I Quit Everything
How One Woman's Addiction to Quitting Helped Her Confront Unhealthy Habits and Embrace Midlife
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
An experimental account of one woman’s quest to shed addictive substances and behaviors from her life—which dares to ask if we’re really better off without them.
In January 2021, Freda Love Smith, acclaimed rock musician and author of Red Velvet Underground, watched as insurgents stormed the U.S. Capitol. It felt like the culmination of eight months of pandemic anxiety. She needed a drink, badly. But she suspected a midday whiskey wouldn’t cure what was really ailing her—nor would her nightly cannabis gummy, or her four daily cups of tea, or any of the other substances she relied on to get through each day. Thus began her experiment to remove one addictive behavior from her life each month to see if sobriety was really all it was cracked up to be.
With honesty and humor, Smith describes the effects of withdrawal from alcohol, sugar, caffeine, cannabis, and social media, weaving in her reflections on the childhood experiences and cultural norms that fed her addictions to these behaviors. Part personal history, part sociological research, and part wry observation on addiction, intoxication, media, and pandemic behavior, I Quit Everything will resonate with anyone who has danced with destructive habits—that is, those who are “sober curious” but not necessarily sober. Smith’s experiment goes beyond simply quitting these five addictive behaviors. Moved by the circumstances of the pandemic and the general state of the world, she ends up leaving an unsatisfying job for more meaningful work and reevaluating other significant details of her life, such as motherhood and the music that defined her career.
More than a simple sobriety story, Smith’s book is an exploration of passion, legacy, and what becomes of our identities once we’ve quit everything.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this fun yet flimsy memoir, former Blake Babies drummer Smith (Red Velvet Underground) describes how, in the face of several long-simmering addictions, she took control of her life during a six-month experiment with abstinence. During the pandemic, when Smith's addictive behavior reached its peak, she withdrew from her five deadly sins—alcohol, sugar, cannabis, caffeine, and social media—one by one. Drawing on sources as diverse as anthropologist Gregory Bateson, macrobiotic guru Michio Kushi, and writers Charles Bukowski and Michael Pollan, Smith investigates the cultural influences of addiction, weaving in her own history with quitting and poking fun at her "self-righteous and preachy" attitude: "There's something powerful, dignified, and pure about the austerity of a bowl of well-cooked brown rice next to a glowing orange bowl of Kraft macaroni and cheese," she quips. After months of self-denial, Smith went back to indulging in her verboten substances, albeit in smaller quantities. Regrettably, her critique of her own drumming—"I blow endings all the time"—also applies to this memoir, which starts strong but loses rhythm and purpose as it progresses. Even at a brief 200 pages, the chapters begin to feel thin and repetitive, and the concluding section about Smith's music career fails to satisfyingly wrap things up. This comes up short.
