The author of the blog took Chantix and had a really bad reaction.  She went to a hospital emergency room after realizing it was the Chantix, and they referred her to a local “behavioral” (psychiatric) hospital and she signed herself in voluntarily.  There she was held against her will, confused with another patient, heavily medicated, and, led to believe that she was bipolar.

The sad part is the blog contains DOZENS of similar stories and comments about this one particular hospital, located in Denton, Texas.  That hospital is owned by parent company Ascend Health, and, if you live near one of their facilities or plan on using one for treatment, you owe it to yourself to read about their hospital in Denton, Texas, first.

She immediately stopped taking the Chantix but the combo of Prednisone combined with the Chantix reaction just about put her over the edge. I’d find her crying and she got so bad she couldn’t even write her name. When we did finally get in to see the prescribing doctor she totally dismissed it from being related to Chantix. All I know is it all started shortly after starting Chantix and it all stopped shortly after stopping. It was a very scary experience. The real disappointment is there is no good way to report this back to Pfizer. The doctors dismissed it so you never get counted in the percentage of “people normally affected” group. They also didn’t know what to do about the reaction they misdiagnosed it twice and miss-medicated the symptoms. My advice is to stay away from it or at least ask your doctor what the treatment protocol is if you start experiencing negative side effects.

I created this blog so the next person who has a nightmare with this medication doesn’t feel as alone as I did when I started falling apart.Have a Chantix/Champix story to share? Mail it to me at info@chantixsucks.com Yes, I will even publish the “positive” ones (but so far, nobody has sent me any!)

Quitting is a great idea.  Over four years smoke-free myself, I really enjoy the freedom.  No worries about going on long car or bus trips and “Jones’ing” for a cigarette.  No fears about missing a connecting flight because I had to find a way in and out of an airport just to get my nicotine fix.  No funky smells in my clothes or house, and, no apologizing for that icky hacking cough that always seemed to disrupt classes, speeches, and other events.  It’s downright liberating to be smoke-free!

But, it is NOT liberating to feel like you’re losing your mind.  It is not liberating to be so volatile, angry and hostile that you damage–sometimes irreparably–valued relationships.   It is not liberating to go to the emergency room having a break down that you can’t explain.  And, it’s certainly not liberating for your family to have to plan your funeral because the depression you felt was so severe that you decided it would be easiest to take your own life.

These are all side effects that people who took Chantix experienced in the past, and, continue to experience today.  These are real people with real stories, some of who have filed a lawsuit against Pfizer.  Still, others may just be suffering in silence trying to put their lives back together because their story wasn’t “bad enough” for a lawyer to take their case.   Think very carefully before taking Chantix, and also be very leery of any doctor who won’t acknowledge that these are very real side effects.

There is a doctor in Denton, Texas, who treated me and my family for almost 15 years.  He is one of those doctors who believes everyone should quit smoking, no matter the cost.  When I had a bad reaction to the Chantix that he prescribed for me?  He wouldn’t even return my calls to ask what happened.  He didn’t care.  Two years later, he was still trying to get someone I know to take Chantix who was known to have depression issues–a group of people that this medication is definitely contraindicated for!  He loves Chantix, to be sure.

I suspect that Pfizer has helped him make up his mind about Chantix.  Big pharma companies are known to warm the hearts of doctors with gifts that might include office supplies, dinners, and even sweet little vacations now and then.   All the companies do it, it’s not just Pfizer.  But, he has definitely proven to be a prostitute to the companies because he rarely pays for anything in his office.  This is a known fact, by the way.  The pharmaceutical industry practically furnished his new office that he built and moved into a few years ago.  He had one entire room dedicated just to Viagra, with a Viagra clock, Viagra paper on the exam table, Viagra tissues, etc.  That’s because, as his nurse told me, the makers of Viagra asked him to do that, so that he could put male patients in there.  While they waited, they could start thinking about Viagra (because it’s written on everything in the room) and then maybe they would be more comfortable asking the doctor about it.  What a great plan.

Don’t think for a moment that your doctor is too ethical to be influenced by the pharmaceutical industry.  I’m not bashing doctors, I just realize how financially stressed many of them really are.  With reimbursements from insurance companies getting tigheter, employer-provided benefit plans getting less-generous, and the country in the worst recession in history, doctors are hurting just like the rest of us.  A family practitioner nowadays might make $150,000 a year.  That sounds like a lot to folks who make $40,000 a year, but when you consider how much medical school costs, and, how long the doctor is there (4 years of college, plus 4 years of med school, plus internship, residency, and, additional years of school if going into a specialization), plus the long work hours, the challenges of running and owning a private practice…I really don’t think $150,000 is too much for them to make.  And, I don’t even like to think about the bodies of most strangers, much less touch them.  Ewwwwwwwwww!  No way I’d do that for $150,000.  NO WAY.

