Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood

Aside from the fact that Zailckas writes beautiful prose, I enjoyed Smashed because she kicks booze without A.A. The disease model of addiction has people believing drunks have some kind of motor control problem. They just can't put down that bottle, and in fact, they need god to do it for them. I believe this theory is a great disservice to all the problem drinkers out there who use alcohol as a negative coping mechanism and seriously fuck up their lives with booze, because it's possible to do all that without an addiction. Like Zailckas, for a lot of people, alcohol serves a purpose -- usually a negative coping mechanism, but a coping mechanism all the same -- for a time; then the negatives of use begin to outweigh the positives. At show more this point it may be time to stop or cut back. I think it bothers people Zailckas did this without 12 steps, but look up the statistics: A.A. isn't very effective. Unless you're at a frat party, the bottle probably isn't taped to your hand. Put it down. Or not. It actually is a choice. show less

Aside from the fact that Zailckas writes beautiful prose, I enjoyed Smashed because she kicks booze without A.A. The disease model of addiction has people believing drunks have some kind of motor control problem. They just can't put down that bottle, and in fact, they need god to do it for them. I believe this theory is a great disservice to all the problem drinkers out there who use alcohol as a negative coping mechanism and seriously fuck up their lives with booze, because it's possible to do all that without an addiction. Like Zailckas, for a lot of people, alcohol serves a purpose -- usually a negative coping mechanism, but a coping mechanism all the same -- for a time; then the negatives of use begin to outweigh the positives. At show more this point it may be time to stop or cut back. I think it bothers people Zailckas did this without 12 steps, but look up the statistics: A.A. isn't very effective. Unless you're at a frat party, the bottle probably isn't taped to your hand. Put it down. Or not. It actually is a choice. show less

Two white, privileged fourteen year-olds raid a parent’s rum cabinet before a birthday party. Several high-schoolers get wasted one night at a bonfire on hard alcohol provided by an older sibling. A dorm of freshman girls run wild through the halls, nightly, swigging wine and stealing couches from the lounge. A sorority pledge event involves massive alcohol consumption and fraternity heckling with underage students. Manhattan interns are invited to lavish corporate parities where older executives are blasted off of their toes on $39 martinis. Young corporate fledglings begin to follow in the footsteps of older office-mates who come in red-eyed and disheveled after launch parties and “business dinners”.

While all disturbing in their show more own way, these are hardly newsworthy headlines. We, as a drinking, partying culture, observe, dismiss and even celebrate alcoholic excesses as rites of passage, matters of fact and facts of life. This is Koren Zailckas’ thesis in Smashed. From parental negligence, or sometimes even encouragement, to Budweiser ’s sexualization of the drinking girl, to general pressures of society, we, especially as women, notes Zailckas, are born, literally, into a culture doused in ok’d abuses.

Her own drinking life is chronicled from pre-highschool through recent post-grad. It is an interesting take on the way many many people go through their teen years, young adulthood and even sometimes into later adult life. In short, I enjoyed many parts of it.

Now the big however.

I finished this book almost a day ago and still can’t tell you how I feel about it. On some levels, I thought it was fantastic. On some levels I wanted to throw it across the room. Did I want to throw it across the room because some of it, substance related or simply reflections on society, hit a little bit close to home? Maybe. But still, there were some reflections masquerading as truths that I found to be wholly subjective, rather than objective.

I agree, wholeheartedly, that the alcohol industry plays a role in how we view the act of drinking. Just like selling candy and junk food to kids who watch children’s programming may lead to obesity and the constantly shrinking runway model/hotel heiress may lead to disordered eating, the barrage of The Party Girl on MTV, in Vogue, on billboards, are only part of the problem.

Certainly, there are double standards. If a drunk frat boy has relations with a drunk sorority girl, he’ll be labeled a stud and she’ll be labeled easy. It was her fault she got drunk. It wasn’t his fault because he was drunk. She wanted it. Alcohol is marked to men and women differently, playing on feminine “weakness” and male “vitality”. We’re all aware of these cliches.

I don’t, though, think that any of these ideas or truths are legitimate cause or excuse for lack of responsibility. I found that a good deal of the book meandered along, waiting for a “reason to stop”, waiting for friends, sisters, magazine ads and coworkers to stop their silly games so she could stop hers.

I also found it hard to watch Koren go through several near death experiences (some of theme as harsh as stomach pumping and nonconsensual sex, others as “mild” as daily vomiting up blood) and numerous failed attempts to drink moderately, to have her repeatedly cry out that she was not an “alcoholic”; she just abused alcohol, simply because she had no known family history of alcoholism. For me, this seems like a big fat slice of denial as most of her drinking seemed uncontrollable and emotionally fueled, but, that, I suppose, in itself, was not a deal breaker for me. I am not her sponsor. I am not her therapist. I am not her mother and I am not her.

