Chantix side effects - a real health concern!

One has only to read the revealing essay by writer Derek De Koff in New York Magazine, to get a true appreciation for the risks, and the reality of Chantix-a smoking cessation medication that has resulted in thousands of adverse affect reports to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and several actual suicides.

Two deaths in particular have caught the world's attention. One was Carter Albrecht, a musician and one-time member of the band Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians (Brickell is married to musician Paul Simon). On Chantix for barely a few weeks, Albrecht turned on his girlfriend before attempting to break into a neighbor's home. The startled homeowner fired a bullet through the door, killing the musician on September 3rd, 2007.

However, it was the tragic death of Omer Jama, a 39-year-old video editor from England that really focused the world's attention to the darker side of Chantix, which is marketed as Champix in the UK. Jama had been eager to kick his smoking habit, and had heard about the 'revolutionary' Champix. "He was so excited about giving up smoking," said his brother Ali, 41, "like a kid waiting for Christmas."

Jama was prescribed Champix by his physician. Jama's family and friends indicated that he had no history of depression or mental illness, and just days before his death had booked a holiday to Cuba, about which he was looking so forward.

It was not long before he was found dead in his Manchester flat, both wrists slit. Omer's brother Ali immediately thought of the pills, according to a report in the The Sun. A friend had started on Champix and suffered violent mood swings. "But Omer wasn't worried about taking them himself because he had no history of moodiness.

"It was totally out of character for him to do something like this."

American writer De Koff's experience with Chantix in New York is equally revealing, according to his sprawling essay that delves into the approval process of Chantix. Specifically 3,659 individuals were carefully selected for the pre-market trial. Those with any history of depression, panic disorder, heart disease, alcohol or drug abuse, diabetes, or people with kidney or liver issues were excluded from the testing. A spokesperson from Pfizer told De Koff that the Chantix manufacturer had to isolate the different variables that could affect the outcome, in order to satisfy FDA criteria. A spokesperson with the FDA confirmed that it is indeed not unusual to exclude participants with major psychological or medical illness from certain clinical trials.

However, given the expected and realized widespread appeal of Chantix and Champix, medication that would be presumably used by people with the very conditions Pfizer excluded from the trial, the results of the clinical trial clearing Chantix/Champix for market could hardly be seen as a true representation.

Sure enough, some Chantix users with a history of psychiatric difficulty, had difficulty with Chantix. However, so too did people who had no prior emotional axes to grind.

Writer De Koff was one of them. Almost immediately after starting on the Chantix program, he reports having extremely vivid, and sometimes disturbing dreams that over time began to take on epic proportions. De Koff also notes that sleep while on Chantix took on an unusual quality...that he wasn't really sleeping at all, but was resting while being constantly 'on guard' for something. He alludes to an assumption that his R.E.M. sleep patterns were dramatically affected during this time.

While admitting that smoking cigarettes had become "an exercise in futility" as there was no pleasure to be found, his dreams and everything else happening during his waking hours were becoming a concern.

"One afternoon, I was typing away at advertising copy, and as I did so, I began to wonder how I had succeeded in fooling myself that my life had any sort of value at all," De Koff writes. "Writing? Sure, it was what I'd wanted to do since I was six-but at the end of the day, who cared? Maybe I should just go downstairs and leap in front of a tour bus. Or launch my head through the computer screen. All this seemed logical, but also weirdly funny, even at the time: I could see how crazy these impulses were, I could recognize them as suicidal clichés. But I couldn't make them go away."

An acquaintance on Chantix told him that it was getting easier by the day and the nausea, which De Koff experienced the first day on Chantix, had stopped. But another Chantix user told him that the medication worked, but left him feeling temporarily 'lobotomized.'

Elizabeth, a 48-year-old musician, told De Koff, "Chantix made me desperately suicidal, just crazy. I joked to my friends that Chantix was the ultimate quit-smoking drug, because when you kill yourself, there's no chance of relapse."

Chantix works by blocking the pathway taken by nicotine to reach those receptors in the brain that release dopamine, the chemical responsible for pleasurable feeling. That's where the hit of pleasure after taking a puff comes from. In theory, if you take away the pleasure, kicking the smoking habit will become easier-especially if you lose your resolve and light up, only to find that smoking does nothing for you. That long-loved feeling of pleasure from smoking is no longer there.

