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.

I dont know where the idea originated that memoir writing is cathartic. For me, its always felt like playing my own neurosurgeon, sans anesthesia. As a memoirist, you have to crack your head open and examine every uncomfortable thing in there.

There's a limit to my patience with anything that smacks of metaphysics. I squirm at the mention of "mind expansion" or "warm healing energy." I don't like drum circles, public nudity or strangers touching my feet.

I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one's own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I'd made a habit--and eventually a profession--of memoir because I hail from one of those families where shows of emotions are discouraged.

I think statistics go in one ear and out the other. All of us respond to stories more than numbers.

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.

But lately, when I’m drunk, I feel a hostility that I’ve never known before. It is a tension deep in my gut that makes me want to yell until my face is red, knock over glasses with the back of my hand, and kick people I don’t know in the shins.