Criticism aside, I enjoyed the book. It did shed light on a large portion of culture that goes uncriticized as it simply allows “girls to be girls” or “boys to be boys”. The writing, itself, was great and I’d like to see Zailckas turn out fiction in the future. Over all a good start, albeit, a tad subjective. But hey, I dislike memoirs, as a general rule, so the fact that I read it and have positive things to say, means it was pretty good. show less

Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood is a work of nonfiction by Koren Zailckas, chronicling her love affair with alcohol. The book’s organizational structure is telling itself, split into four sections: “Initiation,” “The Usual,” “Excess,” and “Abuse.” It begins with Koren’s first taste, swigging sips of Southern Comfort on the sly, peer-pressured into it by her friend Natalie at age 14. Koren then moves through high school and college and has what almost anyone would consider a normal relationship with drinking throughout her education, although peppered with occasional moments of blackouts and vomiting. Within months of graduating college, she stops drinking altogether. While her experiences with alcohol aren’t show more unusual, I think her underlying motivations are.

Koren wants the reader to understand that she considers her drinking history overindulgent. She makes this clear on the cover, a seemingly real-life snapshot of the author slumped over in a chair, her hair gratefully covering her shameful face. She also punctuates the text with footnotes and statistics that tear the reader from the narrative, serving as a reminder that this book has an agenda. Heavy-handed tactics like these are informational and clearly prove that the problem is bigger than Koren herself, but give away the author’s secret: she didn’t think telling her story flat out would work as an allegory to apply to America at large. This detracted from all the wonderful attributes of the book, like Koren’s snarky sense of humor, her spot-on characterizations, and completely realistic retelling of the transition from childhood to adulthood, from innocence to wisdom, through the holding tank of extended adolescence called college. What’s unfortunate is that these wonderful facets of Koren’s writing could have easily made the story a very successful cautionary fable, rendering those distracting statistics unnecessary.

If this were a different story, with a different subject matter, I’m sure I’d love it. I love the author’s writing style, and she weaves a wonderful story. Smashed comes off as didactic though, narrating the various shames Koren experiences after drinking too much, the kind of things that are nationally publicized when they happen to today’s young starlets. This “Don’t turn into Paris Hilton” adage is clear from the beginning, and quickly becomes overkill.

The real problem, rather than Koren’s drinking, is her inability to stand on her own. She drinks because she surrounds herself with stronger personalities who drink, and follows their lead. She goes from person to person, admitting that she patterns all of her relationships, both platonic and romantic, after the one with Natalie, who “will be the blueprint for the kamikaze girlfriends… the suicidal personalities who seize the day by letting go of any expectations for a tomorrow.” If Koren chose better people with whom to surround herself, or if she blazed her own path rather than always passively going along with what was socially accepted, her life story would read very differently. She even uses alcohol as something to hide behind, something to rely upon to relate to people and use as her mouthpiece. It’s not her relating to others- it’s the booze. It wasn’t dependency on alcohol that thwarted her growth, but rather her dependency on others for identity and self-worth.

All that said, Smashed is still an entertaining, thoughtful, honest coming-of-age story. Koren Zailckas is a talented writer who I look forward to reading again, hoping her careful eye will be trained on personal strength rather than personal weakness. show less

Not only is this a true story of one girl sneaking drinks in junior high, creeping out for night-long keg parties in high school and binge-drinking weeknights and weekends through college—it's also a valuable cautionary tale. At 24 (her present age), Zailckas gave up drinking after a decade of getting drunk, having blackouts and experiencing brushes with comas, date rape and suicide. Alcohol defined Zailckas's adolescence and college years to such an extent that, as she tells it, she lacks the tools to be an adult: she's unsure how to maintain relationships and unclear about sex without an alcohol buzz. Zailckas is unsparingly insightful and acutely aware of what drinking can and does do to girls. She explains that while kids are show more taught that drugs are always dangerous, alcohol is perceived as an acceptable rite of passage. Her book is deeply moving. show less

In Smashed, Zailckas is brutally honest despite the embarrassment this might cause her and blows the lid off of teenage drinking and its repercussions for young women. Her tale is more than just a indictment of drugs and alcohol though, it is a social commentary on the often negative interactions between collage-age guys and girls (with the girls usually coming out much worse for the wear). Smashed is insightful and dead-on. This is a must-read for every girl between the ages of 14 and 25 as well as for their parents.

This is not a book about alcoholism. This is a book about depression.

Never have I come across a more self-loathing individual. I wish I knew what got her to such a low point. She’s a successful individual from a stable middle-class family and yet she abhors herself to no end. And it’s always the world’s fault. She can’t possibly be the one with the problem. Sobriety is a painful existence. No wonder she developed such a relationship with alcohol. How else could she mask the utter pain of a successful life of an attractive individual where people love her and others want to be her friend.

This book doesn’t do much good for people with alcohol abuse problems, whom I figure make up a good portion of her audience. Her ability to show more describe the attractiveness of alcohol is down pat. She has listed every positive quality of the drug from it’s ability to improve social situations to the warm, fuzzy affect it has on your body (she literally got high from this drug—and yet she claims she wasn’t an alcoholic?). Lay this next to the bleak world of her sobriety and I’d be back to hitting the bottle myself.

I wish I could sit down with this girl and try to make her open her ease and realize the beauty of being alive. There is no happy ending in this book. She is just as miserable as she was from page 1. I hope she grows up one day and realizes she needs help. I hate to see a person this miserable in this world.

I do give her credit though for being able to show how pathetic alcohol abuse can be. There was nothing attractive about any of the characters in this memoir that exhibited this problem. Every second spent with a drink in hand (or with a hangover the next day) seemed like a precious moment wasted. It further helped my argument against drinking. I'll give her an extra star for that. show less