But, I still expect my doctor to do what’s in my best interest.  After said doctor wouldn’t return my call, I found a new doctor who did not allow pharmaceutical representatives to come into his office.  Sure, he didn’t have free samples to give out, but, he also didn’t have his opinion swayed by free gifts and fancy perks.  I trusted his judgment a lot more than I did that of my previous doctor, who I grew to truly dislike after I realized just how much he cared about his personal bottom line versus my safety and well-being.

My point is this…. just because your doctor is prescribing it for you, that doesn’t make it safe.   So, think carefully before you take this medication.  And, if you have any history of depression, bipolar disorder, or other mental illness, just don’t do it.  The jury is still out on how bad this stuff really is, but there’s enough of us who can definitely say it caused major problems that you should at least consider you might not react well to it, either.

Try hypnosis, acupuncture, nicotine gum, nicotine patches…. and if they’ve failed you before, TRY AGAIN.  You can do it if you really want to!  Best of luck….

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/health&id=8417500

There are tons of links like this. Just tell me….. WHAT is it going to take to have them take this stuff off the market?

Chantix helped me quit smoking but I blame it for having poisoned the happiness of my marriage. I have written letters to Pfizer about the problems it caused me and they responded by sending me the number of a call center in India.

I took the drug beginning in March 2009. I was just over 50 and had been smoking for over 30 years. I was a terrible smoker and because I worked at home I had never had to learn to go without for any length of time as office workers did. Quitting was a wrench.

I had been married for over 20 years and my family and friends always made fun of me for how crazy I remained about my husband well into middle age. But while I was taking the Chantix I fell in love with somebody else.

One of the first things I noticed about Chantix was the vivid, detailed dreams it gave me, but they were good dreams at first. Later on they turned sick and hateful. I’ll get to that. But the dream I associate most with the Chantix is one I still have: I’ve started smoking again, which is associated with feelings of guilt, failure and shame. I wish I could stop having the dream but probably it’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed quit. When I wake up and realize it isn’t true, that I haven’t had a cigarette in years now, I’m always sick with relief.

The other thing that was most noticeable about Chantix is that it made me, for lack of a better word, boy-crazy. At my age!

The drug increases the libido, to say the least. At first this just meant my poor husband had a hard time keeping up with me. He did his best for me, poor bastard. But it was never fulfilling for me because what I really wanted was this other man I had met in connection with my work.

Before I took the Chantix I had always noticed in a sedate middle-aged kind of way that this man was attractive. I would even blush and stammer a little when I spoke to him. But after I had been on the drug a month or so, and after I had stopped smoking, it became an obsession. I had this idea that I had to stay strong and keep off the cigarettes so I could be worthy of him.

I was in La-La Land! I wanted to be “his girl” and I didn’t think he’d like a woman who smoked. I go back over my thinking now and wonder how I squared it all with reality, but I never saw any real impediment to our being together. What I was going to do with my husband I can’t imagine.

I never stopped loving my husband, I love him now, but when I was craziest in love with this other guy I found my husband increasingly obstreperous. When my cell phone would ring and I would see his name pop up it would make me want to scream with disappointment.

I was too modest about my own attractions to confront the dreamboat man directly but I expect I made myself pretty clear anyway. I hung around him too much and manufactured work reasons to call him and tried too hard to find things to ask him about when I was able to be near him. There was one time I was so overt I think I scared SHIT out of him, and after that he avoided me whenever he could, which broke my heart but it didn’t stop me.

I took Chantix a full month before I quit smoking and kept taking it though only one a day, not two, for several more. It was about three months into this that I discovered abruptly that I had fundamentally changed, I didn’t recognize myself anymore.

For one thing I was still obsessed with the man, and for another the obsession had made me secretive and cagey – I had no one to tell about it except, for God’s sake, my husband, and I wasn’t going to do that. But another weird thing was that for the first time in my life I was shopping for clothes, wearing lots of makeup and paying a hairdresser to make me beautiful. Or, you know, try.

Anyway I got scared and quit the Chantix. I had tried earlier, because of the dreams, which as I said earlier had turned nasty. They were still vivid, and every night I’d hope I’d dream this time about my dreamboat making love to me. But instead it would be Great-Uncle Mortimer or somebody, totally unappetizing stuff. I woke up one time really appalled and tried to quit the drug, but I’d start longing for a cigarette in the afternoons and take the Chantix again for fear of caving in.

This time I meant it and quit Chantix cold turkey. Result: I stopped being able to sleep. At first I’d sleep only four hours and wake irrevocably up, then two, then one – then I stopped being able to sleep at all. All one long holiday weekend I didn’t sleep though I took over-the-counter sleeping pills washed down with glasses of wine. Nothing worked.

