From: mha23x@gmail.com   
      
   This Is My Brain on Chantix   
   I’d heard it was the most effective stop-smoking drug yet. So I took it.   
   Then those reports of suicidal ideation began washing in.   
   By Derek De Koff Published Feb 10, 2008 ShareThis   
      
   (Photo: Tim Richardson)   
   Things were looking good. My doctor had gone through the test results and told   
   me I was perfectly healthy—except my breathing was a little shallow. That   
   didn’t surprise me. I’d been smoking for twelve of my 32 years, and my   
   father died of lung    
   cancer in his early fifties. That’s why I was having my first physical in   
   five years: I’d decided it was time to stop for good.   
      
   I’d heard about Chantix, a relatively new drug from Pfizer that blocks   
   nicotine from attaching to your brain receptors. That way, you stop receiving   
   any pleasure from cigarettes at all—even as the drug, snuggling up to those   
   receptors the same way    
   nicotine does, reduces withdrawal cravings and unleashes a happy little wash   
   of dopamine to boot. Wonderful things they can do nowadays.   
      
   My doctor wished me luck as he wrote out the prescription, telling me it was   
   the single most important decision I’d ever make in my life. I had the   
   medication that night, 35 minutes after dropping into Duane Reade. While   
   waiting, I gleefully chain-   
   smoked Parliament Lights. One of Chantix’s big perks is that you can smoke   
   for the first seven days you’re on it (most people take it for twelve   
   weeks)—more than enough time, I thought, to say good-bye to an old friend.   
      
   I swallowed my first pill the next day before work. It was a beautiful fall   
   morning, an almost obnoxiously cinematic day to turn over a new leaf. But by   
   the time I was halfway to the office, I started to feel a slight nausea coming   
   on. Of course, that is    
   a common side effect, as are constipation, gas, vomiting, and changes in   
   dreaming. These five symptoms were emblazoned in a large font on the   
   patient-information sheet.   
      
   My stomach settled as I finished my first cup of coffee. I slipped into my   
   boss’s office, proudly announcing that I’d just started taking Chantix.   
   â€œYou’ve probably seen the commercial,â€� I said. A CGI tortoise races   
   against a sprightly CGI hare,    
   while a paternal voice-over reminds us that quitting smoking “isn’t for   
   sprinters … it’s all about getting there!â€� Clinical trials demonstrated   
   a whopping 44 percent of patients were still off cigarettes after twelve   
   weeks, the ad says. The    
   tortoise winks knowingly.   
      
   â€œYou know, I saw something about Chantix,â€� my boss said, sounding vaguely   
   concerned. He tracked down the story on a CBS Website. It was a sensational   
   report on Carter Albrecht, a Dallas musician formerly with Edie Brickell & New   
   Bohemians. Albrecht    
   had started taking Chantix with his fiancée, with seemingly dramatic side   
   effects. She claimed he had had bizarre hallucinations that worsened when he   
   drank. One evening, he attacked her, something he’d never done before. He   
   then ran to his neighbor’   
   s house and kicked at the door, screaming incomprehensibly. The neighbor was   
   so panicked he wound up shooting Albrecht through the door, killing him.   
      
   I tried not to roll my eyes. It seemed obvious this was nothing more than   
   scaremongering—perhaps Big Tobacco had launched a spin campaign. Millions of   
   Americans were on Chantix. Why focus on the negative?   
      
   The next night, I nodded off listening to Radiohead’s In Rainbows, feeling a   
   little guilty that I’d paid zero dollars for it. I had a quick blip of a   
   dream: A dark, inky fluid was jolting violently from the corners of my   
   ceiling, zigzagging its way    
   across the walls and wooden floor in jerky sync to the music.   
      
   It was only a dream, though it seemed more immediate and visceral than my   
   usual fare, which I rarely remember after waking up. The following night,   
   things got even stranger. I fell asleep with Bravo blaring on my TV and   
   dreamed that a red-faced Tim Gunn    
   was pushing me against the wall. “But I always thought you were so nice,â€�   
   I said.   
      
   By night four, my dreams began to take on characteristics of a David   
   Cronenberg movie. Every time I’d drift off, I’d dream that an invisible,   
   malevolent entity was emanating from my air conditioner, which seemed to be   
   rattling even more than usual. Iâ   
   €™d nap for twenty minutes or so before bolting awake with an involuntary   
   gasp. I had the uneasy sense that I wasn’t alone.   
      
   I smoked a cigarette, then tried going back to sleep. But each time I started   
   napping, I’d dream that something increasingly ominous—carbon monoxide?   
   Vampires?—was sucking vital essence out of me. Soon the clock on my desk   
   read 3:20 a.m.   
      
   The most unsettling thing about sleeping on Chantix is that I never felt like   
   I was truly asleep. Some part of me remained on guard. It was more like lucid   
   dreaming, what I thought it might feel like to be hypnotized. And it didn’t   
   entirely go away    
   come morning. As I showered, shaved, and scrambled into clothes, I tried to   
   shake a weird, paranoid sense that I’d just been psychically raped by a   
   household appliance.   
      
   Next: The early problems with Chantix.   
   1 2 3 4 Next   
      
   Read More:   
      
   http://nymag.com/news/features/43892/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)