A Commonplace Book

And indeed, I was all of these during my one and only trip to New Orleans when I was 18. I bought many, many hurricanes (the New Orleans slushy drink that contains something like seven different kinds of alcohol) from little sidewalk carts and strolled through the French Quarter checking out the voodoo shops and the jazz clubs. A cute artist penciled a sketch of me that made me look more beautiful than I’d ever felt. I saw a pick-pocket in action. I learned to tie a cherry stem in a knot in my mouth. Someone stole the “help your local police, beat yourself up” button off my jean jacket. A street guitarist played “Wish You Were Here.” I saw my first drag queen.

The poet William Stafford once said, “I have woven a parachute out of everything broken,” and these words give me hope that we can, in fact, make something from the broken parts that will save us. But it seems to me, that this change can’t come from a paternalistic governmental figure, but rather, from the bottom, from, as MLK Scholar Kirk Noden said at a local observance, from “Mrs. Jones on the corner.” We all know that Dr. King had a dream, but a little reported fact is that he also believed that one of the biggest threats to Civil Rights was the “white moderate.”

King said, “I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the [...] great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is [...] the white moderate is who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.”

Even today, although in a different context, it seems that the same may be said true. It may be the white moderates, who are desperately trying to hold on to what they have, who are fearful of change and of terrorism and of rising gas prices and of unemployment, who are, albeit accidentally, still the greatest stumbling block to Civil Rights–this time to the erosion of them. We cling so desperately to the status quo that we’ve squelched our own desire to fight for right and for justice, and then we fill the gaping holes in our psyches with food, drink, smokes, gossip, and cheap chinese goods from Wal-Mart.

And still, hope comes from some of the parachute weavers. Blue Girl provides a forum for thought-provoking discussion of all things related to current politics. Wren educates about some of the more under-the-radar political goings-on, and she does so with great depth of feeling. Christopher examines the Civil Rights discussions of current candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton with his trademark elegant understatement.

In my moments of governmental faithlessness, I’m reminded that there are so many of us who want to see our country and our people become whole, and that our numbers include award-winning authors, bright political writers, poets, scholars, teachers, clergy men and women, counselors, computer techs, janitors, homemakers, and yes, Mrs. Jones on the corner.

About a year ago, the Pharma giant Pfizer began aggressively marketing, mostly to doctors, its new smoking cessation drug, Chantix–just in time for those New Year’s resolutions. At the same time, my fabulous state of Ohio passed new public smoking legislation. It seemed to me that the time was right to quit. So I puffed my way through the holiday season. And then like many, many other people, a couple of weeks into the new year, I walked into my doctor’s office and said, “I want to try this new drug for quitting smoking.” My doctor eagerly wrote me a prescription. The nurses commented on this “wonderful new drug.” The first month of a three month prescription carried a $100+ price tag. “Well worth it,” they told me.

A friend had begun taking Chantix about a week before me. Together we marveled at how the drug made cigarettes completely unpleasurable, but at the same time, we knew that it must be a pretty strong drug to affect our brains that way. We were both having very vivid dreams.We both noticed that we started to feel edgy if we forgot to take our pills. Then, over the next couple of weeks, I started noticing increasing dizziness, to the point that I nearly fainted several times a day. I decided to wean off of Chantix.

I weaned off very, very slowly, gradually decreasing my dose of Chantix. By the fourth day without the drug, I couldn’t steady my hands. I couldn’t stop crying. I had never, not even in post-partum, had suicidal thoughts in my life. And while I never actually thought about harming myself, I was suddenly unable to see any reason to get out of bed, to bathe, to get off the couch. I tried meditation and yoga, B Complex and Magnesium. Nothing worked. I was so desperate, I began scanning my old personal phone books to see if I could remember anyone who might be able to get me some marijuana, no luck. When I stood in my kitchen with a bottle of wine and a corkscrew at 8:00 am because I needed to take the edge off, I knew I was in real trouble. I begged my doctor to see me.

I told the doctor that I thought I was withdrawing from the Chantix. He told me that it was probably the nicotine. I knew he was wrong because I had quit smoking three times before, twice when I was pregnant, and I had never experienced these kinds of physical and psychological symptoms. But I didn’t fight with my doctor because I needed him to prescribe me another drug. He prescribed Celexa (an SSRI), which I took for the next five months. When I went to my doctor to ask to be taken off of Celexa, he reminded me of my symptoms–the shaking and the crying. I insisted that I had been withdrawing from Chantix; I could tell he wasn’t really listening.

When my friend finished her three-month prescription of Chantix, she experienced similar withdrawal symptoms. Her experiences led me to begin searching online, and what I discovered were sites and threaded discussion pages full of the same kinds of Chantix withdrawal stories, stories from patients who were terrified by their suicidal thoughts, many of whom had already begun smoking again to cope with the Chantix withdrawal. And yet, Chantix commercials appeared on television with increasing frequency.

Then, a few months ago, former New Bohemian musician Carter Albrecht was accidentally shot by a neighbor during a possibly Chantix-induced psychotic episode. His girlfriend told police that they were both taking the drug to quit smoking, but his body was never tested for Chantix. 

Doctors seem hesitant to find fault with the drug, and they keep prescribing it, often without any warning about the possible psychological side effects. Pfizer has responded by altering it’s drug warning information in Chantix packages, but in general, mainstream media has been largely silent on the possible dangers of Chantix.

While it’s true that quitting smoking is probably the best thing a person can do, healthwise, we have to be more understanding with and patient of smokers. I know that there isn’t one person who ever tried that first cigarette because she wanted to be a life-long smoker. Nicotine is a powerfully addictive drug, and yes, we’ve known this for a while, but most of us started smoking during those adolescent years when it is normal and natural not to worry about our health or our mortality.

All of the social stigma (packaged and repackaged for us by our media) connected with smoking has made smokers desperate to quit. The same stigma has made smokers the target of constant judgement and commentary by family, friends, and strangers. While I fully support outdoor-only smoking (for the health and safety of all), I also believe we need to back off of smokers a little so that we don’t send them running in search of a “miracle drug” like Chantix that may affect them psychologically in ways that we won’t know about for years. Smoking may be an unhealthy habit, but it isn’t a character flaw. It’s also not demonstrative of a lack of morality, although, perhaps, promoting a potentially dangerous psychotropic drug is.