Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood

by Koren Zailckas

From earliest experimentation to habitual excess to full-blown abuse, twenty-four-year-old Koren Zailckas leads us through her experience of a terrifying trend among young girls, exploring how binge drinking becomes routine, how it becomes “the usual.” With the stylistic freshness of a poet and the dramatic gifts of a novelist, Zailckas describes her first sip at fourteen, alcohol poisoning at sixteen, a blacked-out sexual experience at nineteen, total disorientation after waking up in an unfamiliar New York City apartment at twenty-two, when she realized she had to stop, and all the depression, rage, troubled friendships, and sputtering romantic connections in between. Zailckas’s unflinching candor and exquisite analytical eye gets to the meaning beneath the seeming banality of girls’ getting drunk. She persuades us that her story is the story of thousands of girls like her who are not alcoholics—yet—but who use booze as a short cut to courage, a stand-in for good judgment, and a bludgeon for shyness, each of them failing to see how their emotional distress, unarticulated hostility, and depression are entangled with their socially condoned binging.

Like the contemporary masterpieces The Liars’ Club, Autobiography of a Face, and Jarhead, Smashed is destined to become a classic. A crucial book for any woman who has succumbed to oblivion through booze, or for anyone ready to face the more subtle repercussions of their own chronic over-drinking or of someone they love, Smashed is an eye-opening, wise, and utterly gripping achievement.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Addiction, Biography, Biography Memoir, Mental Health, Psychology

339 pages, Hardcover

First published February 3, 2005

Reviews

[Msmeemee · Rating 5 out of 5]

when it comes to memoirs, i can't really critique the content only because it's about someone's real-life experiences. but i can critique the delivery. plain and simple, i love koren's writing style. it's easy to read yet vivid and insightful. i think so many girls and young women can relate to her experiences, it's a validation of being female in this society and the relationship females develop with alcohol as a way to cope with the pressure. plus, as someone in the psychology field, it's a good resource for clinicians who work with individuals that abuse alcohol or for clinicians who aren't familiar with these issues and need a first-hand account of what alcohol abuse is like. five stars.

EDIT: after reading some of the other readers' comments, i have a couple things i'd like to address. a lot of people say that the storyline isn't interesting. i guess with a memoir, it's more about the author's willingness to make herself vulnerable to a wider audience than it is about an interesting story. even though her experiences with alcohol are common, her motivations for drinking are of key importance because they are actually symptoms of a society that places men and women in very rigid boxes. if you're looking for pure entertainment, look elsewhere.

other readers thought she was a whiny, spoiled brat from a good background. this doesn't make someone exempt from having their own internalized demons. other readers commented on her immaturity as a writer and as someone recovering from alcohol abuse. there was no resolution and some were not satisfied with her level of insight about her own abuse. did anyone stop to think that perhaps writing this memoir is part of her recovery process? and as far a resolution, there is no concrete, static resolution to substance abuse. recovery is an ongoing process. and some people don't ever recover fully. if your relationship to a substance is that binding, it can be difficult to completely let go of the abuser mindset.

i think we as an audience can learn a lot about alcohol abuse by our very reactions. a lot of people had no sympathy for the author. in my eyes, i think this exhibits society's relative indifference and lack of compassion for those who are struggling with personal issues and how alcohol and other substances can be a life jacket if only in the short-run. there was one comment about how the author's abuse was everyone's fault but her own. personally, i did not get that, but if that was the general feeling about her, it's an honest portrayal of people who abuse substances. i was especially appalled by one reader's comment about date rape and how the author should've known she would be raped if she hung out in frat houses all the time. in a way, this comment is enraging yet enlightening at the same time. and i think this is where the book is brilliant; it draws out all the biases, all the stereotypes, the myths, the victim-blaming attitudes, and our overall lack of understanding regarding substance abuse that still pervade our society. and i think it's fantastic that the author wrote the book shortly after trying to abstain; her feelings and insecurities are still fresh and we can experience that right along with her. it gives us a perspective of someone who is struggling to find herself without her alcoholic crutch.

