 Yes, smoking is a terrible habit and I tried to stop but Chantix kind of made me go a little crazy. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focused on the solution and welcome back to another video. My channel is all about mental health and this is a video I've been meaning to make for about a year. Yeah, it's been about a year since I tried using Chantix and like this is a mental health topic okay and you'll understand why when I explain why I stopped taking Chantix all right. So I'm a smoker, it's terrible like I know it's bad for me and like some of you who are familiar with me and my story my channel like I am a drug addict and alcoholic in recovery like I often joke with my clients about why the dare program didn't work like did any heroin addict not know that heroin was bad for them of course they did do any smokers not know that smoking is bad for them of course they do like I know I know smoking is bad for me like my doctor like even talks to me like yeah I know you know smoking is bad so I'm not gonna lay into you about it you know but she gives me some options and things like that but honestly like I my struggle with smoking a lot of this been you know just recovering from addiction and it's an excuse like I know it's terrible and some of you watched my video about how I lost weight and things like that like it's something that I'm working on like I feel guilty about it I feel terrible about it like almost every time I pick up and light a cigarette I feel guilty regardless of what my girlfriend thinks I don't know if she's watching this but if you are you're beautiful but yeah she wants me to quit smoking but like I feel awful every time I do it like I know I'm doing something bad that's harming me you know and things like that so like it's something I want to stop doing and I think as an addict in recovery is this justification like I'm very self-aware that it is a justification like a common excuse that you hear from a lot of addicts and I'm one of them is like I quit using drugs and alcohol leave me alone let me have this right like it doesn't change the fact that it's bad so I beat myself up about it too like I quit alcohol and drugs like if any of you are not living under a rock you know that there is this crazy addiction epidemic tens of thousands of people are dying each year even more people are overdosing and surviving there are so many people who are addicts or alcoholics and they can't quit I am one of the few and it's nothing you know to boast my own ego but I overcame a drug addiction and alcoholism it is one of the hardest things to do but I can't quit smoking you know so I got to a point last year where like I finally admit defeat you know I keep trying to do things my own way and stuff like that and finally I'm like you know what I need help like I couldn't quit smoking I need help so I got the idea to try chantix all right so there's a story I won't dive into but the only person I knew who used chantix was this guy I used to work with like 10 years ago and he lost his mind on it he lost his mind so I was I've been afraid of using chantix so like I got the idea but I'm like man that dude like flew off the rails like I watched his mental breakdown and he was a co-worker like he had this episode at work like it was nuts right so I was talking to my girlfriend about it I said I want to try chantix to quit smoking but I'm afraid I'll lose my mind and my my girlfriend you know she's gone to school for psychology and she she was more well versed on this subject than me I forgot what she said and she's not in the room right now but like she said like you know when they talk about chantix and saying that you know there's psychological side effects like they have to warn you about that even if like something really low like one to three percent I think the number was like if one to three percent of people experience these psychological side effects they have to list them so when she said that I'm like okay so there's a very low chance that all have psychological side effects so I do want to preface it was saying this first when I got on chantix okay because I'm not saying that you shouldn't try chantix if you're trying to quit smoking I think when I tried it it was just the perfect storm for bad things to happen so at this time this was another time in my history where I quit taking my anti-anxiety medication lexapro and my doctor had helped me wean off of it and when I followed up with her about coming off of my lexapro that's when I talked to her about chantix so I got off of my mental health medications and got on a new medication that has a possibility of psychological effects you know what I mean like negative effects so I think that was one of the prime factors okay but I mentioned this in my video about getting off my meds and something that I do I let people know I let people know like hey if I start acting crazy if I start acting nuts I need you to tell me because I won't realize it so I started taking chantix and if any of you haven't tried it before like basically they give you like this kit right and you start out by taking a certain dose per day and it gradually goes up and you don't actually quit smoking while you're doing it like it's supposed to diminish cravings and things like that but you can still smoke right but you're supposed to kind of wean off your