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The news about the stop smoking drug Chantix (varenicline) just keeps getting worse. When my sister emailed a while back and said she was thinking of taking the drug to get off the weed, I said make sure you have your suicide hotline number handy. A recent report in JAMA shows an alarming number of suicides and suicide attempts on Chantix, much larger than you would normally expect.
Last year I was sitting in my car dealership waiting to get service on my car and working on my laptop while the television was droning on in front of me. I mean this was one of the rare times when I watch TV without the benefit of Tivo to pause the commercials or otherwise avoid them. And it was like one prescription medication ad after another! They were only punctuated by an ad for a device for diabetics to check their blood sugar at home. All I can say is they better get Ronald McDonald (“Don’t forget to feed the waste baskets…”) back on TV so that they can keep those diabetics rolling in to buy their blood glucose testers (not to mention their Avandia and Actos).
Anyhoo one of the ads that caught my eye was of a woman who droned on about how she needed a cigarette to wake up, one in the car, one at 10 am… Boy I know that drill. I kicked the habit by writing a book that advocated diet, exercise and lifestyle changes over prescription medications for health (works every time! No relapses!).
But enough of my narcissism, back to the “My Time to Quit” campaign by the makers of the anti-smoking drug Chantix, which was gleefully playing across the screen at my auto dealership and interfering with my ability to concentrate on more important things like write a book chapter that noone would ever read.
This drug affects the frontal lobe of the brain, which regulates emotion, and has been associated with depression, psychosis, and suicidality. It made headlines when a famous country music singer from Texas who was on the drug accosted a neighbor in an apparently psychotic state of mind and was shot dead.
Thanks Texas home invasion gun laws!
What’s really annoying is that the clinical trials of Chantix excluded people with mental disorders, but smoking is increased in this population, and these people are obviously at increased risk of suicidality. In spite of this the spokespersons for Chantix say it is fine for people with depression and other mental disorders to go ahead and take Chantix.
When I think of Chantix, in spite of the PR campaign to the contrairy, rather than thinking,
Time To Quit!
The image that comes to mind is of (Governor) Arnold Schwartenagger about to finally eliminate a robot in one of the terminator movies when he says…
Time to die!
I have the best method to quit smoking. DIE!
Oh well, maybe I’ll start humming along with the “life saving drugs” theme song one of these days.
Hat tip to Philip Dawdy.
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I quit smoking by leaving for 2 months to camp “on the ice” in tents in a remote field station in Antarctica (without cigarettes and no hope of getting any). I had spent a month prior to that down to less than half a pack a day from the previous 1.5-2 packs a day. You already know me under a pseudonym. Here I am in my Antarctic days as a freshly minted non-smoker:
http://picasaweb.google.com/greta.heintz/Antarctica?feat=email#
the only time I recommend COLD-TURKEY!!
with any psych drugs, across the board, cold-turkey withdrawal is dangerous…but man…I repeatedly tried all sorts of “nicotine replacement” therapy and all it does it keep you addicted to NICOTINE.
get the crap out of your system and don’t touch another cigarette…it works.
glad I’d already quit cigs when Chantix first came out…of course I was anti-most drugs in any case by the time it came out.
Nice penguins! Well we have THIRD method to stop smoking. I read a book called “The easy way to stop smoking” whose two best points were that it takes two months to completely withdraw, and that you should NEVER have that “just one” after you quit. And yes nicorette gum does not work.
oh…yeah, absolutely…the just one cig had me relapse two times!!
it’s a never again thing…NEVER EVER AGAIN!!
The “just one cigarette” caught me the first time I quit, so I knew better the second time around. I continued having craving until about the 2 YEAR mark though progressively less with time. Since that was situational especially when watching others smoke I guess that was the habit of smoking rather than physical addiction still in place. I was relieved that at a certain point I finally became averse to being near someone smoking and NOTHING would cause me to ever take a puff again. I’d say it was about 2 years or so before that set in. There was a month of near pain of withdrawal at the beginning.
I developed a horrible aversion to smoke as well, but try not to be an obnoxious ex-smoker. I honestly think it’s perhaps impossible for some people to quit. I feel it only happened for me by some grace that the universe provided me with…
Oh, I absolutely agree. I empathize with the people who can’t quit and I understand deeply why they can’t. I have had a lot of accomplishments in my life, but none so difficult as quitting smoking. Being in a tent 300 miles from the nearest cigarette did NOTHING to protect me from the strong urge I had to smoke as soon as I was back at McMurdo once again around smokers and with cigarettes and for sale in the PX for 10 cents a pack courtesy of the US government. It made me understand how someone could go through drug addiction treatment and come out and start using again. Back in an environment with “users” it takes supreme willpower.