I have admitted to the guilty pleasure of being a sometimes smoker, although I happily identify as a non-smoker. I am well aware of the negative consequences of smoking and I choose not to indulge.
I’m not an addictive or automatic smoker, fortunately for me I can take ‘em or leave ‘em. Even so I struggle to watch an episode of Mad Men, where even the doctors have ashtrays on their desks, without longing for a cigarette.
Whatever additive tendencies I may have, smoking is not one of them. I enjoy every cigarette and contentedly go without a puff for years at a time. It’s not the same for others. Many, who know the risks and health affects of smoking and including some who disapprove of it, are also dependent on being able to light up another cigarette. Addicted.
There is a wonder drug, Champix, that blocks nicotine receptors in the brain and supports even the most addicted smokers to ‘give up’. Most will understand giving up to mean the cessation of smoking, and for some taking the drug giving up is more sinister, as some will die by suicide.
Now an argument rages about the greater harm cigarettes, which 16,000 deaths a year in Australia are attributed to, or Champix (the nicotine inhibiting wonder drug) the use of which was linked to 55 deaths by suicide in a week, in the US last November.
The US Food and Drug Administration now requires warnings on the medication “…highlighting the risk of serious neuropsychiatric symptoms in patients using these products. These symptoms include changes in behavior, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal thoughts and behavior, and attempted suicide. The added warnings are based on the continued review of postmarketing adverse event reports for varenicline and bupropion received by the FDA. These reports included those with a temporal relationship between the use of varenicline or bupropion and suicidal events and the occurrence of suicidal ideation and suicidal behavior in patients with no history of psychiatric disease.”
http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch/SafetyInformation/SafetyAlertsforHumanMedicalProducts/ucm170090.htm 1 July 2009
Apparently Pfizer, who market Chapix, have said a causal link between the drug and suicidal ideation has yet to be established. Now they sound a bit a tobacco company…
Established causal link or not I wanted to mention that Champix has been linked to insomnia, aggression, depression, suicide and quitting cigarettes.
