A man tries to quit smoking. He has problems doing this, so he get help from his psychiatrist in the form of the psychiatric drug Zyban, an anti-depressant. Then he really started having problems. As reported in the Guardian, and we pick up his story partway through the article:
Naturally, I got caught out one night. A lighter flew out of my pocket while I was getting undressed. For several minutes I stood there in my pants, indignantly bellowing that it must have fallen through the ceiling, from the flat upstairs. I don't lie well under pressure.
This madness couldn't continue, so I resolved to quit once and for all. Hypnotism proved effective, by which I mean painless. I did it several times. Contrary to expectation, the hypnotist didn't programme me to assassinate Tony Blair, just stop lighting up: 72 hours with a bad mood and a head cold and the nicotine had gone. The problem was that three-month mark: three months into my new life, I'd visit a pub and somehow come out smoking. And after my last lapse, I was too ashamed to return to the hypnotist. Instead, I tried a miracle pill I'd heard about. Zyban, the prescription wonder.
You take one a day for six days, then increase the dose. After 11 days, you stop smoking. Stay on the pills for seven weeks, and you're done.
It worked. Eleven days in I didn't want to smoke, as though the nicotine-craving bit of my brain had been deleted. A pharmaceutical magic trick.
But. There was a "but". A week after my "quit date", I was at home, watching a film with a friend. As the credits rolled, a frantic, nameless dread washed over me. Within minutes, I was a quivering wreck. My mind was drifting away from reality, tethered only by a narrow thread that might snap at any moment. Heart pounding, palms sweating. I clutched my head, blinking, hyperventilating, nerves jangling at 9,000 rpm.
It was a major panic attack, which eventually lasted over four hours, deep into the night. I've never known such terror. I became obsessed with the notion that I might snap at any moment; attack my friend, leap from a window, gouge my own eyes out with my thumbs, screaming, shrieking; a banshee. I've had better evenings in.
The next day I decided I'd had enough of that for one lifetime. I threw the pills away. Thing is, it takes days to clear your system. For a week, I walked around like a de-tuned radio, continually anxious, fighting insane paranoid notions; a horrified alien visitor on a tour of my own life. I was terrified it was permanent; slowly, normality returned.
Weeks later, I still can't believe I was legally prescribed something that could bend my brain over its knee with such demented zeal - although it's worth pointing out I have no evidence that what happened to me had anything to do with Zyban. All I know is it happened while I was taking the drug, and stopped several days after I binned the pills. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe I'm just crazy. I don't know.
I do know, however, that pharmaceutical companies have ominous legal departments orbiting the planet in almighty Death Stars, and that a lawyer twice as powerful as God is doubtless reading this right now.
Anyway. Smoking kills, and I'm glad I've stopped. Quitting's worth it. Just don't choose a cure worse than death.
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