[Caitlin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate this girl. I think she was melodramatic and obnoxious and I don't know what her problem was. I found all of her "statistical" references to be preachy and I found a lot of inconsistencies that bothered me. Her college experience didn't seem all that different from a lot of people I know, so I don't know why she got to get a book deal out of it. I also don't know how she suddenly found so much clarity after quitting drinking for like a month. I think she is reaching big time in a lot of her observations and assumptions. Frankly, I hope I run into her in NYC I can tell her she bugs me and I hope she never writes another book. Oh and that she needs to get over herself.

[Wednesday · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is 333 out of 340 pages of self-loathing and misery with an sad attempt at a happy ending/after school special-style lesson found in the last 7 pages.

In between choking fits of laughter over the overly-dramatic stare coming from the author's picture on the back, I became annoyed---more than usual.

Were it not for the author's poetic descriptions, I never would have bothered to finish this pointless story.
It's a memoir from a white-bred adolescent female binge drinking through highschool and her sorority days.

Since her story merits no interest, the book's content became a description of how lovely gin,whiskey, vodka, rum and beer tantalize the senses. Her talent for description turned the book into a 330 page drinking ad. (The last 7 pages of which she chose to reprimand these ads with the volatility of a stifled sneeze)

With the amount of alcohol Zailckas speaks of having consumed, she still sounds like a child. I appreciate her honesty in admitting to all those embarassing moments high on alcohol and pot, but she should have stuck to writing poetry about dried flowers and broken fingernails.

All the childish intensity glaring from her ridiculous picture on the back of the book can't improve the drolling story which only inspired me to pour those stiff drinks and "breathe the sugary smell of hard alcohol" while "a buzz comes on like sweet music".

She employs women to embrace 'real anger' yet she unwittingly sells booze throughout the book and sells depression right alongside it. She has her thoughts twisted between over-dramatizing her suburban rebellious childhood and trying to prove a cause.

The result is a whining, draining, waste of time that I could have spent getting drunk--but now she's taught me how.

[Nita · Rating 1 out of 5]

(From my Amazon review, written 11/2006)

Smashed is a book that I hope Zailckas will consider with embarrassment as she grows up, assuming she ever does. Zailckas' writing takes herself far too seriously and attempts to inject poetic turns of phrase far too often. Bottling her parents' alcohol buzz like a firefly? Ugh. Trying to claim that all women remember their first drink? Gross.

Her "Woe is me, cautionary tale, this is all so serious, look at how I can weave artsy-sounding phrases into my passages" tone is too heavy, suffocating what otherwise may have been an interesting book with its embarrassingly obvious fumblings towards "gravitas". With each sentence, I felt like the author was looking wistfully out a window to a great beyond, breathlessly imparting what she felt were pearls of wisdom to an entranced audience. Gross!

Might be an interesting book for those intrigued by the specific topic of drinking, but for those who are looking for a good read by a mature (and I'm not talking years, here) writer, keep looking.

Her editor should be ashamed of him/herself for getting this book published; a shoddy work like this is of the career-derailment variety. I wish she'd waited a few years before writing this -- what she's saying is probably important and she could probably say it well if she grew up first.

[Suz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was outstanding. As an addict, Koren was completely unafraid to be honest with the mess that had become her life. As a College student in the United States, this story has shown me the darker side to a drinking culture out of control. I’m not naïve, I know Australia’s same culture is probably just as unruly.

This was crazy stuff! I read a lot of biography and fiction on this topic, and I am absolutely impressed with the honest voices that show through time and time again.

This is interesting. STILL I am not an alcoholic. As far as I can tell, I have no family history of alcoholism. I am not physically addicted to drinking, and I don’t have the genetically based reaction to alcohol that addiction counsellors call “a disease”. In the nine years that I drank, I never hid bottles or drank alone, and I never spent a night in a holding cell awaiting DUI charges.”

And another. You can find girls who abuse alcohol anywhere. We are everywhere. Of the girls I’ve known over the past nine years, the ones who took shots, did keg stands, toppled down stairs, passed out on sidewalks, and got sick inside of cabs, there have been overachievers, athletes, dropouts artists, snobs, nerds, runway models, plain-Janes, and so called free-thinkers.

I was hugely impressed by this book, and am not entirely happy with these quotes, as I returned my copy to the library, and I am not a fan of reviewing after the fact.

