smashed

I've been reading Smashed: Growing Up a Drunk Girl by Koren Zailckas, and I just wanted to share this paragraph. It hit a little bit too close to home the first time I read it.

For many girls, alcohol abuse may be a stage that tapers off after the quarter life mark. Many will be spared arrests, accidents, alcoholism, overdoses, and sexual assaults. A whole lot of them will have close calls, incidents they will recount with self-mocking at dinner parties some fifteen years later. Some of them will have darker stories, memories or half memories or full-out blackouts, that they will store in the farthest corners of their mental histories and never disclose to their families or lovers. But I fear that women, even those women who escape the physical consequences of drinking, won't escape the emotional ones. I fear some sliver of panic, sadness, or self-loathing will always stay with us.