Koren Zailckas's Smashed Essay

Smashed written by Koren Zailckas is an autobiography that describes the reality of growing up with the hard impact of how much influence alcohol can hold on a person. This is not the typical story about an alcoholic because she does not refer to herself as an alcoholic. She instead, writes about her relationship that she has with alcohol. This story details from her first drink at fourteen years old to her real-life realization after college that this lifestyle choice is not worth all that it is accompanied by. The story follows the theme of a girl growing up in the real world and enduring the different stages of life, however this story is different than your average, “coming of age” novel because it is based solely around the dependence
She even said that she did not like the taste of alcohol at first, but she continues many years after. Throughout high school she drinks, only on the weekends, but does not drink just drink, she drinks because it comforts her. In the chapter titled Coma Girl, her drinking has reached a climax in the book. She has blacked out, in the hospital and been tested for “date-rape” drugs. She was only sixteen years old and she was already having her stomach pumped. She was not going to stop this behavior because all her friends throughout high school and even into college drank the same way, but perhaps not for the same reasons. She reflected later in the novel that she did not “know how to achieve these things without alcohol.” (pg. 323) Alcohol served to her as an ego-booster, like a hype man behind the main rapper on stage. She symbolized alcohol as her crutch because she was shy, and felt like she could not be as brave as she was when she had alcohol in her system. Before the story even started she wrote, “I wrote life off as heavy cargo, and accepted it could only be mastered by masterful men. I was a coward. I grasped on to alcohol, which was the first available escape.” (pg.