Could this way of quitting be worse than smoking?

You’ve got to hand it to Big Pharma for coming up with a drug to help you stop smoking that’s actually riskier than cigarettes!

Of course, that would be Chantix, the Rx med put out by Pfizer that’s been linked to more bizarre and violent behaviors than some illicit drugs. Even weeks after users stop taking the med, side effects such as anxiety, nightmares, aggression, depression, and thoughts of suicide just don’t go away.

Now, a new study out of Canada has confirmed another frightening aspect of the drug.

Here’s what we know for sure: You definitely want to keep on trying to kick the habit. Only you don’t want to land in the hospital, psych ward, or worse while you’re doing that.

Here’s how to succeed at the first… while avoiding the second.

A chamber of horrors
There was the Pennsylvania man who shot and killed his wife… and then himself. Then, there was the woman who committed suicide after having an argument over a peanut butter sandwich.

That was just a few days after starting up on Chantix.

They only wanted to improve their health by stopping smoking, but for them — and for many smokers — Chantix turned into a nightmare beyond their wildest dreams.

Ten years ago, Thomas Moore, a senior scientist at the Institute for Safe Medical Practice, said that Chantix had been associated with more adverse reactions than any other drug on the market.

And those “adverse reactions” are some of the worst you could ever imagine — often causing “unpredictable and senseless” violence, Moore says.

The FDA has received hundreds of reports of suicides — and close to 2,000 attempted ones — related to taking the med. And we know full well that adverse-reaction reports sent into the agency are a mere fraction of what is really going on.

Thousands of lawsuits have been filed against Pfizer as a result.

Yet, not only does this drug remain on the market, but just last year the FDA gave Pfizer a major prize by allowing the company to remove a black-box warning of “SERIOUS NEUROPSYCHIATRIC EVENTS,” which should have stuck like superglue!

But even if those types of violent reactions don’t happen to you, Canadian researchers — who looked at the medical records for nearly 57,000 recent Chantix users — say that it can also make you a third more likely to end up in the ER or admitted to the hospital with a heart “event.” That’s an emergency that may be due to unstable angina, vascular issues, or even a heart attack or stroke.

These new findings, however, also shouldn’t come as a big surprise. Because seven years ago, another study out of Canada found that those on Chantix were over 70 percent more likely to have serious heart issues. And even the FDA weighed in on this effect in 2012 by saying that it had found a “higher occurrence of major adverse cardiovascular events.”

If your New Year’s resolution is to stop smoking once and for all, there are other ways to try and kick the habit that won’t damage your ticker… or turn you into a ticking time bomb.

For example:

• Acupuncture, the use of super-thin needles inserted just a tiny bit under your skin in certain areas of the body, has been found to be very effective in helping people to stop lighting up.
• Sipping on enough water — or even better, green tea — during the day can help curtail cravings for tobacco.
• Cutting back on certain “trigger foods” and drinks, such as red meat and coffee, can reduce the desire to smoke, according to a Duke University study.

And finally, certain supplements, especially one called GABA (Gamma-Aminobutyric acid), which is often used to treat anxiety, can actually take the pleasure out of smoking.

But whatever methods you try to help you quit, you want to make sure that taking a dangerous drug like Chantix isn’t one of them!

“Varenicline for smoking cessation linked to cardiac events” Marlene Busko, January 2, 2018, Medscape, medscape.com