by Chris Holmes
*Update: If you or a loved one has suffered a bad reaction to Champix and you are based in the U.K., you can report it to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) here. The more people do that the clearer the true picture will become. Protect others! Report it.*
Having begun this with a fairly open mind when it came to Chantix Champix – a relatively new medication – in the 14 months since I first referred to it in my book, which was the end of May 2007 when its launch was announced in the U.K., I have decided upon a personal stance. I think it is highly unpredictable and sometimes very dangerous, and should never have been passed in the U.K. because many of these problems had already surfaced in the U.S., and caution – not hype – is the appropriate attitude for medical bodies to adopt when something new appears.
All you Chantix Champix apologists who are trying to claim that adverse reactions are “withdrawal of nicotine”, I refer you to the U.S. Surgeon General. The following link takes you to an article posted on the website of WhyQuit.com, which is not, as you might assume from the name, a pro-smoking group, but an advocate of quitting without pharmaceutical products. The article is called Champix and Chantix linked to Depression, Aggression and Suicide. Anyone considering using Chantix Champix should read this article FIRST, then investigate other methods, particularly hypnotherapy, which involve NO RISK and produce far more long-term success anyway than any pharmaceutical quit-product (see evidence on this site and in the book). If you want to know more about hypnotherapy, visit the Central Hypnotherapy website.
Here is the rather grim Champix article.