Lelly, at what point did you stop smoking? If you stopped cold turkey and then started taking Zyban the same day or several days later, it could explain your negative emotional reaction. Extreme nicotine withdrawal can trigger crushing depression and severe irritability. Here is the recommended way of taking it:
On the other hand, even among those who never used
tobacco/nicotine, bupropion can worsen depression, or lighten it up enough for someone who has been deeply depressed to get up enough energy to commit (or try to commit) suicide. Usually, though, this effect is seen in younger patients.
I took it the same way both times, smoked as normal for 7 days, then attempted to quit after that. Both times I didn't go cold turkey at the 7 day mark, I just drastically cut down the amount I smoked to about 1-3 cigarettes per day.
vaping has been the only thing that has kept me off cigarettes for more than 24 hours, I would even light up when I was pregnant, was sick with pneumonia 4 times in the last 2 years, was in the hospital...nothing could stop me from smoking. I was amazed how different the results were, calm and relaxed the first time, raging lunatic the second time.
Not much was different in my life stress/depression wise going into it. I think I was 26 the first time I took it and I had just turned 28 the second time around. So not only do these drugs effect different people differently, they can have drastically different results in the same individual.
The first time around I had stuck with it for about a week (2 weeks if you count the first 7 days) before I gradually worked my way back up to what I was smoking before, even though I continued to take the medication, it was my mind that craved the mental break/satisfaction of a cigarette, not my body, so the drug did work in that aspect.
The second time around when it was day 7 and I was supposed to quit, the uncontrollable anger and sadness and depression had already escalated to the point where I was consumed by it, and I felt like my life had spun into this uncontrollable downward spiral (for absolutely no reason) that I gave up on quitting and stopped taking the meds by the end of the second day. I am not a violent person, and I am an animal lover, I find comfort in my dogs when I am sad and company with them when I am lonely, and petting them always lightens me up when I am angry, but the turning point for me was when I was feeling very irratable (again, for no reason) then my dog started barking and I had the strongest urge to hit him. I knew something was serioulsy wrong for me to even think that, let alone almost do it.
It was the weirdest thing feeling so different and not even stopping to think why I was feeling and acting the way I was, then the light bulb finally went off in my head. I can't believe I let it get that bad before I realized what was happening, and I thank god that I did have this moment of enlightenment because before that my abnormal behavior had felt normal to me and I never really questioned it. Once I stopped taking the pills, it took a few weeks before I felt like myself again.
I totally understand someone commiting suicide while taking these drugs because you don't realize that the drug is consuming you. The feelings are real and it doesn't matter that they are unjustified in the moment. I am pretty sure that if I continued to take it throughout the entire length of treatment, whether I was still smoking or not, BAD things would have happened.
