A company in Atlanta, Georgia manufactured an opioid product, slapped a “Feel Good” label on it, and sold it next to energy drinks at gas stations — with zero warning that it would trap users in the same cycle of dependency as heroin.

The Drug They Called a Supplement

ZaZa is the brand name for a product manufactured by MRSS Inc., a company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. MRSS holds trademarks for ZaZa, ZaZa Red, ZaZa Silver, and ZaZa White. The company manufactures, distributes, advertises, and sells all three versions from its Atlanta base of operations.

The active ingredient in all ZaZa products is tianeptine — specifically tianeptine sodium and/or tianeptine free acid. Tianeptine is a synthetic compound classified as a full μ-receptor opioid agonist. That means it binds to and activates the exact same opioid receptors in the brain and spinal cord as heroin, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, methadone, and opium. The lawsuit states it shares characteristics with FDA Schedule II Controlled Substances including morphine, methamphetamine, cocaine, fentanyl, and PCP.

Tianeptine is used as a prescription antidepressant in tightly controlled medical settings in some parts of Europe, Asia, and Latin America. It is approved for zero medical uses in the United States. Despite this, MRSS sold it openly at gas stations, bodegas, corner stores, and mini-marts — no prescription required.

How Addiction Happens: The Trap By Design

Tianeptine causes dependence by stimulating the release of dopamine in the brain’s limbic system. Users experience a euphoric high. The product also has a very short half-life, meaning it leaves the system quickly and triggers faster, more intense withdrawal — which accelerates the addiction cycle and compels users to dose every few hours just to feel normal.

The complaint describes the escalation clearly: users develop a tolerance requiring larger and larger doses to achieve the same effect. As doses increase, the body physically depends on the substance to function. When a user stops or tries to cut back, withdrawal sets in with brutal force. The symptoms include delirium, autonomic dysfunction, agitation, insomnia, restlessness, nausea, vomiting, tachycardia, hypertension, diarrhea, tremors, excessive sweating, and full-body pain.

Users do not stop because they want more of the high. They continue because stopping hurts too much. The lawsuit states it plainly: “Users are compelled to continue using the product to avoid feeling sick.”

Tianeptine Is Known. The Bans Are Documented.

This is not some unknown or newly discovered danger. The CDC tracked a significant increase in calls to U.S. poison control centers about tianeptine exposure between 2014 and 2017. The affected population was primarily individuals aged 21 to 40, reporting neurological, cardiovascular, and gastrointestinal symptoms alongside signs of opioid toxicity and active withdrawal. The CDC issued a formal public health warning.

On February 10, 2022, the FDA issued a consumer warning that tianeptine is not approved for any medical purpose in the United States and that negative reactions were increasing. In February 2024, the DEA issued a separate warning about the emerging risks of tianeptine. The following states have banned or severely restricted it: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Indiana, and Ohio. Turkey, Armenia, Ukraine, Singapore, Russia, Bahrain, and Italy have restricted or banned it internationally — in many cases after documented overdose deaths.

MRSS Inc. sold ZaZa through all of this. The lawsuit states directly: “Despite these bans in other countries and many states and warnings from multiple federal government authorities, Defendant continues to market the product — with no warnings about its addictive potential — in numerous states across the country.”

The “Feel Good” Lie: How MRSS Sold Addiction

MRSS did not stumble into harm. The company designed a scheme, manufactured a product with known opioid addiction potential, dressed it up in wellness branding, and sold it at the kind of store you stop into for a snack. The product label promises users they will “Feel Good” and “Be Happy.” There is no asterisk. There is no warning. There is no disclosure that the product contains a full opioid agonist.

The ZaZa packaging — for ZaZa Red, ZaZa Silver, and ZaZa White — carries zero warnings about addiction, zero disclosure of tianeptine as an active ingredient’s risks, and zero information about withdrawal symptoms. The complaint states: “There are no warnings or disclosures on the packaging — or even an asterisk suggesting that purchasers should review the back of the product or information located elsewhere for more information.”

