Overview

"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."

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9781501241765

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Reviews

"""Reading I Quit Everything is like having a heart-to-heart with your smartest friend--cups of spearmint tea steaming as the conversation goes from personal disclosure to pop-culture analysis to philosophical inquiry and back. Freda Love Smith writes at one point that this is an ""anti-self-help"" book, and it does offer much more than your average bullet-pointed guide past a midlife crisis. But it helped me, because as a sometimes impulsive, often self-critical, always curious woman at midlife, I related so much to Smith's desire to both reset her life and celebrate all she's lived through. Heartening and challenging."" --Ann Powers, author of Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music ""To what extent are our habits addictions? What would it take for us to give them up? What would be left of us without them? Freda Love Smith asks these questions and many more and takes action to answer them. She quits alcohol. She quits sugar. She quits weed. She quits caffeine. She quits social media. What does the withdrawal feel like? Does their absence amount to addition or subtraction? Is this a temporary experiment or new life direction? Smith is such an engaging, probing writer that you're hanging on tight for this brisk ride, as each question begets a bigger question that she investigates as well as lives. Should she quit drumming too? What about her academic job? Where's the healthy balance among quitting, moderating, and starting over? The one thing you can't quit is reading I Quit Everything."" --Mark Caro, author of The Foie Gras Wars and host of the Caropop podcast ""Searching for the sweet spot between excess and deprivation, I Quit Everything explores the challenges of our immoderate times. Quitting can be revelatory, Smith concludes, even when it's temporary."" --Eula Biss, author of Having and Being Had ""In general, quitting things has a negative connotation. But for Freda Love Smith, the decision to cut out alcohol, sugar, caffeine, cannabis, and social media ended up being a positive. Full of illuminating insights and unsparing self-reflection, I Quit Everything celebrates the personal liberation that comes after shedding detrimental habits. Smith examines the roots of her reliance on unhealthy substances, and then uses disparate secondary sources (scientific studies, Greek mythology, the sociology book Getting Loose: Lifestyle Consumption in the 1970s, Gregory Bateson's influential article about Alcoholics Anonymous) to draw conclusions about her behavior. By the end of the book, quitting has emboldened Smith to carve out new life paths and embrace different dreams. A classic example of addition by subtraction, I Quit Everything provides an abundance of helpful advice--and hope--to anyone feeling stuck in their ways and looking for a change."" --Annie Zaleski, author of a 33 1/3 book on Duran Duran's Rio, and illustrated biographies of Lady Gaga and Pink ""I've said it a thousand times. So have you: I'm going to take care of myself. Smith actually does it, with clarity, humor, and deep interrogation into the societal complexities and personal histories of alcohol, weed, caffeine, food, and social media--the things that save us and, at the same time, drain us dry. I Quit Everything doesn't ask us to quit; it asks us to pay attention, to listen to our bodies, to find what serves us and hold on like the holy goddamn grail. I loved it."" --Megan Stielstra, author of The Wrong Way to Save Your Life ""A humorous, insightful memoir of self-improvement."" --Kirkus Reviews"

Author Information

Freda Love Smith is a writer, teacher, and retired indie rock drummer. Her first book, Red Velvet Underground, was published in 2015. She teaches at Northwestern University and Lesley University, and she played drums with Blake Babies, Antenna, Mysteries of Life, Gentleman Caller, Some Girls, and Sunshine Boys. Freda reviews nonfiction for Booklist, writes for the Sound of our Town podcast, and is the programming director of Bookends University, the curricular arm of Bookends & Beginnings bookstore in Evanston, IL. Freda Love Smith is a writer, teacher, and retired indie rock drummer. Her first book, Red Velvet Underground, was published in 2015. She teaches at Northwestern University and Lesley University, and she played drums with Blake Babies, Antenna, Mysteries of Life, Gentleman Caller, Some Girls, and Sunshine Boys. Freda reviews nonfiction for Booklist, writes for the Sound of our Town podcast, and is the programming director of Bookends University, the curricular arm of Bookends & Beginnings bookstore in Evanston, IL.

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