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Lighting Up: How I Stopped Smoking, Drinking, and Everything Else I Loved in Life Except Sex

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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. Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Publishing Group


Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 27, 2005


Edition ‏ : ‎ Reprint


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Print length ‏ : ‎ 322 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0385338341


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 49


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.81 x 8.5 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #2,376,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #2,340 in Substance Abuse Recovery #7,982 in Author Biographies #50,957 in Memoirs (Books)


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • Susan Shapiro is funny. Some of that humor is derived from a ...
Format: Paperback
Susan Shapiro is funny. Some of that humor is derived from a keen perception, and some of it from a prickly honesty that doesn't flinch from showing her darker side. But it's the relationships in this book that make it great, Shapiro and her friends, her husband, and foremost her psychologist, "the James Bond" of addiction specialists. At one point in the book, he calls her "a woman of substance" and tells her future husband that he'd "never do better." At another point Shapiro's therapist accuses her of having "a chronic anxiety level connected to a hyperactive mind that's plugged into a very analytic level of consciousness." In fact, that's the engine that fires her quest to rid herself of smoking, toking, drinking, overeating. But counterpoint to her staccato mind, Shapiro also demonstrates an innocence. She's curious about everyone, including her shrink, spending half the sessions plumbing his mysteries. There's a childlike wonder in her outlook, reminiscent of Lucinda Williams when she asks: Is it much to demand / I want a full house and a rock and roll band? Like Williams, all Shapiro wants is passionate kisses from her hubby, and to make it as an artist -- both of which she obtains by the end of the book. In Shapiro's case, the art is memoir. She is unabashed about everything she is: ambitious, obsessive, generous, celebratory. And like Shapiro, you'll come away from this book embracing your own strengths and flaws, maybe even healing your own addictions. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2017 by Robert Markowitz
    • Susan Shapiro is absolutely one of the top influential writers of the millennium!
Format: Paperback
Review Image by Gigi Blanchard Gigi Blanchard
"Lead the least secretive life you can," the author's addiction therapist writes. Personally, I'm someone who avoids therapy so this book was especially helpful for me to realize patterns in my own addictive behaviors. Susan is a journalist and writes her memoirs with a reporter's stealth, examining everything from feelings, outside influences to dreams. Her naked honesty makes this a page turner and I found myself wanting more. (So of course, I ordered more of her work). It's truly admirable how bravely she reveals her vulnerability. In real life, the author is somewhat of a mythical character for aspiring writers who swarm her classes and workshops in hopes that through osmosis they can get published. The truth is, most people who study under her and take what she says seriously actually DO get published. Susan Shapiro is absolutely one of the top influential writers in New York City! ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2015 by Gigi Blanchard Gigi Blanchard
    • Four Stars
Format: Hardcover
I really liked this book. It was funny, insightful and real, and I couldn't put it down.
Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2015 by jernessa
    • Get it. Read it. Pass it on.
Format: Paperback
First things first: This book has the most perfect description of what quitting cigarettes ACTUALLY looks and feels like. If only I'd read it three years ago when I quit- I'd have felt a whole lot less crazy. I cried and got goosebumps twice in the first two chapters. It really was like the author had crawled inside my head and given a voice to the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors that I couldn't. If you are an addict, love an addict, etc. get it. Read it. Pass it on It also happens to be a great, honest, raw story. There is no one I wouldn't gift this book to. It's that good. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2013 by clementine ford
    • a real addictive read
Format: Kindle
Lighting Up is a great, can't put it down read. I devoured the story of writer and teacher Susan Shapiro, who found a shrink that served up a recipe for success. There was just one caveat: in order to find professional success (the shrink had already fixed her love life and got her husband to propose), she had to give up almost everything that made her feel good but was so bad for her. Shapiro takes you with her every painful (and funny) step of the way as she fights her addiction to pot, cigarettes, drinking, sugar and finds herself again when all else has been stripped bare. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2014 by Estelle Erasmus
    • Not an aid in stop smoking.
Format: Paperback
I guess if your well off, spoiled, live in a big city, partier, and only have yourself to think about then you might like this book. This book was so far away from most peoples reality that there's no way to relate. I had to make myself finish the book after I spent hard earned money on it. It actually made me feel aggitated thus I wanted to smoke more. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2018 by C. Black
    • Not much of a novel but probably a reasonable memoire
Format: Hardcover
There's a group out there consisting mainly of men who like to watch women smoke, like to hear them talk about smoking, and like to read about their experiences, trials, pleasures, and problems with cigarettes. These people want to know all the details about what brand, the inhales, exhales, dangles, type of light up, etc. Multiple websites, videos, telephone chats, and even a newspaper are available (for a price, for a price). This book's first 100 pages holds that kind of interest for those kind of people. Along the way we learn all about how she smoked in high school and how she sparked up her Capri Menthols, Virginia Slims, and More lights. Alas, after Shapiro quit and becomes a Nicotine Nazi, she becomes far less interesting and toward the end of the journey a real shrew complaining about all the little pleasures that her friends and relatives are having drinking, eatting candy, cookies, fatty foods, coffee. Good grief! Do people like her really exist? If so, I would avoid them like the plague. The midplot squeeze is weak and boring and this character Winters (the therapist) makes little sense. He seems perfect in getting the patients to drop their dependencies on everything by transferring the dependency to him (for a price, for a price). Do New York therapists get $175 an hour for handing out this kind of hokum? Yes, they probably do and therefore this book succeeds as a sort of social document of the kind of life some desperately unhappy people do lead. The ennui of the book reflects the ennui of their lives and therefore the book is about the real New York scene. By the by, I don't think Shapiro was truly addicted to anything. She's obscessed with things, but addiction is a whole different kettle of fish according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Because you like to smoke, or drink, or eat certain foods does not mean you are addicted. The overwhelming situation is use of things (including alcohol, tobacco, and even drugs) and not abuse of things. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2005 by Bernard M. Patten

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