Is Zyban safe to use? (Zyban)

Member Name: rosiesmum

Product:	Zyban
Date:	30/04/01 (1279 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: does help a lot of people to stop smoking

Disadvantages: can effect some people

Zyban the revolutionary drug to help you stop smoking is it safe to use?

I went to my doctor nine months ago and asked to be put on the drug. He didn’t give me a blood pressure check or listen to my heart beat he just told me to see the practice nurse and she would put me on the programme.

She was in a rush, apparently everyone wanted to try it so she just gave me a prescription and a leaflet telling me all about the side effects of the drug and told me to come back in four weeks. It was that easy.

I have heard that you are supposed to have counselling while taking this drug but I wasn’t offered any.
That didn’t deter me though I was very keen to stop smoking so I followed the instructions to the letter.

I took one tablet a day for a week then stepped it up to two tablets. On the eighth day I stopped smoking it was hard but I stuck with it.
The drug from day one made me very thirsty to the point of drinking down two pints of water at a time to quench my thirst. I started to have violent headaches and felt as if I was in cloud cuckoo land, my concentration was terrible. I put this down to lack of nicotine at first but about day ten I felt really ill. I laid on the sofa and couldn’t stop shivering it was like having a fit, that is the only way to describe it really. It frightened me to be quite honest and so I stopped taking the drug.

I tried patches a few weeks later and succeeded that way.

I have been hearing quite a few tales about the side effects of this drug lately, not just the reports in the media but from people that I know.

A young chap I work with was on Zyban and after a week he started to swell up his mouth was burning and even drinking water seemed to burn his throat. His hands and feet were like balloons. He was rushed to casualty and at first they put it down to an allergy from something that he had eaten, but after tests they said it was Zyban causing a reac
tion. He was poorly for over a month.

Yesterday I was talking to a friend and she had had the same symptoms from the drug.

It makes me wonder how safe Zyban really is, a very powerful drug, and it must stay in your system for a long time.
Maybe it is having an adverse effect on some people because they have a different drug in their system still. Could it be possible that having a course of antibiotics three months before could react with the Zyban?
I was taking HRT treatment whilst on Zyban but I was told that it was quite safe.

Maybe the manufacturers at GlaxoWellcome need to do further studies before people are prescribed this drug.

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