Thoughts many years later — Mary Beth

I am one of the people who took this “miracle drug.” It has been over two years since I went through that hellish nightmare. I managed to quit smoking, but when you go to the edge of insanity and back, and almost die, you are kind of motivated NOT to smoke again. There’s no explaining to anyone ever again, “Hey, but I just wanted a cigarette… even though quitting could have killed me. Literally.”

It has been a long road “back,” even though I’m not sure I’ll ever be exactly the same again. Nothing feels like it did before. Nothing. And since I’ve gone months and months without a cigarette, and there’s no nicotine left in my body, I’d appreciate all you do-gooders out there who want to tell me how “awful” nicotine withdrawal is to keep that nugget of wisdom to yourselves. Food still doesn’t taste right. My body doesn’t work like it used to. I have aged 5 or 10 years since all this started. I used to look “young” for my age. Now I look my age and then some.

Right down to my sex drive, I’m simply not the same person I was “pre-Chantix.” I’ve tried changing scenery, I’ve tried changing lots of things, but I am yet to find the old “me.” I’m sometimes curious if that is a function of what I *saw* while on Chantix. After you see and feel what I did, and what so many others have, how can you ever really feel normal again?

I don’t expect anyone who didn’t have bad side effects from it to understand. I don’t expect anyone who has never smoked to understand. But I’ve met enough people and doctors who *do* understand that I know it isn’t all in my head.

It has taken a really patient psychiatrist who believed what I told him–only because he had seen and heard it from too many other people before me–and a lot of medications, to get my mind functioning again. I had what can only be described as “ADD” for many months while on Chantix and after I went off it. I still haven’t regained my full concentration or focus, but I don’t known if that’s permanent hard-wire damage or if maybe I’ve just lost interest in things that don’t seem too important in the grand spectrum of “life.” Either way, the result is the same.

Some days are better than others. Some days I just struggle to feel something–anything–that resembles joy, or happiness, or excitement. Other days I get a vague recollection of what it’s like to be happy. I have decided that given how some people have ended up on this drug, I have to make myself be at least a little bit happy about the fact that I am still alive. I’m grateful for every day “above ground” and I do my part to warn other people about what I went through. Thanks for hosting this site.

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