On the fourth day I was so frayed and twitchy I gave in and took half a Chantix. I began vomiting and didn’t stop for seven hours. It wasn’t ordinary vomiting but wrenching stomach pains to which vomiting was the only relief, so that after everything was out of my stomach I’d drink water so I could vomit more. But that would only stop the pain a few minutes and I ended up in the emergency room.

Nothing was done for me there. The cure was natural: my body was so completely worn out I finally went to sleep. That was two years and two months ago and I’ve never taken another Chantix or smoked another cigarette.

After that I started “coming down” from Chantix. It reminded me of when I was in college decades ago, learning why people like me shouldn’t smoke marijuana. I was never any good at dope. It made me stupid and paranoid, but what I hated worst was that I’d be walking along minding my own business a few days later and suddenly flash back to being stoned. Coming down from Chantix I’d feel like I did back then, sort of helpless because I couldn’t get back straight.

That wore off and as it did I began to see I’d been, as I put it to myself, mistaken in my thinking. I mean about the dreamboat. He didn’t have anything to do with me. Worse, he didn’t want anything to do with me.

But God damn it, I still wanted him. I still had my little problem. I still have it after two years.

I know it’s insane. I love my husband. My family members have all died or moved away from me and my husband is all the security, all the home I have in this world. I don’t want to lose him.

But every time I see the dreamboat man I’m in love again. There’s nobody else in any room he’s in. My other lasting side-effects: I still have no sense of smell, and I still have that damned dream. But those I could live with. This one drives me nuts.

I saw a psychotherapist for a while and she tried to talk me out of it. Didn’t work. Then I was able to take a few months away from my job and I didn’t see the dreamboat for a while and I thought I was cured. But one day I walked into a lunch joint and there he was sitting at a table and everything started over again.

Since then I’ve learned all about him – he’s got a wife and children, church membership, all that for God’s sake. And if he didn’t, I’ve still got the husband. It’s never going to happen.

So here I am in the same situation I was before, except that now I’m never content with it. It used to be just me and my husband and we were complete in ourselves, our own little world. Now I’m always looking over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of the other guy. I’m glad I don’t smoke anymore but on another level quitting has ruined my happiness.

Or Chantix has. The thing that pisses me off most is that Pfizer never answered my letter except to give me the number for the call center in India. I called it but nobody could even vaguely understand what I was talking about.

I am not going to sue Pfizer because I don’t want to tell this story anywhere my husband can hear it. But somebody needs to stop them before they destroy more lives.

I have apologized to my mother, and of course she forgave me, for the horrible Christmas that resulted from Chantix.  I was hateful, curt, reactionary, and downright mean.  I remember feeling like I had every reason to be.  The rage was undeniable and I couldn’t escape it.  By that point in time after three months on that “miracle” (as in, it’s a miracle I survived it) drug, I had had several outbursts, including one that left me screaming at a guy I was dating on the phone with such rancor and hostility that I surprised even myself.   And later on I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I was so angry with him.

As I write this, I remember a fourth incident–I was at a hotel with a friend of mine and her ex-boyfriend was making her cry on the phone.  I couldn’t STOP myself from screaming at him.  We were asked to leave the hotel I was so loud and I really was so pissed off about the whole thing I didn’t care.

What people on Chantix do not–and cannot–realize is that the rage they feel is misplaced.  They should be angry at Pfizer, but instead they often take it out on those closest to them.  The worst result of all is suicide, or homicide, but then there’s also the broken and damaged relationships that result.

If you’re reading this while on Chantix, and you feel that rage that I speak of, try to remember that unless you’ve always had a temper, it’s probably the medication.  Talk to your doctor about it.  And, if you’re reading this as a victim of someone’s Chantix rage, well, I don’t know what to tell you to do other than to be patient, and, perhaps, if you are comfortable with the idea, talk to their doctor.  It would be worth the price of an appointment to sit down and explain the situation to the doctor, who for privacy reasons cannot comment, but, who should be informed about what’s going on.

Your drug does indeed work…only because it puts people through such a living hell they NEVER want to smoke again. AT least half my motivation to never pick up a cigarette again is because I’ll NEVER let YOU have the satisfaction of saying “She just wanted a reason to keep smoking.”

Congratulations on your invention and all the profits you made from it. I’m just happy to be above the dirt line to tell other people what kind of crappy drug you’re putting on the market. Unlike some people who died because of Chantix…. shame on you, Pfizer. You SUCK.

Maybe I should go to a cardiologist but then what? The Dr.’s can go on a nice vacation…The stuff may do me in… I contacted the Pfizer co. and they sent me a letter so they could contact my Dr. which I sent  but have not heard anything since.