Pfizer has said that not ALL dopamine is shut off, but just enough to take away the pleasure derived from smoking.

Meanwhile, De Koff was becoming uncharacteristically reclusive, and began to wonder whether Chantix, "was zapping my brain's pleasure-delivery system to such a degree that not only did I find no reward in cigarettes, but I also found no reward in socializing, exercising, writing, or any of my usual self-stimulating tricks. I'd pace the floor, sit on the bed, channel surf, pace some more, try to read, but the room had a stale, sinking feeling."

In the end, after more bouts with disturbing and uncharacteristic behavior, De Koff ditched Chantix and went onto the nicotine patch. He chronicled his story in a compelling essay entitled, 'This is My Brain on Chantix,' published in New York Magazine February 10th, 2008.

Pfizer reported Chantix sales at $280 million for the fourth quarter of 2007, up from $68 million a year earlier. The FDA has cited 34 actual suicides, and 420 instances of suicidal behavior in the U.S.

Lawyers expect to be busy.

Chantix Legal Help
If you or a loved one has suffered suicidal thoughts, or committed suicide from using Chantix, please contact a lawyer involved in a possible Chantix Lawsuit to review your case at no cost or obligation.

Daniel Arndt, a 44-year old father of twin boys, locked himself inside a room of the family home while everyone was away with a 12-pack of beer and two bottles of blood pressure pills. Arndt had been three weeks on Chantix, the smoking cessation drug from Pfizer that blocks nicotine from reaching key receptors in the brain.

He neatly typed an Email to his wife revealing all the computer passwords, before swallowing the contents of both pill bottles with his 12th beer.

"I was at the point where my wife would just look at me wrong and I'd get angry," he tells Christine Cox, a reporter with the South Bend Tribune in Michigan. "A couple times I got close to hitting my wife, and that's something I've never done."

He was also never one to hit his kids, either. But he began throwing things, and one day when he threw a rake at his wife, the implement hit one of his little boys instead.

It was too much to bear. So he locked himself in the family office with a plan to kill himself, something that in his state of mind seemed quite "natural to do," he told a reporter. "I didn't even think about it."

Thankfully, the story has a happy ending. Arndt was found by his wife in time, albeit with no pulse. While he was eventually revived, the Marion Indiana man was twenty minutes away from death.

He was one of the lucky ones. There have been a reported 39 suicides amongst Chantix users, and scores of reports of adverse reactions. The concern has prompted the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate Chantix, and the potential link to psychotic problems.

There is little doubt that Chantix has its fans. Since arriving on the market a few short years ago, up to five million prescriptions for Chantix have been written worldwide. Given that pre-market testing for Chantix carried no alarming observance of psychiatric difficulty, it was quickly embraced.

And it does work for some. Marcia, a 67-year-old who was battling a two-pack-a-day habit since the age of 18, experienced no adverse affects and quit on her target date. The woman had tried everything in the past, including patches, hypnosis, acupuncture, and Zyban.

And Dr. Jason Marker, a family physician based in Wyatt, is not one to discount the possibilities, and possible benefits of Chantix. "When you consider the effects that smoking has on people's lives, I don't think it would be a stretch to extrapolate that this is one of the most important drugs to come along in a long time," he tells the South Bend Tribune.

Still, he's careful whom he prescribes Chantix to, in light of recent concerns. The doctor stresses that knowing the patient's psychological profile, and indeed knowing the patient well--period--is a pre-requisite for prescribing Chantix safely.

Susan, a 55-year-old woman from Elkhart quoted in the Tribune story, had no history of depression at the time she started what would turn out to be an aborted five-week relationship with Chantix. She reported to her doctor bouts with confusion, mood swings, inability to concentrate and focus on the job, even short-term memory loss.

Susan went from being highly motivated, intelligent and a self-described 'sharp' cookie to a scruff who would don her pajamas after work and stare at the TV. Her productivity on the job nose-dived, and she would have trouble going to sleep and waking the next morning. Weekends would find her confined to the house, not wanting to go out.

Chantix literally sailed through pre-market testing. The success rate of trial participants successfully quitting smoking after completing the 12-week Chantix program was 44 per cent, which is considered high. And while few, if any of the psychological adverse effects were seen amongst pre-market trial participants, those close to the clinical trial process admit that drugs are tested on a fairly small population relative to the general population.

