When you start smoking, where would you place your chances for success at quitting one day? If you put your faith in statistics, you’d have a 5% chance at success. What happens to the rest of us is a potent mixture of extreme craving, unbearable headaches, and irritable twitchiness. The brain wants its nicotine the stimulants in tobacco that make receptors in the brain release pleasure-making dopamine. Do you realize that in a world where smokers for 40 years have endlessly seen smoking bans, dire cancer warnings from the Surgeon General, pressure from friends and family, that 19 out of 20 people fail to quit even once they try? That is the power that chemicals like nicotine have over us; but if you want to quit, it does make sense to try to fight chemical with chemical, does it not? If you want to stop smoking, medication could be your way out.
When you have medicines pulling for you, what do those statistics say for your chances at success then? The improvement isn’t dramatic, but you do stand a fair chance now. That is what the US Public Health Service says - if you wish to stop smoking medication can improve your odds by three times. It all depends on what kind of smoking habit you carry actually. If you take in more than 20 cigarettes a day, antidepressants like Wellbutrin and smoker-specific drugs like Chantix the most important drugs to really help you. Anything less than 10 cigarettes a day or so, and you need no help from drugs – you’re probably not addicted.
People realize that tobacco addiction is a pretty tenacious thing; and they understand that the drugs that you take for it would have to be particularly strong. They wonder if they’ll just end up substituting one addiction for another, or face up to some pretty serious side effects or organ damage these medicines can bring to the heart. Of course, you have to understand that tobacco smoke isn’t exactly the greatest thing for your heart either. None of the side effects actually have anything on nicotine when it comes to hurting your heart. But if you want to stop smoking medication is never going to cure you.. Think of it more as a way to treat your condition for as long as you live. The best thing to do would be to never let the habit in your life.
Let’s see then how the best stop-smoking medication can help. Wellbutrin happens to be your top-of-the-line drug choice. It’s actually an antidepressant that’s been discovered to help with nicotine cravings. Antidepressants are well known for the way they deal with the production of dopamine in the brain (you’ve heard of dopamine, haven’t you? It’s the chemical that helps brain cells communicate one with the other, and it also helps you feel pleasure and craving). Wellbutrin masses up the way nicotine jump starts dopamine production, and you stop getting your nicotine high. Chantix does great withheavy smokers who do two packs a day and have done so for decades. What it does is, it keeps the nicotine receptors busy in the brain so that you don’t feel the cravings at all. And if you happen to weaken midway and get a cigarette, Chantix makes sure that you don’t enjoy it at all.
The worst that you have with Wellbutrin is that you don’t just lose your interest in cigarettes; you lose your interest in food and sex too. And when you add into the mix some problems you might have with sleeping, your weight, and keeping your mouth properly moistened, it can get a little difficult. Chantix doesn’t make it any easier. You have constant suicidal thoughts when you take it, and you have trouble sleeping to boot. And with both drugs, you become less than friendly, and you’re likely to lose your cool rather often. Doctors use Wellbutrin with a tobacco patch sometimes too, and that’s a pretty successful approach. You need to ask your doctor. If all these side effects are beginning to scare you off, you need to think of this – when you quit, you stand to gain an additional 13 years in your life. That should be worth a few measly bucks now shouldn’t it?
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