Honest, raw and totally self-effacing, I highly recommend this memoir for any of those who are curious, or who have teenagers going through this self-destructive phase. It is good reading.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

From scanning all the negative reviews below, it would appear that I am in the minority with my opinions of this book. I personally found it to be outstandingly well-written, insightful, and unflinchingly real and honest. Koren holds nothing back as she recounts her decade-long love affair with alcohol. Much like a bad relationship, she clung to drinking in high school and college as if it were her oxygen; though it was clearly damaging to her physically, mentally, and emotionally, she returned to it night after night because she was too insecure to be able to breathe without it. That said, the book has been a pretty depressing read. Her descripions have evoked memories of all the drunken nights and hungover days I spent during my own twenties, to the point that I have felt almost nauseous at times while reading... a great reminder of exactly why I have never missed all the "fun" I used to have when I was young and stupid, lol. Smashed sends a powerful message by showing, rather than simply telling, what happens when you regularly abuse alcohol, as so many college students are prone to do. I'm not sure that it will necessarily deter young girls from binge drinking, because young people are all about the now, and are going to do what they want to do in the moment. Still, if it helps to keep just one girl from falling so far into the depths of alcohol that there is no return(serious accident, illness, or death), then it has served its purpose. As for those of us who are already far past that stage, it is nice to be able to read this and relate, knowing that by some miracle we managed to come out safely on the other side.

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I completely disagree with the author and the reviewers of this memoir. This book made me ANGRY.

To begin, she has SERIOUS issues that she avoids. I was left with far more questions by the end of the book than when I began. And--where the hell were her parents? They suck repeatedly throughout this memoir. Give me a break. Are they that clueless, or are we not getting the entire story? And speaking of not the whole story--how did she manage to graduate in four years and be able to land and keep a job in the NYC magazine world if she was that terribly blitzed? Is she lying or is the 'Cuse that lame of a university?

ALSO, she is a liar--she IS an alcholic, or has a deeply addictive personality at the least. The fact that she diagnosis herself as NOT and alcoholic based on an EMAIL from a therapist she never meets in person makes me even angrier.

Finally, it is doubtful that this memoir will help anyone because it makes it seem like EVERY kid in college is getting wasted 5 nights a week, when they aren't. Of course, it is a big problem in college, but NOT as prevalent as Zailckas makes it seem. If anything this memoir will cause HARM: it validates those who want to get smashed and misleads them into thinking that they are not alcoholics and can still succeed even though they are repeatedly incapacitated by drink.

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book to be droll, trite, and anticlimactic; more akin to something for a church confessional and less to anything that should sprung on the general public.
Zailckas often brushes against compelling issues of this "drunken girldom": the odd and alienating social structure erected and maintained by many (possibly the majority) of females in the United States, if not extending beyond. The author does precious more than flatly recount the multitude of times she found herself drunk out of more than having "a few too many", draws thin conclusions to account for this behavoir, and then crash right into the next drawn-out, overly-intense tale of binge drinking woe. Also, a side note, after all of this heavy drinking, shouldn't she have built up a better tolerance?

[Tara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful. Horrendous. Self-pitying and self-righteous and self-absorbed. Pointless. Poorly written. Pathetic. If I could give it less stars, I would.

In the end, it's everyone's fault the author had a drinking problem...everyone except the author herself.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having been a college student at a work-hard, party hard university around the same time as the author, I was highly impressed by how well she understands and writes about drinking culture on campuses (particularly the female experience). I think she nails it. I appreciate her debunking many myths about alcohol use among adolescent girls and women. Parents can do everything right (not that there is one right way to address alcohol with your kids, but that's an aside), the girl or woman can have all the exterior marker of success in school or extracurricular activities, and may go on to graduate school or a good job post-college yet STILL have a severely self-destructive relationship with alcohol. I don't think we always look beneath the surface of women like this because superficially they seem to be fine, though mentally and emotionally they may be deeply suffering. It isn't just the girls/women who flunk out of school, who have absent or alcoholic parents, who work dead-end jobs. Koren clearly shows how alcohol abuse permeates the elite college population and the well-off.

