Smashed: story of a drunken girlhood

Zailckas, Koren. Smashed: story a drunken girlhood. The Penguin Group: USA
2006
Heart
Aurora Public Library
Teen Angst
343 Pages


Every teenager has problems. They can have family issues, boyfriend or girlfriend problems, and of course peer pressure. This book is about a girl named Koren Zailckas and her cathartic problem with alcoholism. She has her first drink at a party when she was only 14 years old. It only grows from there. She has a friend that isn’t a very good influence on her. When she gets to college things only get worse. The only problem is, she doesn’t realize that she has a problem. She faces of the issues of girl from friends, to college, to boys, to drugs, and especially alcohol. This is an amazing story of a girl growing up as one of the thousands of girls who routinely use alcohol as a shortcut.
The story is told from Koren’s point of view. She grows up in a small town in the northeast where everybody knows everybody. She has friends but is a shy girl. She uses alcohol to loosen up. When a good party goes terribly wrong for her, she finds herself waking up from a small coma with many bumps and bruises, This is only the beginning though, Zailckas is telling her life story and she is very good a painting the picture. She can describe everything that was in her sight the first time she drank. Throughout the story, there are some facts that are footnoted and you can see where theses studies come from. Some of them are how many girls have sex before college and how many high school students abuse alcohol. For Koren, her drinking became ambiguous.
This is a story that would be geared towards any person who has or is struggling with binge drinking, or drinking in general. College kids would especially like this story, It takes place while Koren is mostly in college and describes lots of problems college students deal with, Koren goes to Syracuse University, She thinks about having a disease in the story, but repeatedly gives reasons why she cannot have one.
I really liked this story. It was very interesting because almost everyone in high school has had an experience with alcohol. She has many stories in the interim of a teenager to graduating college that can make someone not want to experience being drunk. She has written about almost dying, maybe being raped, loosing valuables, getting lost, and many nights hugging the toilet bowl. She describes herself as an alcohol abuser rather than an alcoholic. She might be just that, just an alcohol abuser. I guess it’s your opinion. Does she drink so much that she needs alcohol, or is she just another alcohol abuser?