What's more, trial participants generally tend to be healthy, with fewer chronic conditions. It has also been reported that the original clinical studies for Chantix did not include people who had psychiatric problems, or major medical issues.

Furthermore, smokers as a population tend to have higher rates of medical illness and psychotic difficulty. Twenty percent of smokers are, in general, believed to exhibit symptoms of depression.

Thus, the trial participants who did well on Chantix during pre-market testing could not represent a true cross-section of the smoking population.

In the end, while the FDA continues to investigate Chantix, doctors are advised to weigh carefully each prescription for Chantix, and to monitor their patients as they progress through the program.

Chantix, it seems, carries a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde persona, depending upon the individual.

For some, it's been a godsend. For others, it's been very, very bad...

Chantix Legal Help
If you or a loved one has suffered suicidal thoughts, or committed suicide from using Chantix, please contact a lawyer involved in a possible Chantix Lawsuit to review your case at no cost or obligation.

The online posts and the stories just keep coming-disgruntled users of Chantix who report depression, aggression or even suicidal thoughts themselves, or similar behavior from friends and loved ones taking Chantix in an effort to quit smoking.

Others appear fine on Chantix. The anti-smoking drug from Pfizer, which is not a patch but is an oral medication that targets the brain, burst onto the market not quite two years ago with a flourish and a fanfare that suggested the Holy Grail of Smoking Cessation has arrived.

However, at the end of the day it seems that you just don't know what's going to happen, when something plays with your brain.

Unlike other anti-smoking drugs, which are based on the principle of gradual withdrawal from nicotine dependence, Chantix goes for the jugular by taking the pleasure away. It accomplishes this feat by targeting the neuro receptors in the brain that respond to nicotine, thereby preventing them from releasing dopamine, which is the chemical responsible for the smoker's high. While nicotine builds up in your system, it's the shot of nicotine which Pfizer believes goes straight to the brain, resulting in a quick hit of pleasure. It doesn't last long, but it's there. And it leaves you wanting more of the same.

And so if you quit cold turkey, or even gradually with a patch or other smoking cessation aid, there is always one common thread-and that is if you give up on quitting, if you can't take it anymore, your little white smoldering friend will always be good for a puff of pleasure. Oh, you try to deny yourself. You try to hold firm, stay the course, and muster the discipline to remain strong and kick the habit.

But if you can't-if you JUST CAN'T-you know that the pleasure is as close again as the nearest lighter.

That's where Chantix is different, apparently. In blocking the release of dopamine, it takes away the pleasure entirely. Or so it seems. Pfizer is a bit cloudy as to how it works, but they know that it does.

Of course it works. But the fallout varies with the individual, and reaction to a Chantix cycle is as individual, as every individual on the face of the earth.

Some people breeze right through it. Sure it's hard-quitting smoking is a tough road-but they hunker down and get it done. They go through the pain of losing the pleasure, the sheer effort of making such a wholesale lifestyle change, and are thankful in the end that Chantix helped them to let go of the addiction once and for all.

Others, it appears, aren't so lucky. In post after online post, dozens of Chantix users report depression and anxiety. Some people report a history of depression prior to taking Chantix, while others present no history at all before going on the Pfizer drug.

Some felt depressed while on Chantix. Others had trouble coming off Chantix. The majority, finding that Chantix was making them irritable and testy, and turning them into a non-functioning member of society, pulled themselves off Chantix and went back to smoking.

Grown men with strong, emotional constitutions prior to Chantix, report breaking down and crying several times a day.

One woman identified as Angela told of her boyfriend, who had suffered a bout with depression two years ago, but recovered and had been happy and healthy for 18 months.

Then he began taking Chantix in an effort to stop smoking. Angela reports that her boyfriend's darkness came back, allegedly triggered by Chantix. Two weeks before her post in October of last year, Angela reports that her boyfriend tried to commit suicide by way of an overdose of Paxil and Wellbutrin.

He survived, but the experience has left them both fearful of Chantix.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has received a flood of reports from Chantix users that have experienced depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts, amidst a host of other adverse affects. The agency is currently studying the issue.

In the meantime, while Chantix appears to have many fans, it seems to have many, many more foes. In their view Chantix is a wild card, with inconsistent results given that it is targeted towards the brain. Quitting smoking is tough enough, without involving a medication that exacerbates, and often intensifies the difficulty, turning determination into despair.