I work in student affairs and I will encourage my colleagues to read this book. We are constantly dealing with the issue of student alcohol abuse, but we will not be successful in our efforts to alleviate problem drinking until we understand WHY our students drink and HOW they drink. I think this book is a great place to start, particularly in beginning to understand some of the hidden patterns of drinking among female students.

[Ley · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a drug treatment counselor I would not recommend this book to my clients. The author refuses and/or is in complete denial about what really took place in her life. She refuses to be truthful about herself and instead refers to herself and her terrible so-called friends as "alcohol abusers." She is an alcoholic in every way, shape and form. She also claims that she was one of the lucky ones and nothing really bad happened to her while intoxicated. However, she states that sex or 'fooling around' took place with men while blacked out or passed out. That's called rape. She also has done irreversible damage to her body that only a severe alcoholic could cause themselves.
Although the author does an excellent job of displaying self pity and states that she drank because she had (and still has)no personality and dimwitted parents, this is a horrible book to suggest to an adolescent, young college student or person whom is in recovery. She glorifies herself and is quite self-righteous to think that because she supposedly has the ability to only have one or two drinks socially at the moment, that she is actually in recovery.
The only reason I gave this book three stars was because her idiotic adventures were somewhat amusing and it gave me some insight to the distorted thought process that many of my clients have about their own drinking and drug use. As far as a story of hope and a learning tool for those looking for help, support and answers, this book deserves no stars.

[Korinna · Rating 4 out of 5]

During my time reading this book, my opinions would often change. This is a story about a girl, middle class, white, from a "normal", decent upbringing who starts to drink heavily at 15 and continues for about ten years. Sometimes while reading this, I found myself thinking "why am i reading this? it isn't that interesting. I mean, this is no different from the experiences of many young girls in mainstream culture, and in many ways similar to those of my own." but that is exactly why this is an important book, because Koren's experience is so common. I like that she finds way to introduce statistics and information into her memoirs, giving it the feeling of carrying a message in hopes of changing our society to recognize teenager drinking and the effects that comes with it for girls, such as date rape, depression, eating disorders, etc. These issues are so common but are often ignored and thought of as unimportant. Koren is a "regular" girl with no past history of abuse of mental illness, but it is that which makes this story important, because it poses the question, why are so many "normal" girls being self destructive with alcohol at such a young age?

[Jaime · Rating 2 out of 5]

The entire time I was reading this, I questioned the reliability of the author, a severe alcohol abuser who began drinking at a young age. There were gaping holes in the narrative which she filled with a bunch of unnecessary rhetoric about alcoholism/binge drinking in general. Even worse was the ending during which Zailckas droned on and on about how the government, advertisers, and men in general piss her off. On a positive note, the book is well written, but then that just makes me wonder how the author found the time to become so literate during her college years which were full (so she claims) of nothing but drinking, depression, and self-loathing. Don't waste your time or money.

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love nothing more than memoirs about miserable childhoods, but this girl is just a whiny, entitled, self-centered biyotch. Her problems and drama were of her own making. Avoid at all costs.

[Kristen · Rating 1 out of 5]

God, this book was awful. I really don't care if she feels guilty about drunken partying that she did ten years ago. One of the few books I could not even finish.

[kira · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ha! The writing is dreadful and juvenile; it's actually funny. It reads like the author just took her final paper for Psych 101 and beefed it up with some personal anecdotes. However -- it does make a few astute observations about college women and drinking. She tackles a provocative topic with candor and honesty, despite the cringe-inducing writing.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 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.

[kathi]

This is a horrible book full of wrong information about alcoholism...she justifies, rationalizes, makes excuses to make her drinking appear "normal"...she describes so many situations that "normal" drinkers do not do...she has blackouts, hangovers, sneaky behavior, tolerance, loss of control, denial...all symptoms used to diagnosis alcoholism...she denied having any symptoms at all and rationalized this by comparing herself to other "alcoholics" by saying she had never done those things so she couldn't be an alcoholic like "them". She said she quit at age 23 so wouldn't have to "pick up the pieces" of her addiction...normal drinkers don't have to do that.... a normal drinker may have a hangover and that don't drink like that anymore...normal drinkers don't have blackouts which are the number one thing to look for in diagnosing alcoholism....I would never recommend this book to anyone...I stopped reading before I got to Page 50 but skimmed to the back of the book to see if she had relapsed yet...she hadn't although she sets herself as some kind of guru for other women as they come to her in droves with their stories...she is dangerous to them in her denial and misinformation. This book is going in the garbage.

