Smokers....I finally quit!

Congrats to all of you who have quit either on your own OR with meds, I applaud you. I took Chantix about a year ago and it did reduce the urge to smoke...BUT... I was the most irritable person on the planet for about two months. When I say irritable I mean plain nasty. I'm a pretty laid back guy and always have been but I actually threatened other people during this time and nearly lost my job. My wife said she had never seen me that way before because I was talking pretty badly to her....that had never happened before.I also have a lifelong friend that I very nearly lost from this about face in behavior. I'm not looking to sue anyone so don't automatically go there. The only way I can explain my behavior is I missed smoking and it was making me miserable OR the meds OR maybe a combination of the two....I don't know. I personally know two other drivers who have quit using Chantix after using several other methods that didn't work. I think it's probably a good product overall and am not slamming it by any means, I just can't help but wonder if it is 100% right for EVERYONE...after all it does alter the brain chemistry right??

 

Chantix works like this: When you smoke a cigarette, certain areas of the brain sense the chemicals as "pleasure" which is why people get hooked on it - these same areas are also stimulated to read the message of "pleasure" when people use heroin. The drug Chantix, is picked up by those same pleasure centers, so they are essentially, satisfied. You aren't getting the same exact feeling, but the areas of the brain are satisifed by the medication, so the craving for nicotine decreases. The receptors are satisfied sort of like putting a plastic plug in an electric outlet - yeah, something is plugged in, but it doesn't really do anything.

Also, when drugs are in phase 3 testing, test subjects who take the medications are instructed to record any, and I mean ANY side effects. So, if you are taking, say, a new drug to treat hypertension, and you report during week 2 of the testing that you had knee pain, then knee pain will be a side effect. If you look at the prescription information that comes with a drug sometime, you usually find tables with the list of side effects, the most common listed first. Go down that list and see what you find near the bottom. I would bet on ANY medication, you will find stomach upset, diarrhea, constipation, headache, etc. Likely, when the drug was being tested, some people had those things at some time when they were part of the test. Look farther down the list and you might see things like seizures, insomnia, depression, difficulty urinating and any number of things in smaller and smaller percentages of the test pool. The number of people with these terrible side effects - which may or may very well not be due to Chantix - will be statistically pretty small.

And, any time a drug comes out that meets with a lot of popularity and a lot of people want to take it, the pool of people who may already have other serious problems grows larger and the incidence of them becoming part of the pool increases. Out of 4 million people who tried the drug Chantix, how many exhibited this behavior? Out of 4 million people who have never taken the drug, how many might also exhibit this behavior? (Given the number of nut cases you read about in the news these days, I'm betting there might be a few.)

Also, with a popular drug, anything untoward that comes up, will receive a LOT of press, and it will be slanted however the writer wants it to appear. Look at it this way: If a truck driver is involved in an accident, and someone gets hurt, and it was in no way, shape of form the fault of the driver, tell me - who is the news media going to point the finger of blame at first? And if they get it wrong - think anyone makes a big deal of correcting the mistake? Nope - because that is not news. So, in order to forestall lawsuits, companies will voluntarily add any kind of warning if they suspect it might be a problem, with a lawsuit looming. They learned from Vioxx, too. (Hey, I took Vioxx, probably no more than 5 days a month, not on a daily basis, and I am still alive. For me, it was one heck of a good drug - took care of the pain I had at the time. To me, taking one pill a day and getting relief beat the heck out of taking ibuprofen 800 mg every 6 hours.)

Not every drug is right for every person, too. With a drug such as Chantix, probably some of the people that take it will have an untoward reaction. That does not make it a bad drug for everyone.

Last, if you smoke, and you want to quit and Chantix is the last thing on the list to try, each individual has to weigh the consequences of using the drug to stop smoking and the the consequences of continuing to smoke.

By the way, Zyban is another brand name of Wellbutrin, an antidepressant. The only difference is, Zyban is aimed at smokers who want to quit.

 

Let me tell you my personal experience, and the experience of a former acquaintance with Chantix.

AS WITH ANY DRUG, EVEN PRESCRIPTION, READ AND UNDERSTAND ALL THE WARNINGS AND SIDE-EFFECTS BEFORE YOU TAKE IT!