Why does Chantix work for some, and not for others? Sometimes the dosages have to be customized for the individual. Others have proven fine while on the medication, but withdrawing from it is hell. For some, both are true.

In the end, it suggests that you will never get a clear answer with something messing with your head, which is what Chantix does. It targets the brain, and individuals react differently when you start playing with the gray matter above the neckline.

The FDA has advised doctors to closely monitor patients for signs of depression and other difficulties linked to a Chantix program-especially if there had been a history of depression, or mental illness prior to taking Chantix.

Does Chantix work? Yes, it can. But beware.

And have someone looking out for you, because you may turn into someone you are not.

To be fair, some people turn into monsters, or melt away emotionally simply by quitting smoking, without any help from Chantix.

However, put Chantix into the mix, and suddenly it can be a whole new ball game.

Chantix Legal Help
If you or a loved one has suffered suicidal thoughts, or committed suicide from using Chantix, please contact a lawyer involved in a possible Chantix Lawsuit to review your case at no cost or obligation.

Washington, DC: In a move that is hardly a surprise for anyone conversant with Chantix, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) marked the beginning of February with the stark announcement that a link between serious psychiatric problems, and Pfizer's hitherto most promising performer is "increasingly likely."

This comes a couple of weeks after Pfizer, in mid-January, weighed in with stronger Chantix warnings in response to an ongoing FDA investigation into patient reactions to the smoking cessation system, some of them disturbing.

Reports of depression, agitation and suicidal behaviors are not uncommon. Even so, in updating its safety information, including the move to give the updated concerns more prominence, Pfizer will not go so far as to offer the probability of a direct link between Chantix and psychiatric difficulty.

Only, that it could not be ruled out.

The FDA is also taking somewhat of a high road in not condemning Chantix completely. However, it does say that doctors should continue to monitor their patients carefully, and put a greater emphasis on patients either with current, or past psychiatric illness.

"Chantix has proven to be effective in smokers motivated to quit," says Bob Rappaport, M.D., Director, Anesthesia, Analgesia and Rheumatology Products, FDA, in a statement. "But patients and health care professionals need the latest safety information to make an informed decision regarding whether or not to use this product.

"While Chantix has demonstrated clear evidence of efficacy, it is important to consider these safety concerns and alert the public about these risks. Patients should talk with their doctors about this new information and whether Chantix is the right drug for them, and health care professionals should closely monitor patients for behavior and mood changes if they are taking this drug."

In spite of some meaty headlines last year exposing the dark side of this once-exalted smoking cessation sensation, Chantix has performed well since it was approved in May of 2006. Some 44 million prescriptions have been written for the program, which requires the ingestion of a pill twice-daily for some 13 weeks. Sales for Pfizer totaled $883 million for 2007 in the US.

Rather than a system of patches, and other aids which eases a smoker's dependence on nicotine metobolically, Chantix goes to the source of the pleasure principle-the brain-in the war against nicotine. The drug, known generically as varenicline, targets the receptors in the brain that respond to nicotine. These receptors, in turn, release the dopamine that is responsible for the pleasure a smoker experiences upon lighting up, and taking that first puff.

In theory, it's tougher to fall off the wagon. Thus, with a headful of Chantix, any effort to sneak away somewhere and light the forbidden fruit will have no effect. In other words, if you're going through nicotine withdrawl and you just HAVE to have a cigarette for the pleasure that will inevitably come, the pleasure will not happen.

In theory, that appears enough to turn normally balanced individuals into angry, aggressive animals.

Think about it. Quitting smoking is tough enough, and not everyone is successful. After years, sometimes decades of dependance, doing without the smoker's high is a major life shift. Not everyone can take it.

So you're taking Chantix for the recommended 13 weeks, and you're going through nicotine withdrawl. Cold turkey, and there would be no other way to describe it, because a) Chantix, by Pfizer's own admission, contains no nicotine whatsoever; b) even if it did, the medicinal posse that surrounds the receptors of note in your brain blocks any nicotine from reaching them, and; c) a switch to a nicotine patch for a more gradual approach, or even an outright failure in your resolve that sends you running for your lighter, will have no effect.

The nicotine is blocked. There will be no dopamine released. No dopamine means no pleasure. Imagine the panic and the despair when, unable to take it you give in and light up, craving, longing, needing that brief high. And it doesn't come.

