Yeppers, I am exactly the same way. Contrarian by nature
I’m keeping track of the responses to this post out of “clinical” interest. I’m hoping you are all successful in your efforts, and applaud you for giving it a go.
I brought this product up last week at a meeting with the Physician who supervises my program, he had not heard of it.
Chantix is baned by FMCSA? I did not know that Chantix was on anyon’s b anned list so am interested in that. What is FMCSA? Do you know why it is banned? I have been wracking my brain trying to think if I have any “truck driver” patients, don’t think I do. The majority of my patients come from a Wellness program at a locak University so I have not run into that issue.
There are a number of drugs and medical conditions which disqualify a person from operating a commercial vehicle, Chantix being one of them.
The FMCSA made this advisory ruling after a public health advisory regarding Chantix was released by the FDA which states, among other things, that it may interfere with the ability to drive or operate heavy equipment.
I should say that the FMCSA does not directly “ban” any drugs, but advices those physicians that do our medical certifications that they should not certify any driver who is taking this drug and to consider it an immediate medical disqualification.
There are even over the counter cold medicines and such, like Benedryl, which are medical disqualifiers for us. We have to be very careful about what we put into our systems.
[COLOR=“#300090”]
GinnyG, FMCSA is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration www.fmcsa.dot.gov if you wish to research further. I don’t have a CDL but Google helped me find that answer using “CDL and FMCSA” in the search box.
Panic attack, I had just one; it was a few years ago but I remember it very clearly. :oo: I was sitting in the dentist chair and they were pumping me full of Novocain. Suddenly, I felt my heart rate start increasing like someone has tromped on my accelerator pedal. I just knew it was approaching the red line on some tachometer and there was no hope of shifting up to a higher gear. The dentist realized what was happening to me so he took the needle out and talked me down.
A Panic attack is quite different than just dealing with a highly stressful situation. For instance, last winter here in North Carolina we had a snow event that produce 4 to 6 inches of slush on our roads. Since I learned to drive in the snow belt in north western PA I wasn’t concered about my driving in those conditions. I was tooling up a shallow incline at about 45 mph (in a front-wheel-drive Saturn) when my backend wanted decide to pass my front end. I was now facing traffic in all three lane of the Interstate and you would expect a bit of adrenaline. I felt no panic; I was cool and already had the car in neutral and coasting backward up the interstate. I put it in reverse and backed my car over to the burm/exit ramp and was able to pull a one-point turn and pull back onto the interstate before the traffic arrived.
I think that slide was because I had taken my foot off the gas and my rear tire must have been hydroplaing on the slush. I’m thinking I might have done better just to keep a steady foot on the gas and let the front tires pull me out of the slide. Instead I was trained in snow on a rear-wheel-drive car so expected it to straten out by going letting off the gas and shifting to neutral. FWD and RWD are quite different beast when it comes to slides. I don’t plan on pulling any 180 turns just to learn how it happened. Well, I did learn the importance of having good tread on the back tires as well as on the front tires. :roll:
Hey Mason, I hope you don’t hate me because my Saturn gets 35 miles to the gallon… 
Keep on Truckin’ 
–Jack [/COLOR]
If that was more than a simple filling they might have had epinephrine mixed in with the novacaine.
They warned my sister about the effects of epinephrine before a root canal and she said it’s good they did or else she would’ve thought it was a panic attack. As long as you know you have a reason for the panic it makes it much more tolerable.
Her panic pretty much went away with menopause, I don’t think I’m going to have that luxury.
My dentist knows I have panic disorder. I would hope he knows to get it over with rather than take the needle out to talk me down. The dental assistants are constantly asking if I’m OK because when they’re not working on me I’m shaking like a leaf. And that is while taking plenty of Xanax.
I do have another visit coming up for another cap and that could be part of my panic at the moment. I haven’t touched the e-cig for a couple of days, have been smoking less than a half pack of cigarettes with pipes and cigars the rest of the day and I’m still panicky.
I wouldn’t be so shocked about Chantix not being safe for truckers to drive with.
There is a class action suit in the works against it just like their should’ve been against Zyban.
I equate these modern brain chemical drugs that they’re throwing at every disorder and annoying habit to LSD. They work very similarly by throwing one little receptor out of whack.
Would you want truckers driving around on LSD? It may not act like that with 99 out of 100 but that 1 could do a lot of damage.
Don’t get me wrong, I think all these SSRIs, dopamine adjusters and non-SSRI serotonin adjusters are a great leap and on the right track. But I think they need to stop blindly tossing them around.
They need to figure out a way to test who needs which adjustment rather than “here, try this and see what it does”.
