In the critically acclaimed "Five Men Who Broke My Hear"t,
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 ofher 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.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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