"Koren Zailckas" (born 1980) is a bestselling American writer and memoirist. Her debut, Smashed (memoir)/Smashed, was released in 2005 by Viking Penguin and became a New York Times bestseller. Zailckas attended Nashoba Regional High School in Bolton, Massachusetts and Syracuse University.

Smashed chronicles Zailckas' decade-long struggle with alcohol abuse, beginning at fourteen, in an effort to explain the binge drinking phenomenon that plagues America's youth.

Around the time she quit drinking, Zailckas became preoccupied with an old memory, which involved a night that she had her stomach pumped when she was 16. According to Zailckas, she had not thought about that night in a number of years, but she suddenly could not get it out of her head. Eventually, she sat down and wrote about it. The piece later became a chapter in her book.

More Koren Zailckas on Wikipedia.

I'm getting there. I'm catching up, I think. I feel like I have a ways to go.

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I really think, at this point in time, it does have to be all of us who deal with that as culture. It has to be students and parents and administrations and the government.

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It was drinking and doing stupid things, or drinking and having scary things happen, but then drinking again to ... mask the memories of it.

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