Tiagabine (Gabitril) - GABA reuptake inhibitor also used for anxiety

[dopamimetic]

... but designed as an anti-epileptic that is used over long times and apparently does cause much less tolerance than benzodiazepine use (or it has not been tested strictly, I don´t know). Seems to be available more or less only in France these days, here in Germany it was withdrawn due to monetary reasons ... while I was in France, I´ve tried this one for anxiety and found it to work quite well, although I´ve used regular 5-15mg/d dose compared to the few mg´s used in studies for chronic anxiety disorder. It potentiates benzodiazepines of course, but the main point is that IF it does not cause the same long-lasting and nasty tolerance build-up benzos do, why isn´t it more widely known?

I have used it for maybe two months, then tapered quickly without problems. This has nothing to say, as I have used benzo-relatives back and forth too and luckily never got withdrawal from them. Nevertheless I would feel safer on something that is supposed to be taken for years ... Ok, they warn that the use of tiagabine could trigger seizures in persons without history. But from reading the reports, this seems more to be a problem of over-dose (and either an additional, excitatory mechanism or just gaba shut-down due to transporter blockade) or probably tapering too fast.

At least I did not find anything really related to dependence etc. regarding tiagabine ... so it could be a safer thing than even pregabaline (which brought me bad RLS after just some weeks on it)..

 

[sekio]

Tiagabine or tianeptine? They're two different drugs.

 

[dopamimetic]

Tiagabine (marketed as Gabitril) - afaik the only GABA reuptake inhibitor available. The other directly gaba increasing drug(s) which work by inhibiting GABA transaminase like Vigabatrin (Sabril) or to a lesser extent Phenelzine and Valproic acid (of course both having other main effects) seem to be quite toxic, even though each one has its own side effects profile so maybe a safe GABAT inhibitor would be possible ...

Tianeptine looks promising on the paper, but honestly I haven´t got anything out of it despite several tries, even dosing higher (which later became known to exhibit an opioid-like effect) gave just a brief slight something, which could be easily overlooked. Maybe I was just expecting too much...?

--

Edit: Well it seems to have a weird narrow therapeutic range which also differs much between individuals.. for some 8mg are enough for heavy side effects and with 30mg one got into seizures ... while for me 5-15mg were quite linear and relatively light, with the 15mg of course being a bit sedating but well.. don´t want to know what would happen if I took twice the dose.

Nevertheless, that (non)-tolerance thing interests me. If it´d be safe at 10mg/d or 2x 7.5mg, whatever, for years and effective - why not?

 

[endotropic]

I changed the title from tianeptine to tiagebine since you refer to the latter in your post.