Courtesy

Ryann Rathbone with Carter Albrecht

NEWS 8 EXCLUSIVE

DALLAS — He was known for his singular voice, quick fingers, and kind character.

Carter Albrecht was a favorite in the Dallas music scene. He played for the local rock band Sorta was also a member of Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians.

On the cusp of a solo career, a doctor warned Albrecht he might lose his soulful sound if he didn't ditch cigarettes. He asked girlfriend Ryann Rathbone about taking Chantix, a stop-smoking drug made by Pfizer and approved by the FDA just last year.

"And then we decided that we would do it together, because we decided that we wanted to quit," Rathbone said.

Almost immediately, she said they started having vivid, often frightening dreams. "Changes in dreaming" is a known side effect of the medication.

This was much worse, says Rathbone. "Nightmare, kind of... hallucination kind of dreams where you don't know if it's real or not."

About a week into taking Chantix, after an evening of cocktails, Rathbone said Albrecht started hallucinating for real—lashing out at her physically and verbally. She remembers being hurt and confused by this uncharacteristic behavior.

"It wasn't him. And I'd look at him and be like, 'Do you know who I am? Do, do you know it's me?'" she recalled. "And the things that he was saying did not make any sense. It was like he was in a nightmare."

The nightmare ended on a peaceful Dallas street early on Labor Day morning with a terrified 911 call from a neighbor.

"He was yelling. I didn't know what he was yelling, but I told him to get out of my yard," said the voice of a terrified female neighbor on the police recording. Seconds later, her husband is heard saying he shot someone at the front door.

It turned out to be Carter Albrecht.

"I was thinking, 'There's no way—there's no way. There's no way,'" Rathbone said. "It doesn't make any sense. None of it does."

Months before Carter Albrecht's bizarre death, bloggers had started posting concerns about Chantix.

There were reports of suicide. "I thought I was losing my mind," one person wrote.

Another told of a "super-depressed meltdown" associated with the prescription drug.

"I remember saying that nothing is worth doing, nothing matters, and I wish I was dead," said one North Texas resident who wished to remain anonymous. He said those dark feelings came out of the blue for him, too, after having a few drinks one night with his wife.

Large-print, pharmacy handouts warn of nausea, changes in dreaming, constipation, gas, and vomiting with the use of Chantix.

Only in the extreme fine print of the original box insert is there mention of rare psychotic and suicidal behavior.

Even though a huge number of smokers are also drinkers, researchers say ethically, doctors can't study why Chantix and alcohol could cause the brain to go haywire.

But the combination makes sense to addiction expert Bryon Adinoff of the Dallas VA. "So you mix a drug that affects the central nervous system, like Chantix, and you mix a drug like alcohol that affects the central nervous system," he said. "It's possible to have some unusual kind of responses."

"There's a lot of problems that can occur once it's in a mass use," noted Carrollton family practice physician Dr. Richard Honaker. Vioxx, for example, was taken off the market after it caused heart attacks in patients.

Dr. Honaker says he is now urging patients use Chantix with caution, but he believes its risk may still be worth the benefit. "More patients by far are able to quit smoking with this drug than anything else we have," he said.

The 28-year-old North Texan who reported suicidal thoughts decided to keep using Chantix—but he quit drinking.

"Nothing since that night. I've actually been much better," he said.

Ryann Rathbone said she remains completely in shock about the events of Sept. 3. "I'm devastated and sad. I lost my soulmate," she said. "Where do you go from there?"

Despite her grief, Rathbone has decided to speak out about what happened to the love of her life—perhaps as a warning about mixing Chantix with alcohol.

"If that means saving other peoples' lives by getting the word out about Chantix and the complications or the side-effects, then that's what I want," she said.

Her great sadness now is that this message—and not his music—may be Carter Albrecht's lasting legacy.

E-mail jstjames@wfaa.com

Pfizer is committed to ensuring patient safety and regularly monitors and evaluates any adverse events reported to Pfizer either directly or indirectly through secondary sources. We routinely conduct reviews of post-marketing safety surveillance data, and that data to date do not suggest a causal relationship between the use of Chantix™ (varenicline) and violent behavior. Pfizer's prescribing information for Chantix notes that in clinical trials, the following adverse events were among those reported in Chantix patients on an "infrequent" basis (which is defined as occurring in between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1,000 patients): aggression, agitation, mood swings and abnormal thinking. The rate of occurrence of these adverse events in the clinical trials among patients treated with Chantix was comparable to those taking placebo. It is important to note that a vast body of medical literature has shown that smoking cessation, with or without treatment, is associated with nicotine withdrawal symptoms and has also been associated with the exacerbation of underlying psychiatric illnesses. In May 2007, Pfizer updated the Chantix U.S. prescribing information to reflect this information.