smoking and the cravings are supposed to go away well I wasn't really doing that I was still smoking just as much um one of the side effects that really hit me too was I was constantly tired I was very drowsy on it and it's kind of just the give and take that I took like okay I'm quitting smoking but I'm really tired and like with most medications you're supposed to be on them for a couple weeks for your body to adjust so I was hoping that would go away so I just kept using it kept using it but I kept smoking too and that's when I started to have mental health issues and I didn't realize it one of the things was was just like this immense depression and my depression works in a way of not only hopelessness but I beat myself up I've mentioned this in other videos I beat myself up and like I was just had so much negative self-talk about geez Chris like you can't even quit smoking with a medication and I was just ripping into myself like I felt like a piece of garbage you know and people are asking me how's the chance it's going did you quit yet did you quit smoking yet and the answer is like no no I haven't and like I felt awful about that well then my anxiety starts coming right it starts coming back and I'm meditating and things like that but I just had this racing brain negative thoughts and all sorts of stuff and I was getting very irritable too when my anxiety comes back and my depression hits in like one of my characteristics is I get very irritable I get angry I get snappy and stuff and that's why I tell people to let me know if I start acting abnormal so my girlfriend mentioned it you know and I brushed it off because I was just in a bad mood and what happened was I'll never forget I'll never forget I was in the car with my son and we were going through a drive-through and my son was talking my brain's racing I'm feeling anxious I'm feeling crazy and I'm sitting there and like this thought came in my head and I was like you know what Chris maybe you should go get some drugs because those will probably calm you down and right then it was just like this I was like oh my god like I haven't really thought like like seriously about using in many years you know what I mean like I just celebrated six years clean but this thought sounded so good to me in that moment it scared the bejesus out of me I'm like this is not okay and when that happened like thank god I was able to recognize it like when that happened I sat down and I just and this is what I recommend to all of you when you have like a mental like snap or whatever like sit down and just you got to play detective with your life because everything was so foggy my brain was going a million miles a minute for weeks on end I was like what's different what's going on in my life that's different and it took me a while to sit there and analyze it and then it finally came to me I'm like oh I'm taking chantix maybe I'm having these psychological side effects right oh I'm not taking my anxiety meds anymore and they're also antidepressants maybe this has something to do it so I took the rest of my chantix and I threw it away I went to the pharmacy I refilled my lexapros prescription and I got back on track okay so I just kept taking my meds stopped using chantix so that's kind of what happened to me again like I don't I don't want to veer anybody away from the idea of using chantix like I might be one of those you know few percentile of the people who had a negative side effect it might help you I know their success stories it's this is just my personal experience so I hope you're a little bit more educated about it and you can make a decision like smoking terrible and like man I want to quit I need to quit and like where I'm at with it today honestly that last experience with trying to quit like really shook me up and I know I use it as an excuse and it's not a great one but I'm afraid to try again I'm afraid to try again because I'm afraid that if I let go of smoking it's gonna make me want to drink or use again and and that's probably dumb it's probably an irrational fear and it's good and therapeutic that I'm talking about it with all of you like it's something I need to work on you know whatever the case may be whether it's switching to a vape and weaning down from there I don't I don't know if you if you have suggestions if you've quit smoking leave your suggestions down below I've tried you know meditation and mindfulness and I know it helps I know I can do it but like I don't know I'm afraid to I'm afraid to because it's just something I do is something I use to also relieve stress and it's terrible I'm just a guy babbling on about excuses now it's awful there's no excuse to smoke there's not an excuse to smoke I'm awful I'm awful but I love all of you and I know you love me so this video got really weird so what I'm gonna do I'm gonna wrap this thing up so anyways if you somehow like this video please give it a thumbs up and if you're new here I'm always making videos to hopefully help you out with your mental health click that little round subscribe button and a big big big thank you to everybody supporting me on patreon and if you would like to support what I'm doing trying to help people with their mental health you can click or tap on the little patreon icon right there all right so thank you so so much for watching and I will see you next time