Monday, April 5, 2010

1,2,3, and now 4

Here is the second part of my journey on Chantix.

Day two started out very early at work with a feeling of extreme fatigue. I thought at the time that it was simply because I didn't get much sleep the night before. That afternoon I took a long nap and after dinner went right back to bed. I also noticed that my mood was going up and down, I'd be extremely happy one minute and the next I'd be quite sad. Days three and four held much of the same for me with ups and downs and an almost crippling fatigue. When I got home from work on day four I looked at the information packet that came with the prescription and it said fatigue was experienced in a small number of people in studies. I couldn't sleep enough and felt listless all day. That night when I went to bed I thought to myself "how much more of this can I take?" To top it all off, I was still smoking and although I started to see a change in my enjoyment of smoking on the night of day four I thought I was no where near quitting at that point.

Day five brought a complete change for me. Gone were the fatigue and moods swings. My mood stabilized and I felt happy and energetic. More importantly, I had absolutley no desire to smoke. This fact made me even happier and encouraged me to get outside and exercise. It was a complete one-eighty from the past three days of misery.

Now, here I am at day 9 of taking Chantix and day 5 of no smoking. I've had one small urge to smoke but it passed within seconds. I'm working on changing the habits I had that accompanied smoking but that isn't something that can be done with a pill and overnight. Not smoking is still a learning process for me but I feel like I'm on the right track with a positive attitude.

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