Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction

5 Star Review

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Editorial Book Review:

By JP Klingsmann

Some stories about addiction feel like they’re told from a safe distance, like you’re meant to understand them without really feeling them. Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction doesn’t give you that space. It pulls you into a childhood where things don’t separate the way they should. Care and chaos exist in the same room, and no one fully shields you from it. That’s what makes it stick.

Reading it feels uneasy in a way that builds slowly. It’s not trying to shock you, but it keeps putting you in moments that don’t sit right, especially seeing everything through a kid’s perspective. There were points where I had to stop, not because it was confusing, but because it felt too close to something real. It doesn’t guide your reaction, which makes it harder to look away.

The book keeps circling around love, but not the kind that fixes anything. It’s the kind that stays even when it probably shouldn’t, even when it drains you. Addiction, faith, loss, all of it runs through the story, but what stayed with me was how people still try to show up for each other in the middle of all that. That idea goes beyond this setting. It connects to anyone who’s cared about someone they couldn’t save.

Jonathan Tepper’s writing feels controlled, almost restrained, which makes the heavier moments land harder. He doesn’t over explain or push emotion. The structure moves like memory, not a straight path, which adds to the sense that you’re piecing things together as he is. Some images stick without trying, especially the way normal childhood moments sit next to things that shouldn’t be normal at all.

By the end, it doesn’t feel wrapped up, and that feels right. It stays with you because it refuses to clean anything up. It’s worth reading if you want something that doesn’t soften reality, even when it would be easier to.

About the Author

Jonathan Tepper

Jonathan Tepper is the author of several acclaimed financial books, including The Myth of Capitalism. A Rhodes Scholar, he earned degrees in History and Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MLitt from the University of Oxford. Born in the U.S. and raised in Mexico as a very young child, Jonathan came of age in Madrid’s San Blas neighborhood, where his parents ran one of the country’s first drug rehabilitation centers. Shooting Up is his first memoir, offering a deeply personal view of life at the intersection of faith, addiction, and resilience. He and his wife Stacey have a two-year-old who is a human hurricane of curiosity and keeps them busy. Jonathan returns to Madrid as often as he can.