In theory, that's a good thing, as it forces you to avoid the pleasure you seek. On paper, it's a good idea. In fact, Pfizer says in its own literature that if you slip up and have a cigarette, it's okay. Of course it's okay, as you won't get any benefit from it.

That's the whole idea, and on paper it's brilliant.

But in reality, the opposite appears likely. The inability to give up, give in and get back the all-too-familiar euphoria, however brief, appears enough to drive agitation to agression, despondency to despair.

Panic sets in. And like a cornered animal that feels threatened, anything can happen.

Little wonder, then, that patients are now being advised by the FDA to reveal any history of psychiatric illness that existed before the initiation of a Chantix program. There are also warnings of the possibility that Chantix may aggrivate a current psychiatric illness, even if that illness is currently under control. There is also the possibility that Chantix may foster a re-ocorrence of a previous psychiatric illness.

The FDA notes in its advisory that such patients were not included in the safety studies used to determine if Chantix merited approval.

Patients should be monitored for changes in mood and behavior while taking Chantix. Doctors, familes and caregivers should be especially vigilant for symptoms that include anxiety, nervousness, tension, depressed mood, unusual behaviors and thinking about or attempting suicide. In most cases, neuropsychiatric symptoms developed during Chantix treatment, but in others, symptoms developed following withdrawal of varenicline therapy.

While Pfizer and the FDA continue to deal with the fallout over Chantix, those who are currently trying to quit smoking with Chantix are realizing first hand that it's like trying to walk the high wire without a safety net.

In other words, it's amazing how brave you can be when you know someone, or something will catch you if you fall. And you can be courageous in staring nicotine down, knowing that in the end if you ever get to the point that you can't take it anymore and you-just-HAVE-to have a cigarette, to revel in that momentary high to take the edge off, you can.

It's your safety net. If you can't take it-okay you're a failure, but you can always go back.

With Chantix, you can't.

Chantix Legal Help
If you or a loved one has suffered suicidal thoughts, or committed suicide from using Chantix, please contact a lawyer involved in a possible Chantix Lawsuit to review your case at no cost or obligation.

Washington, DC: Just one day prior to the revelation that yet another smoking cessation patient has died at the hands of Pfizer's anti-smoking drug, the manufacturer unveiled the latest warning pertaining to the potential for suicidal thoughts.

Before last Friday, Chantix product information only hinted at dire behaviors in less-prominent sections of product literature. However, following a litany of complaints that have flooded into the office of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), together with an ongoing review of the drug's ultimate safety, Pfizer on January 18th updated the Chantix product labeling to reflect more serious concerns.

Depressed mood, agitation, suicidal thinking and suicidal behavior have been the reality for many users of Chantix, and its European counterpart Champix. As of now, the Chantix label specifically lists these concerns and asks doctors and health professionals to monitor for these behaviors.

Ironically, the day after the new, intensified product labeling for Chantix was announced, came word of yet another suicide attributed to Champix, which is marketed in the United Kingdom and is not regulated by the FDA.

In this latest suicide, a 36-year-old husband and father of two from Yorkshire hanged himself back in November, shortly after completing a 13-week Champix program. His death comes a month after a 39-year-old man took his own life-again in the UK, and again as a result of using Champix.

European regulators have ordered improved warnings on the product, in view of its link to depression.

According to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), one individual had taken his own life while on the medication, while two others had attempted suicide and upwards of 60 adverse reactions consistent with suicidal thoughts had been reported.

Wayne Marshall was a welder and life-long smoker who had tried everything to stem his 20-smoke-a-day habit, according to his widow Emma. He had been excited about the drug's promise when prescribed to him in August, but according to his wife Wayne quickly went downhill. She indicates in published reports that he had cut himself off from family and friends, and had signed himself off work about a week before he died. However, she said, there were no outward signs that he was contemplating an end to his life.

Still, the changes to his personality were staggering. Always one to have a large circle of friends, to go out with the boys and cheer on the local football team, to find her husband sitting on the stoop sobbing uncontrollably was surreal. And even though he had taken up smoking again after finishing the 13-week Champix program, he appeared upbeat. He was talking with his young wife about Christmas with his two children from a previous marriage.

All seemed well, until November.

