Want to stop smoking permanently? Then why not kill yourself? According to the Daily Mail, the stop-smoking wonder drug Champix can make some users suicidal.
It’s not a big surprise if true – I tried the previous wonder drug, Zyban, and stopped taking it after a few weeks because its side-effects terrified me – but I don’t know whether Champix has similarly suicidal effects. It’s hard to tell: I took it before and shortly after Baby Bigmouth was born in an unsuccessful attempt to stop smoking, and I did indeed feel like hurling myself under a lorry. But then, all new parents feel like that, don’t they?
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0 responses to “The easy way to stop smoking – permanently”
I think that making any sort of change to your lifestyle could make you depressed anyway. Stopping smoking, either with Champix or not is pretty difficult and doesn’t exactly make you happy.
>>”The 39-year-old TV editor from Bolton had been taking Champix tablets for four weeks. His family say he had no history of depression and think the drugs may have affected his mental health. He had split from his wife, but his brother Ali, 41, said: ‘He had so much to live for. I thought about the pills straight away.’ ”
Obviously the depression was down to Champix. Nobody ever gets upset when relationships break down.
Stopping smoking really fucks with your head. I know quite a few people on Champix and it seems that the thing that gets them down is the not smoking rather than the drug. In most cases it seems that the drug helps.
All drugs have side effects. As you know, I can’t take paracetamol. My wife can’t take Penicillin. Lots of people can’t take peanuts, for fuck’s sake. It seems more of a failure in the user’s support system that a failure in the drug. Champix is usually given out in short doses. Even nicotine patches require a doctor’s appointment every 2 weeks. If someone is having major side effects from the drug then they should tell the doctor. If they choose not to then it’s on their own head.
I’m quite surprised, it being a Mail story, that someone hasn’t suggested that smokers killing themselves is a good thing.
Stopping smoking, either with Champix or not is pretty difficult and doesn’t exactly make you happy.
Oh, I agree. That said, both Zyban and Champix are supposed to be taken before you actually stop, so in both cases for me it was going to be four weeks of taking them before the stop date (think with Champix it’s two, but it varies from person to person). And in the case of Zyban, the side-effects kicked in after a fortnight, before I’d done anything about actually quitting smoking. I was quite cheery and optimistic until that point, but pretty much overnight I started wanting to drive off the Erskine Bridge.
Depression is one of the possible side-effects of Champix, I do know that.
And these drugs do mess with brain chemistry – that’s the whole point of ’em. Zyban started life as an anti-depressant; not sure of Champix’s backstory but as it works on receptors I’d imagine it’s something similar. And as I discovered watching a re-run of House last night, stop smoking drugs in very rare cases can make your brain explode :)
Good point on the doc thing, though. Certainly in my case Champix was a week, then two weeks, then a 1 month supply. The bloke should have been seeing the doc a few times.
But then, all new parents feel like that, don’t they?
I did. But only for the first one! By the second one, you’ve already faced up to the fact that your carefree life is over and you’ll be tethered to the baby for all of your hitherto free time. :-)
Thanks for cheering me up.
*sobs*