Book Review : Smashed, Growing Up a Drunk Girl - Koren Zailckas**** Girl has first drink at 14, likes it, likes it a lot, starts drinking quite regularly, when she goes to college/university she drinks even more, she does some daft things when drunk, some she would rather not remember. Well, that sounds like most of the people I grew up. We all tried, and mostly succeeded, in buying booze underage, we all got drunk, threw up, blacked out once or twice, woke up in a strange bedroom with someone we didn't remember getting into bed with, stumbled, fell over, broke things, had raging drunken arguments and beer tear filled make-ups. What seems to make Zailckas different from most of us in the first heady rush of alcohol consumption though is the effect she seems to be striving for. Whilst most folk are content to get plastered, even to the point of illness, here and there, Zailckas recounts that her early drinking experiences are nearly always to the point of blackout inducing levels. Her rapid descent into a form of alcoholism (although she is always at some pains to point out that she doesn't believe herself to be an alcoholic) seems more or less like the simultaenous growing up / regression that all teenagers go through when they become old enough to have cares and responsibilities but are unwilling to accept them. She hasn't been abused or ignored as a child, her parents have not split up, she appears well loved and looked after, but, she finds, or creates through 'teenage angst' a hole within psyche that she seems only to be able to fill with drink. Many teenagers go through this, physically they have become adults, and they are exposed to the adult delights of drink, sex and probably drugs as well, but they have yet to find their own place in the world. I have always thought that university does very little towards helping thses older children into the real world, they are coddled to a large degree, surrounded almost entirely by others of their own age and maturity, without jobs, mortgages, taxes or children to worry about their lives can be largely carefree and booze filled. Universities in the UK now run TV and cinema adverts where there is no importance whatsoever placed on learning but massive importance placed on the universties location for drinking and partying, with the sound turned down you could be easily forgiven for thinking these vidoes of writing, strobe lit bodies were advertising nightclubs or music cd's. The Greek Houses of American Colleges, as described by Zailckas, go even further in their mollycoddling of their youth with each house having it's own Housemother (cleaner of vomit and wreckage) and even their own chef. With almost zero responsibilities after their lectures, the students are free to engage in a social whirlwind of undarage drinking. Zailckas obviously suffers from low personal esteem, she finds it difficult, almost impossible, to start and hold conversations when sober, but thinks herself charming and erudite when inebriated. Similarly, she cannot communicate with boys unless drunk, and her on off relationships occur only when she is drinking. She also loses her virginity whilst blind drunk, or at least she thinks she does, she has blacked out during the evening and has no memory at all of the latter parts of the night. She stumbles through college, her social circle diminished to only those girls who regularly drink as much as she does, then she lands a media job in New York, and her drinking continues apace. I found Zailckas' writing style to be nicely poetic, although she is a little too self righteous at times, and very easy to read. I would think that a lot of people reading reading this will find distinct similarities with their own teenage years, a lot of young people will experience the same things as this girl, a lot of young folk will probably step over the line and find it much harder to pull back than Zailckas did. She is though hugely self-centred, the feelings of her parents, friends and boyfriends are mostly ignored as she chronicles her years of drinking