FDA: Anti-smoking drug Chantix linked to more than 500 suicides [View all]

Tina Hurst was living what she considered a perfect life in her quiet neighborhood in suburban Chicago. She was happily married, the mother of two teenage girls and an executive at an insurance company.

Hurst also had a secret. She was a closet smoker, an on-again, off-again, pack-a-day habit she’d hidden from her family.

“I would quit for a couple of months and then I would start back again, so it was one of those periods where my family thought I was still not smoking, and I had started again,” Hurst said.

Hurst called her doctor, who suggested a prescription drug called Chantix, which is designed to help smokers quit by curbing the desire to light up. Hurst thought she’d found an easy fix. Wiithin a week, she quit smoking.

“I thought it was a miracle drug, you know?” she said.

As Hurst continued taking the drug as prescribed, her well-ordered life started coming unhinged and she began acting erratically. After her husband convinced her to throw the pills away, Hurst said she went over the edge.


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