The young father crossed the parking lot to join other parents meeting with their children's preschool teachers. After a few steps, he began to sweat and shake. As the sky spun around him, he staggered back to the car, desperate to lie down and breathe.
“Did you drink anything?” his wife, Anne, shouted as she called the emergency services. Eric, 26, had finished rehab earlier in the summer.
“The shot! The shot!” he groaned, just before falling, passed out, to the ground.
At a nearby New Jersey hospital, doctors tried to revive him with a defibrillator.
“What did he take?” they shouted.
She showed them a shot-sized bottle of the cherry-flavored elixir she had found in the car. It was called Neptune's Fix. Eric had bought it at a local tobacco shop.
Neptune's Fix contains an ingredient called tianeptine—known as poor man's heroin.
Tianeptine, often sold as a dietary supplement and promoted by retailers as a mood booster and concentration aid, is among a growing class of potentially addictive products available in convenience stores, tobacco shops and on the Internet. . They typically include synthetic pharmaceuticals and substances of plant origin.
Some, like kratom, can be addictive and even deadly. They often originate from countries such as Indonesia and Russia, where they are commonly used for mood monitoring.
In 2023, the FDA issued an alert about tianeptine, warning that it had been associated with overdoses and deaths.
Tianeptine was developed by French researchers in the 1960s as an antidepressant. But at higher doses, it works much like an opioid, generating a short-lived euphoria.
Last year, after Eric completed rehab for kratom, a Southeast Asian herb, he saw Neptune's Fix in a smoke shop. A salesman told him that he was not addictive.
After taking it he felt better: happier and more confident. But soon she “couldn't stop taking it,” Eric said.
Within weeks, he was going through up to five bottles a day, spending more than $400 a week.
When he tried to stop taking it, the withdrawal caused cold sweats, muscle aches, restlessness, and irritability.
While Eric was recovering from tianeptine poisoning, Anne burst into the store where he had purchased it.
“My husband is in the hospital because of this product and they are still going to keep it on the shelves?” she shouted.
“Yes,” he said the owner responded. “Because people want it and we need to make money.”
By: JAN HOFFMAN
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/7082415, IMPORTING DATE: 2024-01-23 19:22:03
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