Smashed Written by Koren Zailckass

Smashed

Smashed: story of a drunken girlhood was written by Koren Zailckass. It is a memoir that reflects her adventure with alcohol. She first started drinking alcohol at the age of 14 and continued until young adulthood. Smashed inspires the teen and adult population all around the world about the negative consequences of excessive drinking. Smashed soon became New York Times bestseller gaining popularity from young people and parents. The writer's story directly relates to thousands of girls like her who are not alcoholics but who routinely use alcohol as a tool to take stand-in for good judgment. Smashed is Koren's sober perception of the world and her everyday life.

The Story of a drunken Girl begins with koren's first drinking at the age of 14, peer-pressured in it by her friend, with a sip of southern Comfort which leads to excessive drinking habit in the youth and adulthood. In her memoir, she describes her youth to be devoted to alcohol and destroyed by excess drinking until she finally came to realize how unnecessary alcohol was in her life. She suffered from various severe cases of alcohol poisoning or in other words, consequences from excess drinking. While she was in high school, her experimentation with alcohol leads to severe stomach pumping. During her college life, due to her over consumption of alcohol, she slowly gets into the trap of self-poisoning which will grow more destructive each year. More important was when she was 22; she woke up in an unfamiliar apartment in New York City with her friends passed out next to her followed by numerous blackouts and vomiting. Her negligence clearly shows how rough and random her adulthood was.

Her dependence on alcohol was deep enough to alter brains pleasure circuit or reward pathway. Here is how the reward pathway works - when you are hungry and see a plate full of food, the neurotransmitter sends senses to the brain which basically says that if you eat that food you'll feel good. After, brain sends more signals to the hand to pick up the fork and eat the food. The brain then releases dopamine in the brain that gives the feeling of pleasure for eating the food. Similar is the case with alcohol and in the case with writer koren, every time she saw alcohol in-front of her, the neurotransmitter sent signal to the brain and the area of the brain that controls memory said that, if you drink that alcohol it will make you feel good. Then it would send single to the hand to pick up the alcohol and drink. The brain then releases dopamine that gives the feeling of pleasure from drinking alcohol. The same process continues every time she had an encounter with alcohol.

Moreover, the movies that I have watched in class and based on the readings for the class there are facts that prove that average American's start drinking at the age of 12. There were movies that I watched which mostly reflected

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