Suicide Linked to Chantix and Alcohol Use

An autopsy report has linked the use of alcohol and Chantix to the suicide death of Donald Walker, the former mayor of Warner Robins, a small town in Georgia. The popular stop-smoking drug Chantix has been connected to more than 100 other suicides in recent years, and the death of Walker is likely to draw additional attention to the serious psychological side effects of Chantix

Walker served as the mayor of Warner Robins, Georgia for 15 years, and was in the middle of a re-election campaign in September 2009 when he is believed to have shot himself in the head while in bed.

According to a report released last week by Houston County Medical Examiner James Q. Whitaker, Walker suffered severe depression from Chantix, which lead him to drink a large amount of alcohol the night of his death and then kill himself. The alcohol in Walker’s blood exacerbated Walker’s Chantix depression and he was found to have a blood alcohol level of .4 at the time of death.

Chantix (varenicline) was approved by the FDA in 2006 as a prescription treatment to help people quit smoking. The drug works by blocking receptors in the brain that are commonly stimulated by nicotine, reducing the positive feelings that come from cigarettes. However, reports of suicide with Chantix began to surface shortly after it introduced, and the drug has been linked to depression, suicidal thoughts and other abnormal behavior.

Walker is the second high-profile death that has been linked to Chantix. In September 2007, Carter Albrecht, who was a popular musician in the Dallas area and a member of Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians, was shot to death after he began violently banging on a neighbor’s door in the middle of the night as a result of hallucinations, vivid nightmares and a violent shift in behavior that the family attributed to the drug he was taking to help him quit smoking, according to a Chantix wrongful death lawsuit filed last year.

Following Albrecht’s death, media attention and an investigation by the FDA into reports of problems with Chantix led Pfizer to add information to the drug’s warning label about the potential psychiatric side effects.

Last year, the FDA required that a new Chantix black box warning be placed prominently on the label to warn users about the potentially life-threatening side effects, which is the strongest warning that can be placed on a prescription medication. The black box warning came after the FDA received nearly 100 reports of Chantix suicide and 198 reports of attempted suicide.

Dozens of Chantix suicide lawsuits and other injury claims have been filed against Pfizer in various state and federal courts throughout the United States. The complaints allege that Pfizer, who excluded individuals with depression or a history of mental illness from many clinical trials, failed to adequately research the adverse effects of their drug before marketing it heavily as an easy solution to help people stop smoking.

All federal lawsuits over Chantix have been consolidated in an MDL, or multidistrict litigation, which is centralized in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, where the first trials are not expected to begin until at least 2012.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article indicated that Donald Walker was the mayor of Houston, Texas, which is incorrect and we apologize for the error and any confusion it may have caused. Walker was the mayor of Warner Robins, which is located primarily in Houston County, Georgia, with a small portion also extending into Peach County.