A review by books_by_bethany
Smacked: A Story of White-Collar Ambition, Addiction, and Tragedy by Eilene B. Zimmerman

3.0

3.5 Stars. In the memoir Smacked, Eileen Zimmerman recounts the shock of finding out about her ex-husband’s secret life as a drug addict. Over time, she and her children begin to notice that her ex-husband Peter, a wealthy lawyer, has changed. Peter is constantly acting odd, has lost a ton of weight, and is always sick. He claims it is due to an autoimmune disease and stress from work. While he was addicted to work, he was also secretly addicted to cocaine, opioids, and methamphetamine.

I found the story of Eileen’s life with her ex-husband and children to be extremely interesting, and I wanted even more details. Eileen describes how they met and the time leading up to their wedding, but then skips ahead to them getting divorced, and skips ahead a bit more after that to when the drug problem has began. The memoir is fairly short, and by Part 3 I felt like it went away from her story and read more like a research paper, quoting facts and information on substance abuse and mental health. As a memoir, I would have liked it even more if it was just a focus on her family, versus a significant portion of the book on facts and statistics regarding addiction in the corporate world, millennials, and the upcoming Generation Z.