Posted by psychobot5000 on June 28, 2008, at 17:10:51
In reply to Re: ))Horned One » Horned One, posted by Marty on June 27, 2008, at 23:53:07
> btw Horned, do you feel a little 'smarter' on Tianeptine ?
>
> /\/\artyJust ran across this thread - tianeptine is awesome. Raises my mood with essentially no side-effects - nothing I've ever taken besides it does that -you all know how bad AD side-effects often are.
I do sometimes feel it makes me a tiny bit sharper -from what I've read, it may slightly raise dopamine levels in a few areas of the brain, something like 18% or so, which might account for that effect.
As for Tianeptine's lack of availability, I think there are two plausible explanations which don't quite make it into conspiracy theory. The first is that, despite the lack of evidence, the (arguably slightly silly) low-serotonin theory is the dominant popular understanding of the problem, and we know too little about the problem to offer a theory that's much better, so it stays on top by default, helped by waves of pharm company advertising of course. Implicitly, its conclusions prevent tianeptine from being considered seriously as an AD.
But also, it took a while after Tianeptine's discovery for it to be used as an antidepressant. For whatever reason, Servier, the patent-holder, didn't get it on the market until that patent was expired. Thus, they now can't afford to spend 500 million to get tianeptine approved in, say, the US, without the ability to charge a high price for it. Tianeptine's exclusion is at least partially financial, it seems - an unfortunate side-effect of the way the patent system works.
Theoretically, they could repatent one of the isomers, or some other slightly altered forms, but for whatever reason, they haven't. Some say Servier doesn't have enough financial resources to do it.
But I love tianeptine - glad to hear others are getting some good use out of it.
-Psychbot
poster:psychobot5000
thread:835336
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080626/msgs/837018.html