The author of Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood gives the reader a firsthand experience into the world of binge drinking. It really is amazing that Koren Zailckas didn’t die during the years that she drank heavily, often forgetting what she did or what was done to her.
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Zailckas has her first drink at 14 when she is spending the night at her friend Natalie’s house and going to a birthday party. The girls take with them glass bottles of Southern Comfort that look like they are filled with apple juice. Koren shares her bottle with the other girls and immediately feels like she is accepted as a “cool,” uninhibited girl. This new personality allows her to get to know more people, but it inhibits Koren from being true to herself and figuring out who she actually is. Another incident involving Natalie is when Koren gets separated from her friend who had…show more content… On Halloween, Billie and Koren get drunk with Billie’s stepbrother and his friend and end up passing out in a cemetery. At 16, Koren drinks to the point of getting alcohol poisoning and needing her stomach pumped. Her friend calls Koren’s father who knew in his gut that he needed to go pick her up. Koren is grounded at home for a month and is afraid she will be ostracized at school and parties. As luck would have it, she “rejoin(s) the pack when an eleventh-grade girl, drunk on whiskey, puts a cigarette out on her ex-dodgeball” (Zailckas, 2005). How sad!
Koren attended Syracuse University, where (at the time) there were 32 bars, six liquor stores, and 12 mini-marts that sold beer. Koren asserts that “in college, we can wear our alcohol abuse as proudly as our university sweatshirts; the two concepts are virtually synonymous” (Zailckas, 2005). Unfortunately, from what I’ve heard from my college friends who live on-campus, this assertion appears to be true. “Everybody” drinks and it’s “OK” and almost expected to
