Published: March 22, 2007 02:32 pm         

Terre Haute nurse stops smoking after 15 years with help of a pill

TERRE HAUTE — In her 15 years of smoking, Valerie Stines tried a number of methods to break the habit.

“I pretty much smoked except during pregnancies,” she said. “When I was pregnant, [smoking] made me sick. When I had the baby or stopped breast feeding, I went right back to my cigarettes.”

Twice, she tried Wellbutrin, an antidepressant sometimes used in smoking cessation. “I quit for less than one month on that,” she said.

Then there was nicotine patches, “but it felt like my heart was racing.”

Hypnotism didn’t work, either. “I think I smoked a cigarette as I walked away from the hypnotist’s,” Stines said as she gave a short laugh.

For Stines, a licensed practical nurse who works at AP&S Clinic, cigarettes defined her days. “First thing in the morning, I’d grab a cigarette,” she says. “While I was doing laundry, during sporting events, when the house was loud, at lunch time … even when they made us give up smoking, I go to the car, drive around and smoke a cigarette.”

But she’s no longer smoking. Doesn’t even want to smoke one. Her magic pill was, literally, a pill: Chantix.

Chantix, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in May 2006, “acts at sites in the brain affected by nicotine and may help those who wish to give up smoking in two ways: by providing some nicotine effects to ease the withdrawal symptoms and by blocking the effects of nicotine from cigarettes if they resume smoking,” according to a release from the FDA.

Smokers continue smoking for the first week or so that Chantix is taken. They begin with one 0.5 mg. pill once a day for three days, then take two pills a day for the remainder of that week. From the beginning of the second week until the end of treatment, two 1 mg. pills are taken twice a day: one in the morning and one in the evening.

“I highly recommend the Chantix,” Stines said. “I cheated once and [the cigarette] tasted horrible. I took three puffs and threw it and the rest of the pack out.”

She does admit, however, that, “for quite a while, I would get up in the morning and go, ‘where are my cigarettes?” And then I’d remember, ‘oh, I don’t smoke.’”

Now, however, “I don’t think about it at all. I don’t worry about how to get a lunch, how long my lunch is going to last, where I’m going to go and smoke my cigarette. I can go shopping the whole lunch break without worry about smoking part of a cigarette here and part of a cigarette there.”

As an added bonus, she’s seeing a brighter world. “I cleaned my windows again just last weekend,” Stines said. “When you smoke and you spray the [glass cleaner] on, you see everything coming down the window. It’s brown. The last time, there was nothing.”