Amy1518

So I'm new and also have a tianeptine addiction. Been taking it every day for 7 months. My best friend quit cold turkey 4 days ago and is now on a ventilator at the moment with a rectal tube (due to the massive diarrhea), GI bleeding, and low potassium and magnesium levels (we are both in the medical field). Granted, I think she has some underlying issues that's caused all these complications but I'm terrified nonetheless. So I'm trying to find the safest, most reliable and comfortable way to get myself off this stuff. Does tapering really work? Will it be manageable by myself at home with immodium and Xanax? I really am scared and welcome any advice I can get. And please, pray for my friend as she continues to fight this fight.

Forte

I've read up online about this stuff and it seems very nasty, just wanted to wish you guys luck and send some prayers for you.

SoberJohn

Amy,
I struggled Tianeptine too and came off of it earlier this year. I made a thread on this forum on how I did it. Just click my name and search for posts.

Good luck

John

erickfl

Hi all, I'd like to chime in on that nice but naughty little brother's helper: tianeptine. I am diagnosed with atypical depression and I can't take SSRIs any more since I started to get tardive dyskinesia from years of use. Thank God the effect disappeared in a matter of weeks after I quit. Recently I got a nasty bout of depression and was prescribed moclamine to help. But it wasn't all that effective and my PDoc would not prescribe the class of A/D that might work best for me, an MAOI. So I started to tinker with my own med regimen. And I remembered having taken tianeptine around 2008 and how it has been effective for me as an A/D. But not your usual A/D. The kind of A/D that works within an hour of taking it. But then stops working 4-5 hours after taking it.

In 2008, tianeptine did not have the bad rap it starts to having now and was a first-line A/D, something you would give even before an SSRI. My GP prescribed it to me and when I started to see a psychiatrist she asked me if I was on meds and when I told her Stablon she said something along: "Oh it's so cute. This is what we are giving to elderly patients in retirement homes when they are a bit depressed". I was NOT slightly depressed and I felt a little belittled. First impressions are sometimes wrong: she was a great therapist and I sticked with her (she's retired now).

So I was prescribed a pill of Stablon (12.5 mg) three times a day. After a month I thought that the depression would get heavier after only 2.5-3 hours after taking it. So I went to my GP and asked if I could have 4 a day and he looked annoyed and said "no". I was annoyed too. I mean you can have anything between 37.5 mg Effexor and 375 mg per day, but for tianeptine it was 37.5 mg for EVERYONE. WTF? So I had to stay on 3 pills a day. Two months down the road and tianeptine was only effective for about 1 to 1.5 hour. That's when I did a bad thing: I went to the pharmacy and said I forgot a month worth of treatment while out of town and please can you help me. In 2008 you could get away with it and I got what I wanted even though the insurance would not pay for it.

Since I had previously abused cocaine, I started to recognize a pattern where you cannot wait for next Friday night, then you take just a little on Thursday night, then Wednesday at night is also OK, and it soon becomes obsessive thinking like OMG I have a meeting with that client at 11am and I need something to pick me up. You get the drift: I started to use cocaine first thing in the morning and had to resort to lame excuses to go to the bathroom at least every hour to ward off the comedown. Well that's where I was headed with tianeptine. It hits your motivation center, which is the same as the reward center (you're motivated because you know there will be a reward). So I quit. And since I was taking "only" 125-150 mg per day at most, it was uneventful and I actually don't remember anything about it.

Fast-forward to today. I'm back on the tianeptine bandwagon. But not on Stablon: I order it in grams over the net. Look for the signs: a long-winded post as if I was on speed. That's the dopamine kicking in me. That's the tianeptine. Tianeptine is like low grade cocaine for me, that's the way it affects me. I read this thread yesterday evening and thought that I might get out while I was ahead. And here I was this morning, not being able to leave my bed. And after 15 hour tianeptine free I decided to take "just a little" to help me going. I know there's the depression behind (lethargic, unmotivated) but then I know how brains of addicts can easily rationalize the use. And although I'm happy to report that I'm using way way lower doses than most of you on this thread (I went through 1.5g in 15 days not in one day), it's already a problem. I cannot deal with the lethargy. It's killing me. And yet I know that I'm on a slippery road. The fact that I haven't been able to go over 15 hour threshold is not a good sign. I have to make a note of how tough the withdrawal is as the dosage escalates.

I'll keep you guys posted on how I'm dealing with it. The plan is to go through what I already bought as slowly as my brain allows it (3.5g in 3.5 month would be ideal but I'm not deluded) and then quit, hoping that by then the depression bout is mostly over.

Sorry again for a too long-winded post but hey, it's the tianeptine doing the talking!

LostEarthling

Me too. I've been taking 5 grams a day. My husband and I both. I have experienced wd when the USPS or UPS messed up our shipment. The restless legs are the worst I have ever experienced. I keep saying every day I am going to start tapering, but I suffer from anxiety and every time I feel anxiety or depression (and it's often), it's a trigger for me to re-dose. I'm a very compulsive person, and it's very hard for me to follow a taper.... This stuff is ruining my marriage, my life, my husbands life.. I'm going to read through all these responses to this thread and I just wanted to chime in and say me too.

4mytasha

Hi LostEarthling~I sent you a private message that I hope you can read.
If we can be of any kind of help to each other, I think we would benefit greatly!
(I'm not sure how many other Tia users are female on here but you and I make 2.)
I haven't yet tried to stop taking this but I have been searching high and low on how to manage the w/d's.
As much as I've read on here, I think Sober John has a story that MANY of us can relate to and learn from!!!

