When chain-smoking Manhattanite Susan Shapiro went to Dr. Frederick Woolverton, a Greenwich Village addiction specialist in 2001, she had little hope she’d be able to quit her 27-year two-pack-a-day smoking habit. But Woolverton, a psychologist and founder of the Village Institute in New York and Arkansas, and a former smoker himself, immediately helped her nix her nicotine addiction. Within nine months, he helped her quit alcohol, pot, gum and bread.
Awed by his behavioral techniques and strategies to stem substance abuse, Shapiro, a freelance journalist and New School writing teacher, told him he should write a book. Now, with help from his former patient Shapiro, he has.
Unhooked: How to Quit Anything (Skyhorse Press) arrives just in time for the stressful food-and-booze filled holiday season.
New York Resident: Did either of you ever struggle with addictions?
Fred Woolverton: Yes, the book details my 20-year addiction to cigarettes and ice cream.
Susan Shapiro: In my 2004 memoir Lighting Up: How I Stopped Smoking, Drinking and Everything Else I Loved In Life Except Sex, I chronicled my intense addiction therapy with Dr. Woolverton.
NYR: What advice do you have for people who tend toward addictive bad habits?
FW: Whether you have a weakness for food, alcohol, cigarettes or anything else, write a holiday plan. Ask friends and family for support. If you’ve spent years guzzling beer, watching football or gorging on nachos and margaritas, change it up this year. Create new rituals. Get away from food and alcohol. Play football on the lawn, ride bikes together, or turn to karaoke, bowling, sledding or board games.
SS: I avoid big events with family and friends where people are drinking, smoking and overeating. Or I limit the time, staying an hour, instead of the whole day. I make time to journal, exercise or get a massage.
NYR: How do you respond to people who may say your therapist crossed ethical lines by working with you on a book?
SS: Dr. Woolverton is my FORMER therapist. I hadn’t seen him for six months when we started the book. Unhooked was completely my idea. He’s taking no money for it. My favorite psychiatrist author Dr. Irvin Yalom wrote a great book with his patient, Every Day Gets A Little Closer: A Twice Told Therapy, so there is a precedent.
As with most brilliant, innovative people, Dr. W is unorthodox. We have a 15-year history. His idiosyncratic and unusual advice has fixed everything wrong with my life. When he treated my husband and me both separately, everyone said that’s unethical. Meanwhile after six years of conflict during our on and off courtship, my love proposed and we’re still madly in love and just celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary.
When colleagues heard that Dr. W critiqued rough drafts of my books they found that bizarre. Meanwhile I’ve now sold 8 books in 8 years and every project he loved found an editor with a great publishing house. Every book he didn’t like, didn’t sell.
When Dr. W gave me real estate advice, everyone said “That’s insane.” I took his advice, bought the apartment next door and it went up in value 7 figures. There’s an expression I use in life and writing: You can do anything as long as it works.
NYR: For anyone wondering whether they have an addiction, what should they ask themselves?
FW: Does the thought of doing without the substance fill you with anxiety or fear? Whatever the terrible consequences, an addict is compelled to use the substance to evade emotional torture they believe would result from NOT using.
NYR: What did writing this book teach you?
SS: I learned that I needed a new shrink to deal with writing a book with my old shrink. I’m now a shrinkaholic and workaholic addicted to book deals. Dr. W says getting press is my new heroin. Oh, and I answer every single fan letter and question—I’m addicted to email.
Upcoming Events:
Jan. 10 UNHOOKED Changed Your Life panel at the Strand Bookstore, 828 Broadway near West 12th Street, NYC
Jan. 11 Speed Shrinking party for AIDS charity at Housing Works Bookstore in Soho, 126 Crosby Street, NYC
Jan. 13 Greenwich Village Barnes & Noble UNHOOKED reading at 6th Avenue and West 8th Street
Dr. Woolverton: VillageInstitute.com
Susan Shapiro: SusanShapiro.net