Collena Koren
Essay title: Collena Koren
Koren Zailckas had her first drink at 14, was continuously hammered by 16, had a sexual misadventure at 19, and sobered up two years ago. Shes 24.
Her memoir, one of the more garish entries in the burgeoning modern youth confessional, might give you a hangover. It also suggests that now that Zailckas has purged herself of her all-too-lurid and remarkably packed past, she might well write good fiction.
Considering how she squandered her memory, she has an eye for detail – and statistics – to justify her cautionary tale.
“In the past decade alone,” she writes in the preface, “girls have closed the gender gap in terms of drinking. I wrote this book because girls are drinking as much, and as early, as boys for the first time in history – a 2001 study showed 40 percent of college girls binge drink.”
Among the no-nos Zailckas describes in Technicolor: Syracuse University, where you might not want your kid to go unless he or she hooks up with an inspiring teacher; sororities and fraternities; alcohol advertising, which Zailckas claims undermines every effort to gain emotional strength, particularly in women; and a society that treats alcohol as far less harmful than illegal drugs.
Writing “Smashed” was clearly therapeutic for Zailckas, who quit booze without Alcoholics Anonymous. That she found a good man may have helped, but her will and pride were paramount. God knows she went through self-imposed hell before she saw her way clear.
“It is my first blackout,” she writes after waking up in a hospital, her hair matted and arms bruised, her co-dependent friends eager to clarify what happened.