{"id":1472,"date":"2011-10-24T21:57:02","date_gmt":"2011-10-25T01:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/modologyworld.net\/steph\/?p=1472"},"modified":"2011-10-24T21:57:02","modified_gmt":"2011-10-25T01:57:02","slug":"the-champix-chronicles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/modologyworld.net\/steph\/?p=1472","title":{"rendered":"The Champix Chronicles"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I started taking champix 21 days ago, hard to believe that it\\’s already been that long! \u00a0Here\\’s a quickie break down of how this actually works:<\/p>\n

First you pick your quit date, somewhere between day 8 and day 14 from the first day you start taking Champix.<\/p>\n

Day 1-3 you take one pill, once a day. \u00a0.5 mg of varenicline tartrate AKA as Champix.<\/p>\n

Day 4-7 you take 2 .5 mg pills twice a day. \u00a0Once in the morning and once at night.<\/p>\n

Day 8-14 is when your dosage doubles to 1mg twice a day. \u00a0This is also the time period that you pick your quit date. \u00a0I decided on October 11th to be my quit date. \u00a0It was the Tuesday after the long weekend, I\\’d have work to keep me occupied and so forth, sounded good right?<\/p>\n

Sure did in hindsight…<\/em><\/p>\n

Except I didn\\’t factor in PMS. \u00a0This obviously doesn\\’t apply to guys but trying to quit smoking during that time was likely the WORST idea I have ever had! \u00a0I made it through one day and one day only. \u00a0I just couldn\\’t take it, I don\\’t know if it was job related stress, the fact that you can\\’t fix stupid, my hormones or whatever the hell was going on. \u00a0So I caved and bought a pack of smokes the next day. \u00a0I hated myself for it and it kind of freaked me out. \u00a0I thought to myself, what if this doesn\\’t work? \u00a0How screwed am I going to be?<\/p>\n

So I thought well maybe I just needed a few more days to give the pills some more time to work, everyone is different. \u00a0So I didn\\’t berate myself too much, especially since I found myself smoking a lot less. \u00a0As in a pack would last me 3 days which isn\\’t the norm for me at all. \u00a0So I had hope and on Sunday October 16th at around 10:30pm I smoked my last cigarette and haven\\’t looked back since.<\/p>\n

I did a lot of\u00a0preparation work in the meantime. \u00a0I\\’ve been researching this drug for over two years now. \u00a0I would advise not to pay attention to the online reviews, people love nothing more then to jump on a bandwagon, especially when it\\’s something negative. \u00a0Yes this drug can have some nasty and quite scary side effects. \u00a0Psychotic\u00a0behavior, suicidal thoughts and or feelings and depression being the three most scariest (in my book) of side effects. \u00a0Mind you, these could happen as a result of not smoking period. \u00a0Although Champix does \\’mess\\’ with your mind in a\u00a0neurological\u00a0sense so it\\’s entirely possible.\u00a0\u00a0However it\\’s not a common side effect in most people and yes I did take all of that into consideration before I started taking this drug. \u00a0Hostility comes with the territory of not smoking period, in any case I pretty much get away with being a bitch because I can blame it on my medication \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

I also prepared my body for it as well. \u00a0Nausea, constipation,\u00a0diarrhea, headaches, gas, abnormal\/vivid dreams (rarely nightmares), sleepiness… \u00a0You know, the usual. \u00a0Because you know what? \u00a0Every time I\\’ve tried to quit smoking, I\\’ve had some of these issues. \u00a0So to combat any side effects I had a chat with my pharmacist and I was advised not to worry about getting any anti\u00a0nausea medication however to offset it, I was advised however to drink lots of water (which I do now, more then I think I ever have) and to take my pill just after a meal. \u00a0I found this helped a lot and the only time I felt a little\u00a0nastiness\u00a0was when I didn\\’t eat and even having something small helped offset the\u00a0nausea. \u00a0As for headaches, well I work in a day care so I\\’m not entirely sure if that\\’s due to champix or not. \u00a0Most of them are low grade and if they get too bad, I have advil handy just in case. \u00a0I also eat a lot better as well, it was suggested in the literature that came with the medication that you beef up your fiber in take, makes sense. \u00a0So I basically cut all the bad crap out of my diet, I don\\’t mind most things whole wheat anyway and anything that I do usually comes in an \\’enriched\\’ version that has all the benefits so there\\’s no excuse really.<\/p>\n

Anyway enough of my blathering on about this. \u00a0Here\\’s the pro\\’s & the cons of being on Champix (at least for me)<\/p>\n