[Valerie H · Rating 1 out of 5]

On one hand this girl is the sort of over privileged basic with no actual real life problems who seems hell bent on destruction as an expression of how great her privilege actually is. Like look at me I go to an excellent college, never mention actually working or supporting myself and blow lots of money on booze! I wonder if she was paying for college herself if perhaps she would have take it a little more seriously. And I wonder why her parents who presumably foot the bills didn't question the huge amount she spent on alcohol. But anyway it's all "Tee hee my life is charmed and without accountability or consequences for my actions"!

It's kind of gross, how she appreciates nothing and she's just as boring and insufferable as those generic drunk girls in college that you know to avoid because they are incapable of talking about anything other than some generic guy on the baseball team or thinly veiled references to much their dad makes.

The book itself is tedious, just as tedious as spending time with any deeply self absorbed drunk. The author maintains she isn't an alcoholic but only a dry drunk could have the energy to talk this incessantly about the same boring repetitive years of drinking as if it was somehow interesting. As if anything actually happens besides just being drunk in various settings for literally years.

And I certainly don't want to victim blame but this girl knowingly puts herself in constant danger of being raped. All the situations a person instinctively avoids she seeks out. She dates a known rapist. She passes out constantly in a variety of places with a variety of random people. She arranges drunken overnight dates and doesn't communicate at all about her boundaries. She gets wasted and breaks into fraternity houses. Let me say rapists are responsible for rape, not the victims. It's not her fault. But she pretty much does everything everyone is warned not to do which is an interesting testament to her self destructiveness that she disappointingly doesn't really go anywhere with in terms of self awareness.

All the time she maintains a horror of sex. She can't feel her own breasts for a self examination because it's "too embarrassing" and she is super proud to have "maintained her virginity" like a penis entering your vagina is so important and event that it's somehow defining. She talks dismissively of sex workers and girls who are "easy" as an expression of her projected shame. In high WASP style she actually refers to sex as "fornicating." She wants to date a boy but instead drinks until she passes out to avoid closeness. She gets mad when the boys she dates leave her for other girls who idk probably actually like men. In short she's exhausting and never reflects on any of it.

So on the other hand her sexual self is so skewed and cut off I have to wonder if behind all this nonsense is a past sexual abuse history or if she possibly has borderline personality disorder. To support the idea of bpd she has no real identity and no sense of self, but that's kind of a chicken and egg question for someone who has been drunk since they were 14. So I kind of want to have compassion in that she's maybe mentally ill and not just an over privileged girl who thinks the rules of reality shouldn't pertain to her. It's multi determined is my final analysis.

And her politics. Ugh. She talks about her sad tragic friends with (horrors!) divorced parents and (gasp!) half siblings. It's like this book is from the 50s not the 90s. But at the same time there is a weird lesbian undertone which is never examined. This book also has some casual racism, such as describing a sorority as being "babes" because they are "all white and blond." Because obviously that's what beautiful. Ew.

[Danielle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not very well written. Gets very boring about half way through, which maybe is the point of it. I will never know because I am not going to finish it. The author is not very likable or doesn't present her story in any way that makes you feel anything for her. She makes a lot of excuses for the way she acted during High School and college that I can't buy into. This from someone who has been known to enjoy a few drinks every now and then.

The bottom line - the quality of the writing is not good enough to draw you in and keep you there.

