Smashed or The Fainting Phenomenon Understanding Why People Faint and What to do about It

Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood

Author: Koren Zailckas

Garnering a vast amount of attention from young people and parents, and from book buyers across the country, Smashed became a media sensation and a New York Times bestseller. Eye- opening and utterly gripping, Koren Zailckas's story is that of thousands of girls like her who are not alcoholics-yet-but who routinely use booze as a shortcut to courage and a stand-in for good judgment.

With one stiff sip of Southern Comfort at the age of fourteen, Zailckas is initiated into the world of drinking. From then on, she will drink faithfully, fanatically. In high school, her experimentation will lead to a stomach pumping. In college, her excess will give way to a pattern of self-poisoning that will grow more destructive each year. At age twenty-two, Zailckas will wake up in an unfamiliar apartment in New York City, elbow her friend who is passed out next to her, and ask, "Where are we?" Smashed is a sober look at how she got there and, after years of blackouts and smashups, what it took for her to realize she had to stop drinking. Smashed is an astonishing literary debut destined to become a classic.

"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

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

… Ms. Zailckas somehow stayed sharp enough to remember the most humiliating things that happened to her. At the same time, she got drunk with a frequency and variety that translate into a whole book's worth of 100-proof cautionary tales. Her memoir offers a mortifyingly credible story of smart young women doing stuporous things.

Library Journal

Zailckas, 24, charts her relationship with alcohol from first taste at 14 to eventual abstinence at 23. Her cast of supporting drinkers reveals that her alcohol abuse-"highlights" of which include alcohol poisoning at 16 and a blackout with possible loss of virginity in college-is not uncommon. These women drink as a method of socializing and as a seeming means to deal with rage, self-doubt, and depression. Alcohol was the author's preferred conduit of bonding with other women, yet it prevented her from forming meaningful relationships. While Zailckas's writing lacks the humor of Augusten Burroughs's Dry, her rather poetic prose works to reveal a problem that goes beyond the personal. However, her own story remains the strongest and most moving aspect of the book, despite tiresome rants against the alcohol industry's glamorization of drinking and the government's and colleges' lame campaigns against problem drinking. Overall, a powerful memoir; recommended for large collections and especially high school and college libraries.-Amanda Glasbrenner, New York Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An astonishingly revealing debut chronicles nine years of binge drinking in high school, college, and beyond. Now 23 and sober, the author begins her story of alcohol abuse with her first drink, taken in the summer of 1994 when she was14. It's an event she remembers vividly, as she does the first time her parents caught her drinking a year later and the first time she blacked out, another year after that. With alcohol, Zalickas discovers a way to end her feelings of shame, lack of self-confidence, even self-loathing. Since her drunken self becomes confident and brave, she drinks expressly for the purpose of getting drunk. Throughout high school, she has to hide her drinking, but at college-Syracuse University-she finds that it's more than accepted; it's expected. This is certainly true at the sorority she joins, nicknamed the Zeta Alcoholics and reputedly filled with fast-living and fun-loving girls. Zailckas confesses to spending more time in the bars around campus than at the gym, the library, or the dining hall. Out of college and working in Manhattan, she continues for a time to binge drink to quell her social anxieties, but after a blackout that ends with her waking up not knowing where she is or with whom, she is scared enough, or perhaps grown-up enough, to quit. While her account of college years rarely mentions the academic side, she clearly must have spent some fruitful time in class. Certainly the influence of her writing teacher, Mary Karr, author of The Liar's Club, is evident here. Unlike Karr, however, Zailckas repeatedly inserts into her disturbing memoir facts about teenage drinking to demonstrate that her experience with booze is not unique ("the mean age of the firstdrink for girls is less than thirteen years old," or "nearly three-fourths of sorority-house residents are binge drinkers"). Riveting, with a powerful message for parents of teenaged girls. Agent: Erin Hosier/The Gernet Company

Table of Contents:

	Preface	xi
	Initiation
	First Taste	3
	First Waste	27
	First Offense	55
	Coma Girl	85
	The Usual
	All You Can Drink	109
	Greek Mythology	135
	Excess
	You're Pretty When I'm Drunk	157
	Love in the Time of Liquor	181
	Beer Tears	211
	Abuse
	Ascent and Descent	247
	Liquid Heart	275
	The End Has No End	301
	The Still-to-Learn	319

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The Fainting Phenomenon Understanding Why People Faint and What to do about It

Author: Blair P Grubb MD

Fainting, the sudden and often unpredictable loss of consciousness, can be a frightening experience. While often benign, fainting can sometimes be the sign of serious illness. Recurrent fainting can significantly disrupt a person’s life, and make them prone to injury and, on occasion, death.
The Fainting Phenomenon, Second Edition is a valuable information resource for anyone whose life is affected by fainting.
Written for the layperson, this book will help you:

• Understand the different reasons why people faint and their significance
  
• Seek proper medical attention and treatment
  
• Deal with related conditions such as Postural Tachycardia Syndrome and Orthostatic Hypertension

This is an indispensable and reassuring guide for parents, families and care givers.