Q: Can I combine Zyban and a nicotine patch to quit smoking?
A: Absolutely, says C. Anderson Johnson, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. "The antidepressant bupropion (Zyban) and the nicotine patch can be used together and have been found in one study to be nearly twice as effective in bringing about and sustaining smoking cessation as the nicotine patch alone." Although the combination did not provide a similar advantage over taking bupropion alone, people on the combination therapy did gain significantly less weight than did those taking only bupropion, Johnson adds. To give yourself the best chance of getting cigarettes out of your life forever, Johnson says, you should also include counseling in your stop-smoking regimen. "People generally do considerably better with pharmacological interventions in combination with counseling than with drug therapy alone, regardless of the drug."
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