My Experience: Started dipping snuff at 8. Switched to smokes 10 yrs later. Smoked until 2 yrs ago. Changed to patches, gums, lozenges, and the occasional cigar but still couldn't kick the nic. and bounced back to smoking again before seeing the doc about it.

Doc reccomended Chantix. Here were my side effects: 1) Extreme Agitation - I'd fly off the handle at the drop of a hat. 2) Intensely vivid and in a few cases lucid dreams. (I honestly miss that!) 3) *INTENSE* withdrawal symptoms even before I quit smoking, but my smoking INCREASED because chantix was blocking the nicotine and my
body was telling me I craved a cig sooner. Once I realized this was happening, I forced myself to QUIT smoking, but I still had withdrawal. 4) as I continued tapering off the chantix after 3-4 months, the withdrawal symptoms persisted until about a week after I'd run out of the stuff completely I finally broke down and bought a pack.

Finally, I went back to lozenges for about 4 months and got fed up and decided to force myself to quit cold turkey. I've quit cold turkey with varying levels of success in the past, but post-chantix relapse smoking I had FAR WORSE WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS than ever before... WORSE.

I am now 42 days cold turkey. Just gotta tell yourself you REALLY don't want that nicotine.

Here's an old acquaintance's story:

He'd been smoking most his life, mid-30's. His girl pretty much the same story. They decided to quit together w/Chantix. They had NEVER had a major fight in the years they'd been together, but Chantix immediately changed that. Carter went from a laid back friendly sort of guy to an irritable and irrational person looking for every argument he could get himself into. For the first time ever that I've known, he actually lashed out and hit his girl in a couple of these arguments. One night she was fed up, told him to get the Foxtrot out of the house until he could get his temper in check. He walked to the corner store, and walked back home accidentally going to the back door of the NEIGHBORS house instead of his own, and banging on the door and screaming. The neighbors didn't recognize him, thought they had a crazed lunatic on their back porch, and after much yelling thru the door, the neighbor fired a "warning blast" with his shotgun thru the window at the top of the door.

Carter was very tall... mid to upper 6-footer. He took that blast to the face and died instantly. Google the name "Carter Albrecht", the news stories will come up at the top- of course they don't say anything about Chantix, but someone who knows Carter's girl said that was really the only thing that had changed in their lives recently before the incident.

All because of Chantix.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU TAKE... JUST CUZ THE DOC AND DRUG COMPANIES SAY IT'S SAFE, THAT DOESN'T MEAN IT'S GONNA BE A WALK IN THE TULIPS!

 

You don't think it was just the nicotine withdrawal? I know my ex was just like that and all it was was the nicotine withdrawal because he wasn't taking anything.

That's really awful. If Chiantix does cause things like that, they better get on top of it and fix it or put warnings on the label.

Good for you for quitting smokine!! I used Nicorettes years ago and that helped me.

 

Well, I'd think after 3 months of no nicotine I'd be past any nicotine withdrawal, especially considering I was taking something that should have masked those symptoms.

Really the only way to quit and stay quit is to quit cold turkey. I was actually pretty successful, was nicotine free for almost 2 yrs after quitting cold turkey, but I messed up at a bar one night and said gimme a smoke, and like they say the rest is history.

The warnings are on there... each bottle of pills comes with a huge fold out with all the information in tiny print.

The PDF file on the Chantix site states the most common side effects are:

1) Nausea
2) sleep disturbance (trouble sleeping or vivid, unusual, or increased
dreaming)
3) constipation
4) gas
5) vomiting

It also goes on to say:

"These are not all the side effects of CHANTIX. Ask your doctor or pharmacist for more information. Tell your doctor if you experience agitation, depressed mood or suicidal thoughts. These symptoms have been reported in patients trying to stop smoking with or without
Chantix. It is not known if these symptoms are related to Chantix."

All I can do really is warn people to make them understand it is NOT a cure-all stop-smoking holy-grail. It's worked GREAT for lots of people, and NOT GREAT for lots of people. Do your research and pay close attention to how it's affecting you.

Of course the warning label also expresses that you should not operate heavy equipment or vehicles without fully understanding how quitting smoking with chantix will affect you.

 

I've got a carton of Marlboro and a case of Coors in the garage. Stop on buy

 

Nothing like trying to encourage someone who is trying to quit a bad habit.

 

Your child hood dream.. Very encouraging....

 

Yeah, not the touch of class you showed for the guy trying to quit smoking!