14-02-2010

CHICAGO (CBS)  -- All she wanted was to quit smoking, so she tried a widely advertised prescription drug that was supposed to help her. Instead, one suburban mom says something horrible happened. CBS 2\'s Anne State reports.

Tina Hurst is a suburban mother and a manager at a Fortune 500 company. Her life was great, but she had one dark secret.

"I was a closet smoker," Hurst said.

Her doctor prescribed a drug called Chantix to help her quit. Seven million Americans have taken it.

Hurst says she took Chantix for two months and it worked great.

But when she stopped, "I totally went off the deep end," she said.

Hurst says she started walking around the house in circles, crying and hallucinating.

"I thought somebody died. And I was freaked out," Hurst said.

Her husband, Tim Hurst, was freaked out, too.

"I was so confused and scared by the way she was acting," he said.
An ambulance rushed Hurst to a hospital where records indicate she was very agitated and had to be restrained. She spent four days in a psych unit.

Prior to this, Hurst said she never had a history of anxiety, depression or any mental problems. She thinks it was caused by Chantix.

Her doctor\'s diagnosis? "Substance-induced psychotic disorder."

Chantix does come with a warning that mood and mental problems, including depression and suicide, have been reported in patients taking it.

When we looked at three years of data from the FDA, we found 15,000 reports of side effects. More than 1,600 of those involved suicides or suicidal behavior.

Drugmaker Pfizer says: "...because these events are reported voluntarily from a population of uncertain size, it is not possible to reliably estimate their frequency or establish a causal relationship to drug exposure."

Carol Southard is a smoking cessation specialist.

"I\'m a huge advocate of Chantix and I\'ve had a lot of success with it and very few problems," Southard said.

Southard says she has had more than 700 patients on Chantix.

"It literally shuts down the nicotine receptors, so the physical \'jonesing\' is nonexistent," she said.

Southard says Chantix has risks, but they\'re minimal and few and far between.

"There is nothing, nothing on the market that does more damage than cigarettes. Nothing," Southard said.

"I want Chantix off the market," Hurst said. "I want people to know how dangerous this drug is."

Pfizer says Chantix is an important treatment option for people trying to quit smoking and its benefits outweigh the potential risks for many smokers.

The FDA is requiring that Pfizer do a study to determine how often psychiatric side effects occur, but that study has not yet begun. In a statement, Pfizer said it is currently in discussions with the FDA regarding a large study.