Cons: Side effects can be a bitch sometimes. \u00a0Dreams are beyond odd, but\u00a0manageable\u00a0just the same. \u00a0Headaches, well I always seem to have one of those too. \u00a0That\\’s pretty much it though, just need to be mindful of the changes your body is going through and likely best not try and wean yourself off of anything else just yet or you\\’ll most likely pay dearly. \u00a0That was an accident I had yesterday by having nothing with Caffeine and almost no sugar. \u00a0I had a\u00a0migraine\u00a0so bad that I barfed. \u00a0Coffee machine is broken (of course) and I have no money until Thursday (of course). \u00a0I thought well it can\\’t hurt right? Yeah no I was about 15 levels of wrong on that one! \u00a0Oh and the coughing fits and the sore throat… \u00a0Those are extra fun! \u00a0There is also little to nothing you can do about them either until they go away. \u00a0Your\u00a0sinus\u00a0cavities\u00a0are going to drip constantly and make the back of your throat feel slimey and your nose runs pretty much All. The. Time. \u00a0Coughing? \u00a0Not a pretty sight, especially when you\\’re recovering from the flu and you start coughing hacking so hard that you yarf to the point that it would make the\u00a0excorsist\u00a0jealous. \u00a0Except that ain\\’t pea soup it\\’s a combination of\u00a0phlegm, mucous and bile all rolled into one delightful, projectile vomit package. \u00a0This of course happened at work, why wouldn\\’t it? \u00a0Your sense of smell improves. \u00a0Why is this a con you ask? \u00a0Ever been in Montreal\\’s metro system? \u00a0You\u00a0develop\u00a0a new appreciation for breathing through your mouth and NOT your nose.<\/p>\n

Pro\\’s:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You\\’re saving an ass-load of money! \u00a0I can\\’t speak for everyone but my habit alone ran me about $216.00\/month. \u00a0That\\’s 2 hours of tattoo work with my Montreal guy and a lot more with my Ontario one.<\/li>\n
  2. You don\\’t smell like a dirty ashtray anymore. \u00a0Doesn\\’t matter how much stuff you slather on to smell nice, that cigarette smoke over-powers it.<\/li>\n
  3. Things taste better, a lot better. \u00a0You also cut down on things like salt and sugar because you notice it a lot more without having to add more. \u00a0Although I have discovered that there\\’s a few things I don\\’t like the taste of anymore. \u00a0Not a big deal really.<\/li>\n
  4. If you have nerve damage or bad circulation (which I do) you\\’ll notice that get\\’s better as well, which is a nice plus.<\/li>\n
  5. You\\’re no longer paying out the ass in \\’tobacco\\’ tax either, one less contribution that you have to make to the government.<\/li>\n
  6. Champix is usually covered by insurance or the province. \u00a0In my case the RAMQ does cover it and the starter pack (two weeks worth) cost me $28.00 plus the\u00a0existing\u00a0cost of my cigarettes so about $70.00 roughly (I\\’m guesstimating here) and since my payable goes down every time I get a\u00a0prescription\u00a0filled my continuation pack only cost me $18.00 and I haven\\’t smoked since.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Now don\\’t get me wrong, you still have to want to quit and on occasion you\\’re still going to have cravings. \u00a0However the actual nicotine\u00a0withdrawal\u00a0should only last you 76 hours MAX. \u00a0After that, there is no more nicotine in your system and from that point it\\’s\u00a0psychological. \u00a0It\\’s a habit, so in order to break this one, you need to create another one. \u00a0It\\’s amazing the things that you associate with smoking and before I decided to quit, I changed up my routine in small ways. \u00a0Taking different routes to and from work and eliminating cigarettes that I knew that I didn\\’t need. \u00a0It does help.<\/p>\n

    I\\’ve been lucky with the side effects not getting to me too badly, although I know a few people have had problems with the drug. \u00a0However they\\’re all men and men are notorious for NOT reading instructions or directions and I\\’m willing to bet that if they did, they just *might* have had an easier time with it. \u00a0But who am I to say?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So I started taking champix 21 days ago, hard to believe that it\\’s already been that long! \u00a0Here\\’s a quickie break down of how this actually works: First you pick your quit date, somewhere between day 8 and day 14 from the first day you start taking Champix. Day 1-3 you take one pill, once […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,73,37,55,53,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-things","category-gross","category-smoking","category-stephs-junk","category-thats-classy","category-the-champix-challenge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/modologyworld.net\/steph\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/modologyworld.net\/steph\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/modologyworld.net\/steph\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/modologyworld.net\/steph\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/modologyworld.net\/steph\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/modologyworld.net\/steph\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/modologyworld.net\/steph\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/modologyworld.net\/steph\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/modologyworld.net\/steph\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}