FREE: *Smashed* The Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas

The listing, *Smashed* The Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas has ended.

Paperback book from a smoke free home. The cover has some fraying and a few of the first couple pages are a little "crinkly." Anyway, the rest of the book is pretty much like new.
Please feel free to ask questions!

Description:
Zailckas doesn't have the "genetically based reaction to alcohol that addiction counselors call 'a disease.'" But throughout her adolescence and early adulthood, she abused alcohol heavily: "I drank for the explicit purpose of getting drunk, getting brave, or medicating my moods." Her first sips of hard liquor, before she started high school, hit her with the force of a crush-- "as hopeful and as heartbreaking as kissing a boy." By the time she entered Syracuse University, she had already been hospitalized for alcohol poisoning, and her binge drinking through college, wholly supported by the Greek system, contributed to heartbreaking, empty sexual encounters and difficulty relating to anyone without "the third wheel" of alcohol. Zailckas muses about the societal factors that contribute to the astonishing rise in women's drinking. Most unnerving, though, are her honest, detailed accounts of her own profound abuse, which was accepted, encouraged, and chillingly commonplace; thousands of young women share her story. Like Caroline Knapp's Drinking: A Love Story (1996), this raw, eye-opening memoir will deepen readers' understanding of American culture and perhaps their own lives. Gillian Engberg