I hate to be a shill for pharma but one of my friends went on Chantix and the results seem incredible to me.

If I recall correctly the clinical studies put it at 50% success rate or higher depending on how many weeks you continue the regiment.

From the outside looking in it looked like it was way less effort and mental strain than other forms of quitting. They basically started taking the drug and by the end they just didn’t want cigarettes anymore.

For those of you looking to quit nicotine, I think looking toward medical solutions is the way to go. It’s too bad our medical system has incentivized shyness around finding medical solutions.

I will second this, having enjoyed similar success. The idea is that you start taking it, smoke normally the first day or two, then stop (if I understand the mechanism correctly the drug uses the nicotine to guide it to the correct receptors at the outset and subsequently the molecules self-attach to each other). You take it 4 or 6 weeks - I think 4, but it was 16 years ago so I forget. Contrary to what some imagine, there's no long-term dose. Within the first few days your cravings evaporate, by the end of the course smelling someone else's cigarette evokes a mild feeling of nausea. It's the only approach that never resulted in a relapse of some kind for me.

There are side effects; it can cause stomach bleeding if you don't carefully take it with meals, so if your breakfast is just a cup of coffee you'll need to adjust to consuming food; and it's associated with intensely vivid dreams which can disrupt your sleep. I experienced both but did not find it that bad, I blame myself for playing a bit fast and loose with the mealtime warnings. idk what it costs now but I paid $400 for the full course out of pocket, probably like $750 today with inflation. So, less than 6 months of moderate cigarette use.

It doesn't fix the psychological desire for a 'smoke break'; for about 6 months I chewed gum (ordinary gum, not nicotine) to get past the mental habit of wanting to consume something. Some people reported using a fidget toy to give their hands something to do. My theory is that if you have a severe smoking addition it is probably because nicotine slotted neatly into some pre-existing somatic need, so once you get past the cravings stage it's worth exploring why smoking or vaping became such a big deal for you in the first place.

I had a family member who became suicidal on Chantix. I was wanting to quit at the same time so when given the option I went with Zyban (bupropion hydrochloride) and had quit by the second week.

What was really incredible though was right from the start I felt fantastic, like I spent all day in a flow state.

The doctor stopped the prescription after (I think) 8 weeks and I didn't start smoking again. Many years later I learned it is prescribed for ADHD and also as an antidepressant.

It gave my grandmother strokes. She never smoked again, and was still around, but never quite the same. She told me once, "I miss smoking every day. I loved it so much."

i remember a long time ago seeing the ads on TV with the turtle...the listed side effects were half the ad.