[Holly Anne Burns · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't love this book. The author is self-centered and what happens to her is obvious and not interesting. That being said, it was a fast read.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

i’m glad k got this for me from the library. i thought i’d really like it, and i did like some of it.
i thought it would mostly be a memoir of the author’s drunken childhood--which it was for the most part. but then, part way through the last chapter, she tried to make it some sociopolitical thing about girls and drinking and how its bad and why we do it and how she talked to all these other women--which she’d never mentioned before--who’d had similar experiences to hers. but she didn’t offer a solution to this problem. i didn’t want a treatise, i wanted a memoir. i didn’t want statistics, i wanted a personal recounting of teenage alcohol abuse. i didn’t want to hear about why drinking is especially bad for girls, blah.
anyway. she drank for the same reasons that i drank (mostly). it wasn’t peer pressure (until after we’d stopped drinking). it was because it made us feel good. it made us feel like we could approach boys and talk to them and have us like us, when we couldn’t do that sober. it made us forget the problems that we had. it allowed us to drop our inhibitions that were caused by low self esteem and low self worth. it let us open ourself up to experiences we might not have had otherwise.
i honestly have no idea when i had my first drink, though i can remember my first cigarette. i wasn’t a drunk, and i wasn’t an alcoholic. i was a binge drinker. i didn’t drink OFTEN, but when i drank, i drank a lot. even after i went to the hospital . it was my senior semester of college, i was having fun, wishing boys would love me. what can i say?
i stopped drinking, on my own, after i’d lived here for almost a year. i needed to get that shit under control. i didn’t drink anything--not a drop--for about a year.
now i can drink socially without going overboard and without binging. i don’t do it often though because mostly it just gives me headaches and liquor shits. and it’s expensive. sure, it’s ‘fun’ to go out and have a few drinks with friends, but for the most part, to me, it’s not worth it.
and i really don’t understand why drinking and going out for drinks is such a big part of our culture. as a mostly non-drinker i don’t shove it people’s faces, but it sucks that i can’t go to a bar and just order a water or a coke without getting THE LOOK from the bar tender and then getting a teeny tiny glass of water when i could get a fucking huge stein of beer. why can’t we just go out and socialize with out the fucking lubricant of booze? i just don’t get it.
oh, and don’t get me started on alcohol being legal and pot being illegal. stupidest fucking thing ever. i think alcohol should be more heavily regulated and more heavily taxed and that pot should be legalized and have the same regulation and taxes. that’s the only way the government will ever curb the ‘drug problem’.
/rant

[Celeste · Rating 2 out of 5]

I began this book really wanting to like it. I assumed that it was a cautionary tale against underage drinking, and that appealed to me. Being the child of an alcoholic, I've seen a lot and feel pretty strongly about alcoholism and alcohol abuse. I figured I'd like it as a given.

But I didn't. Her images are strong and powerful. There were passages that I could smell the stale cigarettes and feel the burn of hard liquor in my throat, but during the college period of her life it gets hazy and some parts seem blown out of porportion. I can't know for sure, it's just a feeling as I read it. I also didn't like how she interspersed cited information into her story. Hornbacher did it well in Wasted, but it came out uncomfortably. I did see how well read she became on the subject afterward, and I would probably enjoy a conversation with her on the marketing of alcohol. But her citations made me think that she was too used to writing them in college and thus stuck them in her book. Her attitude toward her own drinking was confusing in places. Several times in the book she states that she is not an alcoholic but in one part she compares her attraction to it as a drug addict to his drug. Huh? If she was trying force the belief that she is not addicted to it, then that was a bad bad simile.

I really enjoyed her voice in the work. It was nice to read something from someone who is only one year older. I'm looking forward to reading more from authors in my generation. I would give her another chance and read another book by her, but since I had to plod through this one with all the joy of reading the nutritional info on the back of my cereal, I will not be rereading this one in the future.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that most women should read, and most men would gain a huge understanding from reading it as well. I won't call it required reading because it has some flaws, but it's worth your time, really worth it.

That being said, I felt that the author forced statistics into the very well-written narrative. I appreciate the research that the author did in order to make her points more scientific, but I think the memoir alone gets the point across without the numbers. The last section of the book was pretty disappointing. It culminated in a chapter full of rage and an odd mixed message. She rails on against men and the alcohol industry, but shows the reader how her new boyfriend affects her healing process. Very confusing, and possibly less effective than it could have been.

Aside from the last chapter misstep, I think I would recommend this book to just about anyone. A very interesting reading experience.