The lawsuit alleges that MRSS deliberately chose silence. The company knew that disclosing ZaZa’s opioid-grade addiction potential “would adversely affect its profits.” Concealment was the business model. The framing of the product as a supplement — with packaging that looks like an energy shot — was intentional cover designed to exploit the gap between how consumers understand “gas station supplement” and what tianeptine actually does to the brain.

Free Samples: A Calculated Hook

MRSS handed out free samples of ZaZa with zero warning attached. The lawsuit explains the strategy: “The very act of giving out ‘free samples’ is intended by Defendant and is understood by customers as an indication that the product is safe and harmless.” A free sample from a store shelf carries an implied message: this is fine to try. Users had no reason to believe otherwise.

With a product that triggers opioid-style dependency and craving, a single free sample could be enough to initiate the addiction cycle. The company understood this. The lawsuit alleges MRSS “intended to induce Plaintiff and members of the proposed Class into purchasing as many ZaZa products as possible, for as long as possible” — specifically by getting them addicted before they knew what they were taking.

MRSS Knew What Tianeptine Does

The complaint is unambiguous on the question of knowledge. MRSS manufactures ZaZa in a specialized lab. The company uses “highly technical knowledge about tianeptine salts and free acid to compound the tianeptine in its products.” The company was and is “aware of all ingredients in the ZaZa products and the addiction risks posed by the ZaZa products.” The company is also aware of the existing medical and pharmacological literature on tianeptine — the same literature that led the FDA, the DEA, and a dozen states to issue bans and warnings.

The lawsuit alleges that MRSS “knew and intentionally designed the ZaZa products to prey on users and take advantage of ZaZa products’ great potential to addict users, thereby increasing Defendants’ profits.” This is the allegation at the core of the case: the addiction was not an oversight. It was the product’s purpose.

The People Behind the Purchase Receipts

A class action tracks purchases and calculates refunds. It does not fully account for what MRSS took from people. The court filings include testimony pulled directly from the “Quitting Tianeptine” community on Reddit — people who found each other online because they had nowhere else to go. Their stories are not outliers. The complaint describes them as consistent, echoing, representative. These are accounts from people who thought they were buying a supplement.

One user described working seven days a week just to maintain their ZaZa habit — taking two to three bottles per day for six months, dosing every three to four hours around the clock, waking in the middle of the night to dose in order to sleep at all. “It’s killing me financially and ruining my relationship with my family,” they wrote. They had tried to taper down to one bottle a day but could not get lower. The financial bleeding was constant. The isolation was compounding. The product had reorganized their entire life around its schedule.

Another user described being trapped specifically by the physical symptoms of withdrawal: restless leg syndrome, night sweats, restless arms. “I am so worried about the withdrawals,” they wrote. They were not chasing a high anymore. They were trying to avoid feeling sick. ZaZa had turned from something that felt good into something they could not put down without their body breaking down.

The most devastating account in the complaint belongs to a man who first encountered tianeptine in 2018. He was already struggling — a prior dependency on hydrocodone and oxycodone, then kratom. When tianeptine became available he started. Within months it consumed everything. Over two years and eight months, he burned through approximately $30,000 (enough to cover a year of groceries for a working-class family of four, with money left over). He maxed out five credit cards. He pawned two car titles. He took two personal loans of $5,000 each ($10,000 total, roughly the out-of-pocket medical expenses for a single emergency room stay). He ran up more than $6,000 in store credit at the shop where he first bought tianeptine. He pawned his wedding band. He pawned his wife’s silver jewelry. He stole money from his son. He stole from friends — losing several in the process. He stole from his church’s offering plate. Twice.

