The greatest blessing: My husband smokes again

Crazy right? How can a person be so happy about her husband taking smoking up again to the point of calling it a blessing? Well, in one word- Chantix.

What is Chantix? It is one of the more popular effective drugs available to help people quit smoking and over come their addiction.

My husband decided he would quit smoking because it was starting to run his life. I was annoyed because I could not deal with another thing to have to deal with. I am not sure that made any sense but I am a nursing student with two children under the age of five and I take them and my house serious. To have a newly recovering addict in the house with all the irritability that goes along with was another stressor that I did not think I could deal with.

The doctor prescribed Chantix for my husband and what a bear that first week was. I guess you could say he was anxious and volatile the first week but that was to be expected. We looked over the side effects which included strange dreams, nausea, constipation, aggression, crazy dreams and even suicidal ideation in some extreme cases. We were prepared for any inkling of bowel impaction or over negative thoughts. We had a plan in place, our tushes covered in everthing that could come up.

For about forty five days he exercised vigorously due to a need to meet military standards. This was good also to prevent just about all the side effects. He recently passed his fitness test and he relaxed his regimen to normal. This week he had a military exercise (where they practice war time scenarios) which cut his routine out entirely. I noticed that over the past few days he had more stress type behaviors and was getting a little gruffer, even so, what happened today was very out of character for him.

He was working on a storage container type thing, what it is called is not important, what IS important is that the door was stuck. Anybody would step back from that and think about the cold, or other factors, which would make a door get stuck and seek to fix the problem. This is NOT what happened. Instead of this healthy dealing with a minor problem he proceeded to beat the ever living hell out of it. He bent metal and broke the hinge. This made such a vivacious noise that the boss (for those of you who know military words this would be the flight chief) came down and calmly talked my husband composed. He kept saying ‘the door won’t open’ and she told him to go to the hospital and let them know that he was on this stop smoking medication and what just happened.

He went and the doctor told him to immediately stop taking this medication and explained that this is sort of what they meant by aggression and suggested he smoke to even out what was left of the trouble. They said in thirty days he could try this other med, Wellbutrin, and to limit his smokes per-day so it wont be to hard to quit. They did not want him undoing the work he already done. They also asked his happenings over the past weeks because this symptom should have presented quickly. This is how we know that the exercise really helped him a lot.

The blessing, as I mentioned before, is the mandatory exercise that kept him level this long. Most importantly is that fact that he could have been home when he went ape over a small thing, like what kids do from time to time, and hurt one of us. Had this happened my husband would be dead, I would be in jail, and my kids’ future would be questionable with their lives in such turmoil.

What I bring to you today is a warning, not necessarily against Chantix, but towards side-effects and what they really mean and which ones to look for. We focused on the common ones and how to combat them and of course the big one, suicide. We often allow our selves to get distracted and ignore all the facts. SO please read your drug labels and actually consider what each one means, how to deal with EACH side effect, and pay attention to how you feel both physically and mentally. In a world that has a pill for everything we often forget to clarify, or even recognize the effects, both good and bad, of these pills and their interactions with daily life.