[TheSaint · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alcohol abuse as a feminist issue? Author Koren Zailckas begins her harrowing memoir of nine years of binge drinking with a dedication to her mother, for first making her "mindful of women's issues." Truly, Zailckas makes a good case that binge drinking (and its consequences whether drunk or sober) is societally more objectionable for women. Indeed, the reader will walk away from Smashed thinking all eighth-grade, white, suburban females are destined to a desperate life of blackouts and hangovers. Though the author eventually sees the error of her ways, methinks she doth protest too much about the spectacles she made of herself while drunk, and not enough of the "good life" she had after sobriety.

[Tim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have met many sad, broken individuals here in South Africa who have hit the bottle because of the horrors they have born witness to, been at the receiving end of, or even themselves perpetrated. This privileged girl has no such excuse and receives not a murmur of sympathy from me, from my slightly jaded third world perspective.

Also, it was extremely poorly written.

[Claire Grunewald · Rating 4 out of 5]

“On the days that my stories run in the newspaper, I feel as happy as I do at any bar’s happy hour.”

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read this book as a sophomore in college, when I was grappling with some alcohol issues spurred on by having an older group of friends, attending a university with liberal drinking rules and "thoughtful" punishments for underage drinking, and the thrill of living on my own in a tolerant, safe environment where I could experiment at will. My mom gave me this book to help me process my own actions and determine what drinking meant for me, in my life.

I read it a second time, recently, as I reevaluate the impact drinking has on my adult life, and attempt to finally transition away from unhealthy college-level drinking. So, I do have an investment in this story. I believe the narrator's story is one worth telling, and I believe the overarching issue of binge drinking and the dangerous level its reached on college campuses is something worth talking over and over about. I understand that, like it or not, binge drinking often has much more disastrous effects for young women. I also understand that alcoholism in women is something women are often hesitant to address or talk about, because it's a problem that is seen as inherently masculine. So I get it. I get where the author is coming from. But reviews of this book that emphasize the extent to which she blames her environment are right - she started and began to enjoy drinking to get drunk at a very young age, so it seems surprising that the level of drinking she found in college came as a shock to her. I agree that society does young people a disservice by failing to address the issue of binge drinking, but I don't know that her complete indictment of her friends, men around her, her sorority, the college environment generally, the alcohol and advertising industries, and society as a whole, is well-supported. I have been able to reconcile many of my actions and behaviors by taking responsibility for them, but her tone sometimes becomes preachy and she veers dangerously into slut-shaming, especially when talking about the other actions of girls from her sorority, whom she blames harshly for their alcohol-induced behaviors, while letting herself off lightly by saying she was only influenced by those around her. What made me saddest about this story was not that the author decided to stop drinking or that she felt she drank too much, but that throughout the entire story, she struggled so much to make genuine girlfriends. She seems to blame this both on alcohol and on the perceived quality of the women around her, but I think this might have been a more interesting exploration for the author to make than that of her drinking problem.

That said, this kind of drinking and the ramifications that come from the behavior are shared experiences among many girls, and the story is valuable for that reason. The writing style is accessible. I do wish the narrator would have possibly explored taking more responsibility for her actions and addressing her problems without blaming others and going cold turkey. But I do think the exploration of problem drinking that isn't alcoholism is a valuable way of exploring the way that binge drinking can change lives before it ruins them. The author seems to suggest that there is no way to live within the culture in moderation - that the only way to be healthy is to isolate one's self. I don't know if I agree with that, and I wonder if the author's relatively young age at the time of publication influenced her attitude (which can come off as naive or bratty) and her choices. I wonder what this memoir would have been like had it been published several years later, once the shock of early adulthood wore off. I would recommend this book to young women entering college or young women who feel intimidated or isolated by the social scene on large universities.

The author was clearly very influenced by studying with Mary Karr, and when I read the book the second time, I wondered if, in writing a memoir about her own drinking, she was trying to echo her mentor's successes.

[Chrissy · Rating 2 out of 5]

So many misspellings that Stephenie Meyer would blush, rife with bad metaphors, and so poorly written that, 3 years after reading it, I feel the need to bash it on goodreads. That is not a good sign, for those of you keeping score at home.

[Laurie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The ending was quite abrupt with little wisdom shared.