Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

An investigative report aired by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) tells the stories of two people who became suicidal after taking Chantix (marketed by Pfizer as Champix in Europe and the UK).

Chantix became available in the UK in December of 2006. Since then, nearly 400,000 prescriptions for the drug have been written.

Karen McGhee, a resident of Greenock on Scotland’s western shore, was one of those Chantix users. McGhee had been taking Chantix only a few days when she attempted to kill herself.

The McGhee’s daughter found Karen and ran to get her father’s help, shouting that her mother had hung herself.

“I just got woken up with my daughter dragging me out of my bed to come downstairs,” Karen McGhee’s husband, Robert, said.

He found his wife hanging from the stairs in the hall of their home.

“I ran downstairs and Karen was on the floor on her knees with a pelmet round her neck. I tried to lift her up to free the knot, but I couldn’t get it loosened. I managed to cut her free and take the noose off her neck,” he told the BBC.

“I just couldn’t comprehend it. I thought I was dreaming.”

Karen McGhee spent several days in the hospital hooked up to a ventilator before finally recovering from the incident.

She vowed to avoid Chantix in the future. “I’ll never put myself through that again and never put my family through it again. I’ll always be a smoker, or, if I quit, then I’ll quit naturally,” she told the BBC.

Another Chantix-related incident occurred in the city of Manchester in northern England. Omer Jama, who the BBC describes as a “young Manchester man,” slashed his wrists. His brother Ali called the incident “a random act, completely out of character, that took an instant.”

Omer Jama did not survive the incident. He did not leave a suicide note and his death was not recorded by the coroner as a suicide.

According to Ali Jama, the coroner recorded Omer’s death with an open verdict rather than issuing the verdict of suicide because forensics revealed Omer had Chantix in his blood at the time of his suicide.

The coroner researched the toxicology results and learned of the possible links between Chantix and suicidal behavior.

More than 3,000 people have reported adverse reactions to Chantix across Britain. 260 of those reactions have been classified as suicidal in nature. 16 Chantix users attempted suicide and 10 killed themselves, the BBC reports.

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