with the high doses and The fact it was IV, I suffered a classic opioid overdose no different than had it been heroin or fentanyl. The dose and ROA was sufficient to put me out, at which point my breathing became shallow and eventually ceased, and after some period without respiration, my heart stopped. This is my best guess. Be careful everyone.
 
People were denying the potential for tianeptine to induce overdose intravenously? This situation shouldn't be surprising given it's MOA and widespread use intravenously in certain countries (I wanna say russia?). Anyways I'm also glad you mad it out fine. Use this as anlearning experience. I wish you the best in your recovery <3
 
You took like 20 times the max dosage. You do realise Tia is bad on your liver? Did you have your hepatic levels checked?

Glad you're okay.
 
You can not speak for everyone. Anyone with a brain would know that you can OD on tianeptine. You can OD on water for christ sakes. You are shooting 20-40 times the dose into your vien. What did you expect? Clearly, you are the problem not tianeptine. I never go over 45mg per oral and I feel negative side effects and increased heart rate. Jesus man. "You better get yourself together. Pretty soon you're gonna be dead."

NO ONE BUT you thought "that you couldn't OD on tianeptine". That is the type of behavior that gets you killed and ruins it for the rest of us.
 
mike.vick said:
You can not speak for everyone. Anyone with a brain would know that you can OD on tianeptine. You can OD on water for christ sakes. You are shooting 20-40 times the dose into your vien. What did you expect? Clearly, you are the problem not tianeptine. I never go over 45mg per oral and I feel negative side effects and increased heart rate. Jesus man. "You better get yourself together. Pretty soon you're gonna be dead."

NO ONE BUT you thought "that you couldn't OD on tianeptine". That is the type of behavior that gets you killed and ruins it for the rest of us.
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I did not attempt to speak for everyone, however your statement that "no one but me thought you couldn't OD on tianeptine" is quite untrue. The whole reason I made this post is that it is widely believed by many, that for all practical purposes, tianeptine does not produce life threatening overdoses. If you examine medical literature, this belief is espoused. Additionally I would challenge you to find cases of fatal tianeptine ingestion. You will find 2 documented cases, one involving a large amount of alcohol, the other which involved massive amounts of of another antidepressant.

No doubt what I did was irresponsible, however there are MANY out there that a use tianeptine for its opioid effects, and those that do are typically using doses in the several hundred mg range, because it is at this doses that the opioid properties become prominent.

My purposes here are to warn those people that this practice is not nearly as safe as they likely believe, or as safe as has been widely reported anecdotally AND by medical literature.

The fact is there are many drugs widely believed to be somewhat "overdose proof". Marijuana, codeine, and I think many (not all) would have included tianeptine In that list. I just wanted to warn those who held this belief, because no, I am far from the only one who held this belief, that this is NOT the case. That's all.
 
^^^ Yet another faulty assumption. Codeine causes gasping for air and fatal respiratory depression. Marijuana and shrooms are the only rec drugs that cannot cause a fatal OD.

You are seriously gonna die from stupidity if you keep assuming.
 
It's not surprising. It's a class of drug that causes anxyiolytic effects. It's a depressant. It can cause respiratory failure. Any depressant or anxyiolytic drug can.
 
mike.vick said:
^^^ Yet another faulty assumption. Codeine causes gasping for air and fatal respiratory depression. Marijuana and shrooms are the only rec drugs that cannot cause a fatal OD.

You are seriously gonna die from stupidity if you keep assuming.
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I think you may be getting sidetracked and hyper focusing on debating me.

I made a post because I suffered a near fatal overdose from a drug that many many people believe is not capable of producing such a thing. The fact that you are not included in this group does not change the fact that many are abusing this drug under the assumption that they are safe from such overdoses.

Id also add that I didn't state that codeine could not cause an OD, I stated that many believe this to be the case. Also, codeine does prove to be a very difficult drug to OD on as it essentially acts as a prodrug for the much more potent drug morphine, which it is converted into in vivo. Our enzymes that perform this task become saturated at a certain point so there is only so much morphine that can be produced from codeine per unit of time. Again, this is why many BELIEVE it to be fairly benign when it comes to overdose. I'm sure some have fatally overdosed, but it's quite uncommon.
 
Jb90210 said:
I think you may be getting sidetracked and hyper focusing on debating me.

I made a post because I suffered a near fatal overdose from a drug that many many people believe is not capable of producing such a thing. The fact that you are not included in this group does not change the fact that many are abusing this drug under the assumption that they are safe from such overdoses.