His wife left him. His son stopped speaking to him. On August 11, 2020, he attempted to hang himself. Twice. That same morning. He called a federal employee assistance hotline and was admitted to a detox unit by 1:30 in the afternoon — having already consumed one 15-count and one 24-count bottle of ZaZa Red that morning. “Had I not been admitted,” he wrote, “I knew I’d have died by that day’s end.” He had been taking ZaZa products at a rate of four to six bottles per day. None of those bottles carried a single word of warning. The label just said to “Feel Good.” MRSS knew. They kept selling.

Straight from the Filing: Words That Cannot Be Walked Back

These are direct quotes and factual statements from the class action complaint filed in federal court on June 23, 2025.

What This Costs the Rest of Us

Feeding a Crisis That’s Already Killing People

The United States is in the middle of an opioid epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people over the past two decades. MRSS sold an opioid product — framed as a harmless supplement — directly into that crisis. The complaint states: “Defendant’s conduct exacerbates that crisis.” That is not hyperbole. That is a factual allegation supported by the pharmacological profile of tianeptine and the documented pattern of addiction and overdose it produces.

The CDC found a significant increase in poison control calls related to tianeptine between 2014 and 2017. The affected population was primarily adults aged 21 to 40 — working-age people. The symptoms reported included neurological effects, cardiovascular effects, gastrointestinal effects, signs of opioid toxicity, and active withdrawal. These are people ending up in emergency rooms, calling hotlines, missing work, losing function. The CDC issued a formal public health warning. The FDA followed in 2022. The DEA followed in 2024. MRSS kept selling through all of it.

The product’s design compounds the public health damage. Tianeptine has a short half-life, which accelerates the addiction cycle and increases overdose risk. Because ZaZa is sold as a supplement — available without age verification, without a prescription, without a pharmacist consultation — users have no framework for understanding what they are taking. They do not seek medical help for a “supplement problem.” By the time they realize what has happened, physical dependency has set in. Treatment for opioid use disorder is expensive, scarce, and stigmatized. MRSS collected the profits. Society absorbs the treatment costs, the emergency room visits, the lost productivity, and the grief.

The complaint also notes that ZaZa’s disguise as a supplement specifically targeted people who might avoid traditional opioids precisely because they know opioids are dangerous. “When reasonable consumers think of opioids, they think of heroin, fentanyl, hydrocodone, oxycodone, or morphine. They do not think that ZaZa products sold at gas stations or other local stores will act like an opioid.” MRSS exploited that ignorance. People who were specifically trying to avoid opioid dependency walked directly into it because MRSS made the product look safe.

The People Who Can Least Afford This Are Targeted by Design

Gas stations, bodegas, corner stores, and mini-marts are not where wealthy people shop for supplements. ZaZa’s entire distribution model — sold in the same retail locations as lottery tickets, cheap cigarettes, and single-serving snacks — targets working-class and lower-income communities. These are the neighborhoods where a $40 bottle of “supplement” sounds like a wellness product, where consumer protection resources are thinnest, and where the gap between what a product claims and what regulators actually do about it is widest.

The economic destruction documented in the testimonials from the “Quitting Tianeptine” forum illustrates how quickly ZaZa hollows out a household’s finances. One user’s account documents $30,000 (enough to make a full down payment on a modest home in many U.S. markets) spent on ZaZa products in under three years. Multiple maxed-out credit cards. Pawned property. Stolen money. Payday loans. These are the financial instruments of people with no safety net. When a ZaZa addiction compounds onto that kind of financial fragility, the results are catastrophic and permanent — destroyed credit, destroyed savings, destroyed relationships.

The addictive loop MRSS engineered ensures that the financial harm escalates over time. The complaint explains the tolerance mechanism: users need larger and larger doses to achieve the same effect. As the dose requirement climbs, the per-day cost climbs with it. The user documented in the complaint escalated from a single bottle to four to six bottles per day. At documented retail prices of approximately $40 per bottle (roughly the cost of a tank of gas for a midsize car), a four-bottle-per-day habit runs to $160 a day ($58,400 a year, more than the median household income for millions of American families). The product is not just addictive. It is financially predatory by design, and it targets the communities with the least capacity to absorb that predation.