ZUG: Real-Life Comedy From Funny People Like You

Why I Quit Chantix

Despite the years of research I devoted to street pharmacology in the mid-1980s, I was not prepared for the bizarre dreams caused by the stop smoking drug Chantix. The nighttime hallucinations were quite entertaining if you went into them with the right state of mind -- and despite all the temporary inconveniences, I was finding that Chantix really worked.

Then I threw a temper tantrum that transcended simple nicotine withdrawal, and entered the realm of full-blown psychosis.

One night just before bedtime, my son poured himself an enormous glass of milk. Of course he couldn't finish it, so he left it on the table and we went to bed. Just as I was drifting off to sleep, I heard the cat jump onto the table, knock the glass onto the floor, then lap up the dairy waterfall as it flowed over the edge of the table.

Now, before I quit smoking I would have gotten up, pulled on my pants, shooed the cat away, then smoked a cigarette until I regained control of my temper. This time, I was out of bed and charging downstairs in my underwear the instant I realized what had happened.

When I burst into the dining room and flipped on the lights, I caught that son-of-a-bitch red-handed. Normally he would have just shot me a look of disinterest before nonchalantly jumping off his perch and sauntering away. Not this time. His feline instincts kicked into overdrive, as he looked at me with sheer terror and tried to haul ass for cover. The key word is "tried."

If we had not blown the money to get the the cat declawed, he probably would have gotten better traction -- but as it stood, his legs started madly flaying at ninety miles an hour, only he wasn't going anywhere. In fact, he didn't get off the table until I knocked him off, at which time he hit the ground running at just a hair below Mach 3.

Oh, I wasn't crying over it.

By this point, I was so enraged that I was running just as fast. I chased the animal around the kitchen island, back underneath the dining room table, and into the living room. He tried to seek refuge beneath the baby's playpen, but that thing has no weight to it, so I easily lifted the playpen with one hand and tossed it crashing into the couch. The cat dodged beneath an end table, then an armchair, but I was right behind him, overturning furniture and leaving him exposed.

I reached out and wrapped my fingers around his collar, loosing a scream of victory as I did so. My wife, however, had bought one of those safety collars that easily come unsnapped, to prevent the kids from grabbing the animal by the neck and strangling it by accident. She never considered the possibility that her husband might someday want to strangle the cat on purpose.

Before I knew it, the cat was cowering behind the television set, just out of my reach. I threw everything I could at him, trying to get him out, but I was eventually forced to break out the vacuum cleaner. That flushed him out in no time, but now he was breaking for the kitty opening in the basement door. I sprinted to head him off, throwing myself over the couch to tackle him as he hit the kitchen. I finally nabbed the bastard, less than a foot from reaching safety.

Now that I had the cat, it was time for to clean up his mess. Carrying the cat by the scruff of the neck, I hauled it to the table and proceeded to wipe up the mess with the little cretin.

Cats are not nearly as absorbent as you might think. I spent quite a while wiping it up and down, back and forth across the table, but the only thing I accomplished was spreading the milk around. Figuring that it must have been saturated, I dragged the cat to the sink and dunked it in the dishwater for a rinse. I don't know how long I did this, but I finally had to pause when I caught myself laughing maniacally while thinking about wringing out my cat like a dishrag.

That's when I realized what it would look like if someone walked into the room. What would my son think if he came downstairs to find the house ransacked, the kitchen covered in water, and his father soaking wet in his underwear, holding a violated cat covered in bubbles?

After regaining some semblance of self-control, I decided that I needed off Chantix. I started weaning myself over the course of the next week, and a few days later I quit taking the stop smoking drug altogether. Six months later, I am still smoke-free -- and I have not had a cigarette since February 20th!

So, if you're serious about wanting to quit smoking, enjoy the taste of roadkill sushi, want to spend your nights like Hunter S. Thompson after a plate of bad clams, and need an excuse to indulge in some inexcusable (though highly entertaining) acts of animal abuse, Chantix is the drug for you!