March 12 is a day Shannon Stewart won’t forget, and not just because it’s her mother’s birthday. This year, it was the day she used her lighter for her mom’s birthday candles instead of cigarettes.

“I didn’t plan it that way,” Stewart said. “It just worked out. She was thrilled for me.”

Stewart, a 23-year-old mother of two, participated in the ongoing Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line study for youth age 13 to 24. The study, led by UW-CTRI Researcher Tammy Sims, seeks to determine the effectiveness of the Quit Line for young callers. Stewart said the Quit Line works, and credits the advice from her quit coaches to try varenicline (Chantix) as invaluable. “I tell everyone I know that Chantix is the wonder drug. I tried to quit several years ago, back in high school, tried several times. I never made it past the first 24 hours.” Armed with the advice on varenicline, Stewart had to nudge her doctor into prescribing it.

Shannon Stewart quit smoking while participating in the Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line’s youth study.

“He said, ‘It’s really new. I’m just starting to hear about it.’ I was the first patient my doctor gave Chantix to.” Perhaps Stewart’s success will encourage physicians at the clinic to consider prescribing the combination of Quit Line coaching and medication recommended in the Clinical Practice Guideline: Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence. For Stewart, counseling and Chantix marked the end of a negative health trend that began at age “11 or 12” when she started smoking. Now she has renewed energy. “I never noticed how much I coughed until I wasn’t coughing anymore. I can push the stroller so much more easily.”

She totes up another benefit of being tobacco free—healthier skin. “I got a little wrinkle, like a laugh line. I said, ‘A wrinkle! At age 23? No!’ It just tipped me right over the edge. The threat of imminent death didn’t bother me, but I was not going to be a wrinkled corpse.”