I’ve been watching this topic intently, wondering if I should make the jump to “vaping”. Currently, I smoke 3-4 cigs a day. I know, I know…I’ve heard it all before “if that’s all you smoke, why not just quit”.
I used to go through 1 - 1 1/2 packs a day, but got myself down this far. Like Mike, I have panic disorder - have had since my early teens, and at that time nobody had a clue as to what the heck a panic attack was so I was really in no man’s land - and believe that has a lot to do with my smoking. I do notice that when I’m away from home, I do smoke more - again, I attribute that to the panic disorder and being away from the “safe and familiar”. So, to me it seems like maybe it is more the action, rather than the actual nicotine, which is the motivator for me…although I will admit, when highly nervous, that first “hit” is amazingly calming.
Anyway, what I’m wondering (and I know this sounds ridiculous considering what all is in cigs) is how safe is the stuff that’s being inhaled by “vaping”? I mean, we know the long term effects of cigs…but does vaping run a higher risk of short term, equally bad consequences? I keep thinking of people that have aspirated, and end up with fatal pnuemonia, or lung infections, and that type of thing…something that buries you sooner than later.
So, how safe are the flavors, etc. that are used when vaping? How safe is inhaling liquid as opposed to smoke?
Please don’t think I’m stupid…it’s just that these are two different substances, and I wonder if there is a chance the liquid and flavorings could be equally as bad and possibly cause problems earlier than regular smoking tends to.
I don’t know if I’d bother for 3-4 cigarettes a day, miccisue.
There’s quite a bit of start up costs.
I signed up for a panic drug study once and about 2 hours later I had to call them back and unsign for it. The thought of taking untested drugs was too much.
I should’ve known these untested e-cigs would’ve been easier said that done.
That’s just it, we don’t know how safe vaping is. We assume it’s safer but there’s no real proof. We have no idea how much vaping nicotine compares to how much smoking.
We’re also putting a lot of faith into Chinese businesses, the country that gave us beads made out of date rape drugs and toys painted with lead.
Beads made out of Date Rape Drugs?? What the --ll is that? Hopefully I am not “teaching” the art/craft of “beading” to my 6 year old using…DATE RAPE DRUGS
Just one of the many recalls from Chinese made toys for American kids.
Hey what happened to our e-cigarette forums :??:shrug:Says it’s a suspended page:tap::hair:
A problem with the host that can’t be resolved, even temporarily (which I’m under the impression they were already under a temporary resolution). It will be a few days for the servers to be up. And the way that generally goes means a few days turns into a week.
The host may not have liked the content or maybe it got too much traffic and they wanted more money.
It’s my understanding that it has something to do with excess CPU usage which of course means they want more money.
Hopefully it’ll be resolved, or moved to a different server, before too long.
As for the safety of vaping, as Mike said no-one can provide a definitive answer to that. Just based on what we know about the known ingredients, it has to be better than smoke, but to what extent can’t be said without actual studies being published.
I’ve read that a couple of universities may be prepared to conduct studies but have seen nothing definitive on that as of yet.
We got a memo today reminding us that there is NO SMOKING anywhere on the grounds, even the parts that are not officially ‘school grounds.’ Anyone caught smoking will have to answer to the Superintendent. Apparently he’s been driving by and has seen people outside.
Thanks to the information here,[B] I[/B] haven’t had a cig at work in over a week.:cheering: Two fellow smokers have since ordered their own.
So thank you!
That’s awesome, Ingrid!
That’s great. I think these things are really going to be popular in short order.
OK, it’s been eons since this was talked about.
How’s everyone doing? Are you all liking it? Any problems with it?
Can someone fill me in so I know whether to give this a shot or not?
Thanks!!!
I, for one, have not bought myself a pack of cigarettes since January.:cheering::cheering: I have one once in a while, but the ecig is my main source of nicotine. I have a doctor’s appointment on Monday. I’ll be interested in what she says about it.
My plan is to work the nicotine level down slowly until I’m off it entirely.
The only thing I’d recommend is to have extra batteries and atomizers on hand since they don’t last forever. I also like the battery that comes with the cord on it. Also, buying the liquid and empty cartridges is less expensive.
I’ve gotten two die-hard smokers to try it so far, and they like it, too.
Now that cigarettes are over $8.00 a pack, I’m very happy!
$8.00 a pack:passedout: I was complaining about $5 and something…OMG where do you live?
I live in good old tax-them-til-they-drop New York. The taxes just went up on April 1st, which coincides with the basic rise in price.
I couldn’t get over panic attacks about ingesting something from China.
I save mine for times when I can’t smoke, which also are times when I’m most likely to be on Xanax so the panic is not as much of an issue.
I have cut my cigarette smoking down to about a half a pack a day with pipe smoking.