This isn't just one girl's story of sneaking drinks in junior high,
creeping out for night-long keg parties in high school and
binge-drinking weeknights and weekends through college—it's also a
valuable cautionary tale. At 24 (her present age), Zailckas gave up
drinking after a decade of getting drunk, having blackouts and
experiencing brushes with comas, date rape and suicide. She weaves
disturbing statistics (from Harvard School of Public Heath studies and
elsewhere) into her memoir: most girls will have their first drink by
age 12, and will have the experience of being drunk by 14; teenage
girls drink as much as their male peers, but their bodies process it
badly...