In Shitfaced: Musings of a Former Drunk, Seamus Kirst explores the milestones of self-destruction that marked his coming of age. At 13, he went to the ER for swallowing a bottle of pills. By 16, he was already a veteran of several in- and out-patient rehab programs for alcohol. As he walked across the stage at his high school graduation – just after delivering his valedictorian address – he had already been hospitalized three times for alcohol poisoning. The situation only accelerated at Brown University, where he abused a plethora of drugs, from Xanax to cocaine, while his alcohol abuse intensified. Most terrifying was his attitude toward his own dissolution, his rationalization of behaviors that brought him ever closer to death. In that sense, Shitfaced, is not just a memoir, but a dehortation for those who find themselves in the same place; Kirst goes back to find a self that he barely survived.