Gas stations and head shops across the United States are still selling dangerous “elixirs” that cause life-threatening seizures and blackouts — even though the FDA recalled the stuff 18 months ago.
As the Associated Press reports, health officials are issuing staunch warnings about products from a brand called “Neptune’s Fix,” which are marketed as cognitive supplements that contain an unapproved compound called tianeptine, an opioid-like drug often referred to as “gas station heroin” or “zaza.”
Last year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took action against the brand after a public outcry against its massively unhealthy wares. At the FDA’s behest, Neptune’s Fix voluntarily recalled three of its products on January 28, 2024, but for some reason, they’re still for sale at some seedier stores.
In the ensuing 18 months since that recall, poison control centers across the country have reported an uptick in calls about the company’s euphoria-inducing products, prompting the FDA to send a letter to health officials warning about the “magnitude of the underlying danger or these products.”
Though the Neptune’s Fix debacle is relatively new, tianeptine itself is not.
Originally developed as an antidepressant by the French pharmaceutical manufacturer Servier in the 1980s and sold under the trade name Coaxil throughout Europe and Asia, there’s some evidence that tianeptine can, in low doses, be used as a treatment for everything from asthma and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to anxiety and irritable bowel syndrome. Nevertheless, tianeptine isn’t approved as a medication or supplement in the UK, Italy, Australia, Canada or the US due to its addictiveness and laundry list of side effects including increased heart rate, lowered blood pressure, heart attacks, seizures, and even death.
According to folks who’ve purchased and taken grey market products purported to contain tianeptine, the side effects seem to outweigh any potential high it may induce.
In a 2024 anecdote shared on the user-submitted drug encyclopedia site Erowid — remember them? — head shop tianeptine induced a “very dirty opiate high.”
“Tianeptine delivered a familiar opiate buzz that was a bit overpowering,” the user wrote. “It caused noticeable respiratory depression, cloudy thinking and even some chest tightness, followed by a sudden come down that left me feeling sad.”
Over on Reddit, meanwhile, there’s an entire subforum dedicated to quitting the stuff, where users share horror stories about the drug sending them to the hospital.
On one such thread that was posted a few years back, someone who claimed to work at a drug analytics lab said they had become aware of a “sh*tty knockoff” of Neptune’s Fix that didn’t contain any tianeptine at all, but instead was full of synthetic cannabinoids — the same sketchy stuff that went into Spice and K2 — and the synthetic benzodiazepine known as Bromazolam.
As with all unregulated supplements, Neptune’s Fix and others like it should be viewed with tons of caution because there’s no governing body making sure they contain what they claim to be selling — and in the case of this “gas station heroin,” should be avoided entirely.
More on scary supplements: In the Face of a Measles Outbreak, Our Dingbat Health Secretary Is Recommending Cod Liver Oil
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