Smashed: Growing Up a Drunk Girl - Softcover

Zailckas, Koren

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0091905605 ISBN 13: 9780091905606

Publisher: Ebury Press, 2006

Synopsis

The day Koren turned fourteen she tasted alcohol for the first time. At fifteen she was piecing together forgotten fragments of drink, men and misplaced clothes. At sixteen she was being carried through hospital doors unconscious. And so it began...Brought up by loving parents in a stable middle-class home, Koren was a sweet and altogether normal child. Yet from her mid-teens until her early twenties, she thought nothing of regularly drinking herself into a state of amnesia. Alcohol became her safeguard and prop, providing her with a self-confidence she couldn't otherwise feel. And whilst drinking to excess was perfectly acceptable, even actively encouraged, amongst her friends, it quickly reached a destructive monotony that bordered on dependency. It took a number of terrifying incidents - from stumbling home alone covered in vomit to waking up naked in bed unsure of whether she had lost her virginity - before Koren could finally say to herself enough was enough and seek help for her problem. "Smashed" is the shocking but all-too-recognisable story of a young woman coming of age within a society that finds it easier to turn a blind eye to binge-drinking than address the problem head on. Beautifully written and brutally honest, compelling without preaching, this is a book that demands to be read.

About this title

From the Author:

In the past decade alone, girls have closed the gender gap in terms of drinking. I wrote "Smashed" because girls are drinking as much, and as early, as boys for the first time in history, because there has been a threefold increase in the number of women who get drunk at least ten times a month, and because a 2001 study showed 40 percent of college girls binge drink. When you factor in increased rates of depression, suicide, alcohol poisoning, and sexual assault, plus emerging research that suggests women who drink have greater chances of liver disease, reproductive disorders, and brain abnormalities, the consequences of alcohol abuse are far heavier for girls than boys.

From the Back Cover:

"Gripping... one of the best accounts of addiction, the college experience, or even what it means to be an average teenage girl in America. A."
–Entertainment Weekly

Bookstores are flooded with boozy bios by former girls gone wild. This one rises to the top.
—People

Poised and elegiac... Smashed goes down with a slow, genteel burn.
—The New York Times Book Review

A mortifyingly credible story.
—The New York Times

Brilliant and horrifying.
—The Baltimore Sun

About this edition

• Publisher: Ebury Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0091905605
• ISBN 13: 9780091905606
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352