Id also add that I didn't state that codeine could not cause an OD, I stated that many believe this to be the case. Also, codeine does prove to be a very difficult drug to OD on as it essentially acts as a prodrug for the much more potent drug morphine, which it is converted into in vivo. Our enzymes that perform this task become saturated at a certain point so there is only so much morphine that can be produced from codeine per unit of time. Again, this is why many BELIEVE it to be fairly benign when it comes to overdose. I'm sure some have fatally overdosed, but it's quite uncommon.
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Generally speaking you're correct. Codiene is an opiate after all, albeit a much weaker formula than morphine and other opiate class of drugs. If the medication is Acetaminophen coated with codiene which is typical in the U.S than you're more likely to die of liver failure than a codiene overdose due to abuse.
 
Personally I find the OPs information pretty interesting. I'd always considered Tianeptine a (mildly) stimulating drug whose mu agonism probably wouldn't be strong enough to actually give someone a lethal case of respiratory depression.

Then again at the right dose Oxy is considered stimulating, and plenty of people manage to nod themselves into the afterlife on that stuff.
 
Hodor said:
Personally I find the OPs information pretty interesting. I'd always considered Tianeptine a (mildly) stimulating drug whose mu agonism probably wouldn't be strong enough to actually give someone a lethal case of respiratory depression.

Then again at the right dose Oxy is considered stimulating, and plenty of people manage to nod themselves into the afterlife on that stuff.
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Neither substances cause stimulation. However, because they both induce anxyiolytic effects they lower inhibition which only mirrors effects of stimulation. Both are depressants. Similar depictions can be made of alcohol, although, that to is very much a depressant.
 
Thanks for the responses guys. If we can though, can we move away from the debates about what specific drugs have what effect, or which ones are likely to cause overdoses. I think we can all agree that nearly any drug at sufficient dosage can lead to fatal or near fatal overdoses, but that some drugs are far more likely (fentanyl for example), while others very seldom do, and are largely viewed as "safe" as far as overdoses go (codeine or tianeptine for example).

The purpose of this thread was to call attention to the fact that tianeptine, which is often viewed as such a "safe" drug, stopped my breathing, and eventually my heart. Yes this was caused largely by the fact that it was via IV use and at very high doses, but as many can attest, it is not at all rare for people to use tianeptine at these doses of several hundred mg in order to achieve the opioid agonism that becomes prominent at this dosage. I just wanted people to be made aware that at these dosages, tianeptine really does behave as a full mu agonist capable of causing a typical opioid overdose that was survived in this case only due to competent chest compressions and large dosages of Narcan.
 
tianeptine is not safe for injection. its a property of the chemical not impurities. ime the stuff doesn't really ever dissolve in water, just kind of sticks to it. good way to lose limbs. stick to the classics for IV.

a guy around here was taking up to 5 g of the stuff a day orally and he didn't OD. so people are consuming large amounts of the stuff and i think people make assumptions that it has a high ceiling.

I also think there is an assumption that tianeptine doesn't cause respiratory depression.

you can't really say for sure that it was shallow breathing bc no one was monitoring you. Could have been some other complication but it seems the most likely.

I wasn't aware that tianeptine was a depressant, at least in the traditional sense.

I think this is good information. Glad you are okay man.
 
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question for OP - were you injecting sulphate or sodium form of tianeptine?
 
First, I'm glad to hear you are ok, that's an awful situation. But I hope that other people read this and see that you (like you already said) SHOULD NOT IV this compound, as it is way too dangerous for multiple reasons and there is little margin for error. 13.5mg is an oral dosage, and people should stick to 13.5-25mg three times a day MAX. This is a very strong compound and while it is pretty safe within its recommended dosages, (minus the back and forth over how bad for your liver it is) you must be careful to not go too far. Again, I'm VERY happy to hear you survived this experience and are able to advise people against doing the same. Good luck to you!
 
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Your best way to get off is to taper. Going cold turkey is not only uncomfortable, but it's also dangerous. Take your mgs down every day or two till you have tapered to almost nothing. You could try kratom as something to deal with withdrawls, but be careful not to replace one with the other. Good luck!
 
As a lover/hater of the Tia, I for one totally believe this. I'm a fairly long term heroin guy, and I might take Tia over H if it not for the vein damage. Which is due to the hygroscopic nature of it sucking the water from the the tissue surrounding the vein. (I believe…) Also pretty high PH….I'd never gone over 150 mg/ a cc , but I done that back to back. The thing I find is if you keep it to like doing 2 or 3 g's a week max 2-3 days, I haven't noticed any withdrawals from these short but high dose binges. (like a G a day at least, but just for 2 days). Also: I find at these doses I never lose the rush. And I don't build tolerance, it is almost the drug that keeps on giving. …I really ought to see how it is oral considering it's the same BOA….(but different absorption time)…the only thing I did stop feeling after a while is the nice little inner-colon bum rush. (if you know you know)

it's really a lovely short thing, the shooting coke of …not quite..but pretty much the ugly cousin of opiates? Here's hoping to it not getting scheduled. People were saying the same thing about phenibut 10 years ago though….same with kratom.
AND SAY GOOD BYE TO YOUR VEINS.
 
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