I’ll Stick With the Lung Cancer, Thanks
At least the lung cancer is predictable.
Daniel Williams decided he’d listen to his girlfriend and his 8-year-old son and finally quit smoking, with the help of a new prescription drug called Chantix.
He started taking the medication, and a couple of nights later, as he was driving his pickup truck on a country road in Louisiana, Williams suddenly swerved left.
His girlfriend, Melinda Lofton, who was with him, later told him that his eyes had rolled back in his head and that it had seemed as if he was frozen at the wheel, accelerating.
Moments later, they were in a bayou, struggling to escape the murky water, Williams said.
“Since I was a kid, never had anything like this ever happened before,” he said. “It never happened before, and it hasn’t happened since. And all the tests I’ve taken say I have nothing wrong with me at all.”
The nonprofit Institute for Safe Medication Practices last week linked Chantix to more than two dozen highway accidents reported to the Food and Drug Administration, saying the mishaps may have resulted from such drug side effects as seizures.
The FDA had earlier issued a warning about suicidal thoughts and suicides among patients taking Chantix and is now evaluating whether it needs to expand and strengthen that precaution.
Pfizer, the drug’s manufacturer, said that as early as May of last year, it had added a warning to the prescribing literature for Chantix that patients should exercise caution when driving or operating machinery until they know how the medication affects them.
Of course, I’ll stick with not smoking anything at all. Not to beat a dead horse, but marijuana—which can get you really fucked up—doesn’t have any of these affects and it’s still illegal. But drug manufacturers can crank this stuff out by the ton, and not only to they not go to jail, they get rich.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:48 am
that’s why i opted to quit smoking cold turkey. it sucks and you feel like crap, but a lot of the things that are supposed to help you quit nicotine come with their own slew of side effects.
i hadn’t heard of that drug ’til now though… that is megacreepy.