Book Discussion Smashed by Koren Zailckas Essay Example

I said freshman in high school have no business drinking.

At the age of 14 you are still developing very important physical and social skills.If you impair this development process with drinking you inadvertently now make this your staple. Meaning that having the skills to meet new people and have a good time without being impaired is now lost or were never there. Now you feel like you must rely on alcohol to “Be Open. ” Quote 4 Seventeen ounces of Southern Comfort® I all it takes for me to make new friends How horrible. That is 500ml of 80 proof alcohol.

Anyone that can drink that much is surely showing other signs of extreme alcoholism as well. 17 shots of any alcohol should be enough to put anyone in an unconscious state.That is if you haven’t spent the last year working up one hefty tolerance Quote 5 You need to get over this shyness, my mom will say. I agree with her mom.

She does need to get over her shyness. The only real problem with this is that she needs to find a new way of getting over her shyness. She has a way the she think works for her already but unfortunately it is through alcoholism. This is a crucial point in her life where she could make a change in her habits and lifestyle to stop the inevitable barrel roll downhill that is soon to happen. Quote 6 But instead, I, conform to a beer-ad version of myselfThis is suggesting that she has already fallen into the lifestyle of an alcoholic. She is minimizing her life’s problems.

She is also directly implying that she still

doesn’t want to conform to the normal girls in beer ads. She is representing herself as a different person in the ad but still glorifying the same concept. Which this concept being if you drink this beer you will… Quote 7 Natalie is your friend. You two are supposed to look out for each other.

Particulary if your going to be drinking. She doesn’t need to add that I shouldn’t have been drinking.We both know, at this point that it is extraneous to the conversation. This quote definitely is supportive that her mom accepts drinking. She is also mad at her daughter for a reason that most wouldn’t assume she is too mad over.

She is mad at not taking care of her drunk friend the way she should have. Implying how she is a bad friend for leaving the party without knowing where she went to and where she was. Her mom doesn’t at all say she is mad about her being drunk. She actually says the she doesn’t care if Koren drinks she just wants her daughter in their own house while doing it.Which in my eyes indirectly supports her drinking.

Quote 8 …ever since my I barred my mom from my room. She has something to hide. This is implying that she is leading a double life. She has the one life she portrays to her family and teachers. Then she has this completely different life that she is trying to seclude her parents from.

Quote 9 On the nights when I felt sad, particularly, I could feel my drinking accelerate This is a very bad stage to be in. She now is openly admitting that

she is using drinking as a crutch.In the future when she is sad, angry, depressed etc… You can only assume that she is going to be using drinking as her crutch to try to pull her emotions back up. What is unfortunate about this is that she has fallen into a horrible cycle. The common misconception is that you can drink away your tears.

This however is quite the opposite. When you get drunk under heavy emotion you are stealing the only real processes you have to deal with the problem. So now a seemingly small problem can bring you into tears because they way you know how to deal with these issues is completely counterproductive to feeling any better.