I think for one, we have to really accept that anger is a normal human emotion that can be a positive force for change.

My demeanor isn't that of a woman enraged. To see me slumped, glassy-eyed, holding a sandwich someone has cut for me into four "manageable" pieces, a person might tell you I look much more like a woman subdued.

For the first month of school, writing is its own upper. Pounding on my computer keys feels like playing the piano, like arranging words into harmony that sings back to me.

Like most women, I remember my first drink in tender minutiae.

Without a bottle to hold, I feel incomplete, the way Plato says we are each born only half a circle, and we spend out lives seeking out our other half. A drink is my beloved. Without it, I am wanting; I feel half finished.

I grew up in a family that despised displays of strong emotion, rage in particular. We stewed. We sulked. When arguments did occur, they were full-scale conniptions, and we regarded them as family failings.

But in college, we can wear our alcohol abuse as proudly as our university sweatshirts; the two concepts are virtually synonymous.