Lighting Up
How I Stopped Smoking, Drinking, and Everything Else I Loved in Life Except Sex
Published on 27. December 2005
Book
Paperback/Softback
322 pages
978-0-385-33834-9 (ISBN)
Description
In the critically acclaimed Five Men Who Broke My Heart, Manhattan journalist Susan Shapiro revisited five self-destructive romances. In her hilarious, illuminating new memoir, Lighting Up, she rejects five self-destructive substances. This difficult quest for clean living starts with Shapiro's shocking revelation that, at forty, her lengthiest, most emotionally satisfying relationship has been with cigarettes.
A two-pack-a-day smoker since the age of thirteen, Susan Shapiro quickly discovers that it's impossible to be a writer, a nonsmoker, sane, and slender in the same year. The last time she tried to quit, she gained twenty-three pounds, couldn't concentrate on work, and wanted to kill herself and her husband, Aaron, a TV comedy writer who hates her penchant for puffing away. Yet just as she's about to choose her vice over her marriage vows, she stumbles upon a secret weapon.
Dr. Winters, "the James Bond of psychotherapy,” is a brilliant but unorthodox addiction specialist, a
former chain-smoker himself. Working his weird magic on her psyche, he unravels the roots of her twenty-seven-year compulsion, the same dangerous dependency that has haunted her doctor father, her grandfather, and a pair of eccentric aunts from opposite sides of the family, along with Freud and nearly one in four Americans. Dr. Winters teaches her how to embrace suffering, then proclaims that her months of panic, depression, insecurity, vulnerability, and wild mood swings win her the award for "the worst nicotine withdrawal in the history of the world.”
Shapiro finally does kick the habit-while losing weight and finding career and connubial bliss-only to discover that the second she's let go of her long-term crutch, she's already replaced it with another fixation. After banishing cigarettes, alcohol, dope, gum, and bread from her day-to-day existence, she conquers all her demons and survives deprivation overload. But relying religiously on Dr. Winters, she soon realizes that the only obsession she has left
to quit is him. . . .
Never has the battle to stem substance abuse been captured with such wit, sophisticated insight, and candor. Lighting Up is so compulsively readable, it's addictive.
A two-pack-a-day smoker since the age of thirteen, Susan Shapiro quickly discovers that it's impossible to be a writer, a nonsmoker, sane, and slender in the same year. The last time she tried to quit, she gained twenty-three pounds, couldn't concentrate on work, and wanted to kill herself and her husband, Aaron, a TV comedy writer who hates her penchant for puffing away. Yet just as she's about to choose her vice over her marriage vows, she stumbles upon a secret weapon.
Dr. Winters, "the James Bond of psychotherapy,” is a brilliant but unorthodox addiction specialist, a
former chain-smoker himself. Working his weird magic on her psyche, he unravels the roots of her twenty-seven-year compulsion, the same dangerous dependency that has haunted her doctor father, her grandfather, and a pair of eccentric aunts from opposite sides of the family, along with Freud and nearly one in four Americans. Dr. Winters teaches her how to embrace suffering, then proclaims that her months of panic, depression, insecurity, vulnerability, and wild mood swings win her the award for "the worst nicotine withdrawal in the history of the world.”
Shapiro finally does kick the habit-while losing weight and finding career and connubial bliss-only to discover that the second she's let go of her long-term crutch, she's already replaced it with another fixation. After banishing cigarettes, alcohol, dope, gum, and bread from her day-to-day existence, she conquers all her demons and survives deprivation overload. But relying religiously on Dr. Winters, she soon realizes that the only obsession she has left
to quit is him. . . .
Never has the battle to stem substance abuse been captured with such wit, sophisticated insight, and candor. Lighting Up is so compulsively readable, it's addictive.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Random House USA Inc
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
459 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-385-33834-9 (9780385338349)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
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Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Susan Shapiro, an award-winning writing professor, freelances for The New York Times, New York magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Elle, and O: The Oprah Magazine online. She’s the bestselling author or co-author of twelve books her family hates, including Five Men Who Broke My Heart, Lighting Up, Unhooked, The Bosnia List, and the inspiring writing guide The Byline Bible. She and her husband, a scriptwriter, live in Greenwich Village, where she teaches her popular “instant gratification takes too long” classes at The New School and NYU and in private workshops and seminars.