Day four: This is my brain on Chantix

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Day four: This is my brain on Chantix

I recently turned 34, which meant that Ii had been smoking for as many years as I had not been smoking, so I decided to really try to quit. My doctor asked me a series of mental health questions, to which everything checked out, he gave me a scrip and I was good to go. I’ve had a couple friends who have had success on Chantix, but I’ve also heard the horror stories…

Day four, and I’m starting to realize what the deal is. This shit is no joke. Most of this weekend I spent sleeping, and then this morning, I almost couldn’t go into work at all, because I felt like I was in a lucid dream and that reality was slowly cracking around me. We’ll see how this goes. I’m not sure whether this is going to be better or worse than going cold turkey.

This morning, Delsyd sent me an article from New York Magazine on one man’s experience with Chantix before he finally had to quit and go on the patch:

A week into my Chantix usage, I started to feel as if the city landscape had imperceptibly shifted around me. Mundane details began to strike me as having deep, hidden significance. The neon arch above McDonald’s: The lights blinked on and off in some sort of pattern, and I needed to crack the code. One of my co-workers was messing with some papers: What is he trying to imply with all that damned crinkling? Sitting in the subway: A man hurries to get inside. His hand, holding a cup of coffee, gets stuck in the closing door. I watch the hand wriggle. The lid bursts open and steaming brown liquid hits the floor. Fingers twitch and splay. Coffee splashes in crisscrossing slats through the subway car. It was a sign—something bad was going to happen.

Yeah.

The people whom I’ve known personally who have tried Chantix to quit smoking have just described it as “weird”. That’s how I would describe it so far. Weird, but not in a good way. Not in a recreational drug kind of way. Seriously, if you have a history of mental or emotional instability, do not take this. Ride the snake. See where it goes before you decide to bail.