Chantix, and its British counterpart burst onto the market last year with much promise. It is the only smoking cessation drug of its kind that specifically targets those receptors in the brain that respond to nicotine. Chantix attaches itself to those receptors and prevents nicotine from reaching them, thereby preventing the receptors from releasing a round of pleasureful, but short-lived dopamine. The theory is that unlike cessation programs that serve to gradually withdraw from nicotine, Chantix eliminates the pleasure principal entirely.

However, the language on Pfizer's own Chantix web site does little to instill confidence, repeatedly deferring to the word 'believe' when describing how the program allegedly works.

Chantix is just the latest in a serious of drugs that have been the center of concern over behavioral issues. Just this week it was revealed that the FDA has been undertaking an analysis of various anti-depressants over concern about dynamic changes in mood, emotion and behaviors-changes which can be present in divergent drug classes.

It has been learned that the FDA has forwarded communiqués to all drug manufacturers, with regard to a testing protocol for suicide and other dire adverse effects.

Chantix has had a banner year, in its first full year of availability. The drug is used by more than five million patients, with sales of $603 million through the third quarter of 2007.

It will be interesting to see how Chantix holds up under this latest scrutiny with regard to safety.

Chantix Legal Help
If you or a loved one has suffered suicidal thoughts, or committed suicide from using Chantix, please contact a lawyer involved in a possible Chantix Lawsuit to review your case at no cost or obligation.

Cincinnati, OH: Chantix looked like a sure winner going in, Lucy writes on her blog. But it sure exposed its dark side on the way out. Lucy, a resident of Ohio and a former smoker, had tried quitting a few times over the years, without success. Then Pfizer came along with its so-called wonder drug Chantix, designed to help smokers quit the dreaded tobacco in a boffo new way.

Everybody was upbeat. Lucy's doctor was eager to write a prescription, and even the nurses in the office were commenting about this 'wonderful new drug,' Lucy writes.

Early in 2007 and with her New Years resolution still fresh, Lucy smoked her last cigarette, and then it was off to the drug store for Chantix.

If first impressions are everything, Chantix delivered. Together with a friend, who had started Chantix a week before, the two women marveled at how the drug made smoking completely unpleasureable. "But at the same time, we knew that it must be a pretty strong drug to affect our brains that way."

Chantix targets receptors in the brain that respond to nicotine. When a person inhales, nicotine is absorbed into the blood and travels to the brain, reaching certain receptors that respond to nicotine. That response is the release of dopamine, which results in a feeling of pleasure. However, as most smokers will tell you, it doesn't last long, leaving the smoker to reach for the lighter yet again.

Most smoking cessation therapies are based on the theory that a gradual reduction of nicotine over time will reduce the dependency. However with Chantix, Pfizer went right to the source. Targeting, as it does those specific brain receptors that respond to nicotine and release dopamine, Chantix prevents nicotine from reaching those receptors. As a result, release of dopamine is radically reduced, or eliminated altogether.

Eliminate the dopamine, and you take away the pleasure from smoking - or at least, that's how it appeared to the Ohio blogger when she was on Chantix in the beginning.
First impressions were great. However, the bloom was soon off the rose.

The two Chantix friends were now starting to have vivid dreams. They would get irritable if they forgot to take their pills. Lucy began to suffer from dizziness, to the point of nearly fainting dead away several times a day.

She decided then and there, that she wanted off Chantix. But she knew quitting cold turkey would be a mistake, so she endeavored to wean herself off the drug slowly, decreasing her dose.

That's when Chantix turned ugly for Lucy. By day four without the drug, her hands wouldn't stop shaking. Nor could she stop crying. While she didn't suffer from suicidal thoughts, she could no longer find a reason to get up in the morning, to bathe, to get off the couch. Meditation and yoga didn't help. Vitamins and B Complex didn't help.

Finally, when she was set to open a bottle of wine to take the edge off at 8am, she knew she had to go back to her doctor.

In his opinion, Lucy's symptoms were from nicotine withdrawal, but Lucy disagrees. She describes having quit smoking during two pregnancies, and both times she had never experienced the kind of symptoms she had been suffering from Chantix. And her friend, who went the full three months with Chantix, described similar symptoms.

Chantix recently updated the safety information on its web site, in response to increasing reports of suicidal thoughts, together with a myriad of other complaints that have surfaced in recent weeks. The manufacturer stresses the importance of remaining in concert with your doctor, and that any Chantix smoking cessation therapy should be closely monitored.