LostEarthling

Hi 4mytasha! I tried to send a message, but it said I had to post at least 25 times before I was I was able to do so. Not sure if maybe I did something wrong. I'd better get posting if that is the case! Yes, we can definitely be of some support to each other in this journey. I think there are more people struggling with this than we think. My greatest fear is a ban. That's why I feel the urgency to taper off. I haven't really been successful with my taper, but I'm not giving up. Any progress is progress, even if small. Thanks so much for reaching out to me. We can use all the support we can get and I'll be hanging around this site often in the weeks/months/years to come.

Hope2QuitTia

Hello Earthling,

We may have crossed paths in Sober John's thread, but I figured it couldn't hurt to contact you here either. I have had a bad tianeptine habit, also taking around 5 grams per day and even up to 7 on a couple of occasions. My life's become more or less dictated by the drug, as it's something which causes WD's only two hours after the last dose. The first WD symptom I always experience is sweating; no matter the temperature of the room I'm in, I'm sweating profusely as if I just ran a couple of miles on the treadmill. My sweat also takes on a strange chemical odor, as if the tianeptine is being excreted through my skin. And of course I don't really need to explain how horrible the WD's get if I run out of the stuff. Their the same as described earlier in this thread; extreme temperature fluctuations; aches and pains; flu-like symptoms including a nose that never stops running, eyes that never stop tearing and more or less "leaking" and a nasty, phlegmy cough; pure mental anguish including the inability to concentrate long enough to complete a sentence; sorrow and despair and an obsession with sad and tragic events like in the newspaper or on TV; RLS from hell; and insomnia which only ends when I get more tianeptine. When I ran out last month it was literally the worst experience I've ever had with any drug and maybe one of the worst experiences of my life. It was two days of pure hell. The situation scared me so much that on the one hand I became completely depressed realizing that I was at the mercy of this stuff, but on the other hand I became determined to quit. I hate feeling controlled by this substance.
So here's the GOOD NEWS. In two days I just halved the amount that I'm taking without the slightest problem and not a withdrawal symptom in sight. Trust me when I tell you this: GABAPENTIN: IT WORKS. I got some gabapentin and began taking it here and there to experiment with its effect on tianeptine withdrawal and the first thing I noticed was that I could go much, much longer before feeling the need to redose. I took 400mg and was able to comfortably go without dosing for 8 hours. Then I combined 400mg of Gabapentin with 20mg of Loperamide (prefacing it an hour earlier with a Tagamet HD, quinine pill, and Aleve) and was able to go 12 hours without any WD symptom at all. This was coming off a 5 gram a day habit! And even after 12 hours I probably could have gone on longer,but instead I just took some tianeptine out of habit and to make sure I didn't cause anything too dramatic to occur in my body. But this stuff works. Get your hands on some Gabapentin and you can begin to beat this. Combine it with loperamide (you don't have to go crazy with the loperamide, I honestly think a 20mg dose 2x per day is sufficient) and you'll be able to dramatically taper quickly and without discomfort. Seriously, there is very little if any discomfort. In fact the Gabapentin makes me feel pretty good, much better than I've been feeling the past couple of months since my habit reached such high levels. Finally, tomorrow I'll be getting some tramadol. This is the final piece of the puzzle, and once it's in my possession I'm going to try to go 24 hours without tianeptine, and if it's possible I'm just going to keep going. And once I hit 5 days without any Tia I'm going to start tapering the Gabapentin and tramadol, which will be a lot easier and will take place over a two week period. But you have to believe me and you have to get your hands on this stuff. It truly works. I know how you feel because I was very skeptical of anything working having seen the intensity of the withdrawals and fighting them off every day every 2 hours for the past 8 months. I'm telling you there's a light at the end of this tunnel. I'm not out of the woods yet, but I can see for a fact that there IS a way out (which I could not see a week ago). Also, FWIW, someone the other day told me that for some reason CORDYCEPS completely stops withdrawal in its tracks. I've been taking them as well. I can't say if cordyceps work for sure to stop withdrawal since I've been taking them with the Gabapentin, but it can't hurt. I honestly haven't felt a withdrawal symptom of any kind in two days. Sure, I've been taking some tianeptine here and there, but before I was feeling symptoms constantly, after every one or two hours. Now--none in sight. Good luck to you and keep in touch if you need help. This is a nasty, nasty addiction. We need all the support we can find when it's time to quit.

4mytasha

I am SO glad to read about another experience as I will and do need, all the help I can get as I am too, trying to stop.
Although it still works/helps at a higher dose obviously, I am SICK of relying!!
I have not looked yet but where can you get the gaba/tramadol/cordyceps?

4mytasha

UPDATE(s)????

LostEarthling

Thank you for that! I wish I had noticed your response sooner. I really need to get a doctor, so I can get the meds needed. I haven't really tapered yet. I have lowered my doses, and I probably take a little less then 5 g a day, but I NEED to taper. I don't have a doctor, but I do have insurance. Hope you come back here and tell us how you're doing. I would say more, but I literally just woke up. That's perfect for me to have read this first thing in the morning though. Thanks for that!!

lostsoul71

That smell of the sweat is with any opiate, it excrete's through your pours, I find Percocet one of the worst something to do with sulphur in the tablet someone told me once. But every opiate addiction I had I would shower min once a day sometimes 2-3 times

enadesiforas

*****

I apologize in advance if someone already answered this question: Talking about Tianeptine: was it the sulfate or the sodium form you became addicted to?
Thank you.

******