|
Middle of the night, and I awoke in a cold sweat; worse, I woke my wife too. "I was being chased by monsters," I told her ... although in truth, I had no idea what the dream was about. This has been true of me forever, really. I used to tell people that I just don't dream; but when I said that to a mental-health professional once, I was advised that "of course you dream; you just don't remember your dreams." (So if a dream falls in the forest and there's no one around to see it, is it really a dream?) Anyway, this was one of exactly two side effects I had from taking my course of the stop-smoking aid Chantix, which I did from New Year's Day through June, 2008. But not continuously, though; I stopped somewhere in late February thinking I was cured, only to backslide as I've done with all of my other attempts to quit. So I had to restart the Chantix in late March; and this time I stayed on it until there was no doubt that I was "cured." Both times, there came a point about 3-4 weeks in where I'd fire up a cigarette and find myself putting it out after two or three puffs, mumbling "Why am I doing this? It's doing absolutely nothing for me." There was no more instant "rush" from the hit of nicotine, which left the various disgusting bits of smoking (foul taste, dirt, etc.) extremely exposed. This to me was nothing short of miraculous. Why? Well, I've smoked since 8th grade, and the earlier you start the harder it is to quit. I'd also tried every other method -- the gum, the patch, the little fake-cig mouthpiece, cold turkey -- without lasting success. The gum was so ineffective for me that I once actually found myself chewing the gum and smoking simultaneously! Getting Chantix was no problem: I'd been seeing a doctor about shortness of breath (motivation enough to quit?!), had seen the Chantix ads, asked if he thought it might help where other approaches hadn't, and walked out with the scrip. What attracted me was the drug's claimed mechanism: instead of simply replacing nicotine, it binds to the pleasure-center receptors that nicotine normally docks on. No docking, no nicotine rush; no rush, no basis for addiction. And that seems to be exactly what happens. My other side effect? A relatively mild bit of nausea, right after taking each dose. By "mild" I mean that unpleasant queasy feeling ... but no doubling over and no booting of cookies, and it would be all over in about 10 minutes. Every psychoactive drug has side effects; consider Ambien, on which some people are reported to get up, cook breakfast and return to bed, all without conscious knowledge. The issue is then whether the side effects you experience are worth the benefits. For Chantix, you'd have to have a far worse batch of side effects than I did to outweigh the serious ill effects of smoking. | ||||||||||||||
|
|