An interesting sidelight is that while Chantix, and its supporters know what it is designed to do, they can't really say how it works, or why.

"Based on research, it is believed that CHANTIX helps keep nicotine from reaching key receptors in the brain. It's the only prescription treatment of its kind."

Pfizer uses the word 'believe' on two other occasions on its web site, in a small, illustrated tutorial describing the relationship Chantix has with the brain.

"Based on research, it is believed that CHANTIX works by blocking nicotine from attaching to the receptors."

And in the next panel,

"It is believed that CHANTIX activates these receptors causing a reduced release of dopamine compared to nicotine."

In other words, Pfizer thinks it knows how it works, but they're not sure. Or at the very least, they're not prepared to say.

In the end, bunnies and turtles are playful metaphors for the difficulty, and the triumph of quitting. But anyone playing with your brain, had better know what they're doing...

Chantix Legal Help
If you or a loved one has suffered suicidal thoughts, or committed suicide from using Chantix, please contact a lawyer involved in a possible Chantix Lawsuit to review your case at no cost or obligation.

New York, NY: Smoking is not the easiest habit to break. It can cause irritability in the best of us, as we try to wean our bodies of addictive nicotine. But suicide? That's what one consumer experienced with Chantix, the so-called smoking cessation wonder drug that was proven in clinical trials to be more effective than Zyban.

Today, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is investigating more than 100 complaints from patients of Chantix who have experienced suicidal thoughts.

Some have even taken those thoughts one-step further, and made the attempt.

Amy Garza is one such Chantix client. Smoking since the age of 16, Amy recently told CBS News correspondent Thalia Assuras that she had tried just about anything and everything out there, to rid her body of the demon nicotine. Nothing seemed to work.

Then her doctor prescribed Chantix, which is made by Pfizer and has been on the market since 2006. When first introduced, consumers and health care professionals-even the FDA itself-were bullish on the prospects of a product that went right to the brain to get the job done. Specifically, Chantix targets specific receptors in the brain that produce the pleasure-laden dopamine, as a result of stimulation from nicotine. Chantix works to block access to these receptors by the nicotine cocktail found in cigarettes and other tobacco products. Thus, the nicotine calm (some say euphoria) inherent with smoking a cigarette is mitigated and, so it seems, withdrawal symptoms are reduced.

Results from clinical trials were encouraging. After a year, 23 per cent of Chantix users had succeeded in quitting smoking, versus 15 per cent of smoking cessation clients using Zyban, the closest rival to Chantix and the only other smoking cessation med available in pill form. Expectations were high when it was introduced in 2006.

Despite all of that, Garza tried to kill herself. She managed to slash one wrist, before the attempt was ultimately aborted.

Garza told CBS News that she had never been under psychiatric care. And yet, "it was like a psychotic breakdown that came out of nowhere," Amy told CBS' Assuras.

A spokesperson for Pfizer defends Chantix. In a statement to CBS news, VP of Medical Affairs for Pfizer Dr. Ponni Subbiah said, "I can tell you there's no scientific evidence establishing a causal relationship between Chantix and these reported events."

However, the concern remains. A popular television producer in England committed suicide after attempting to quit smoking using Champix, the British cousin to Chantix. And a promising US musician suddenly turned aggressive, assaulted his girlfriend and attempted to break into a neighbor's home before he was tragically shot dead by the startled occupants.

While suicidal thoughts are rare, they are identified in the product literature, as well as in post-marketing studies. As well, Chantix has a laundry list of adverse affects, including aggression and anxiety.

Yet to be determined is the relationship of Chantix to challenges normally attributed to smoking cessation. Further, not everyone will behave the same, towards the same medication. That variance is only exacerbated with a drug that targets, and has an impact on the brain.

For now, the FDA is taking a position that the benefits of quitting cigarettes outweigh the risks associated, or suspected with Chantix. However, the agency is monitoring the situation, and advocating that any individual on Chantix should be closely monitored.

Garza, 33 and a smoker for 17 years, blames Chantix for her suicidal thoughts.

"You really think it was because of this drug?" was the question posed by CBS' Assuras.

"I do," was Garza's reply.

Chantix Legal Help
If you or a loved one has suffered suicidal thoughts, or committed suicide from using Chantix, please contact a lawyer involved in a possible Chantix Lawsuit to review your case at no cost or obligation.

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