As children we are taught to believe that when the clock strikes midnight and we embark on our twenty-first year of life, a magical alcohol ban lifts from our bodies. Once we grow a little older, it becomes clear that there is no such thing.

When we reach this point in our lives, it may be easy to take a couple of swigs from a red plastic cup without walking away in handcuffs, but it can be harder to face the consequences of what seems like “harmless partying.” When a 17-year-old transitions from alcohol use to alcohol abuse, they sometimes don’t realize it’s abuse at all.

We all know alcohol is physically addictive. According to projectknow.com, when alcohol is consumed, a person develops a tolerance, meaning they have to drink more alcohol to feel “buzzed” or to get drunk.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines alcohol abuse as a pattern of drinking that results in harm to one’s health, interpersonal relationships or ability to work. According to livestrong.com, alcohol abuse can cause depression, low self esteem, argumentativeness, weight gain, a disinterest in previously pleasurable activities, a drop in grades and recklessness.

Of course, alcohol can be more than physically addictive. Heavy drinking as a teenager can cause growth effects, long-term cognitive damage, neurologic injury and higher chance of liver damage to the developing body.

Despite these potentially adverse consequences, 49 percent of South students drink alcohol at varying frequencies according to an Oracle-conducted survey of 293 students. This is no shock; experimenting with alcohol is often shrugged off as “typical adolescent behavior.”

But who’s to say that when you’re having a rough day you won’t remember how relaxed you felt drinking and wind up alone in your room using alcohol to feel better? You’re starting to rely on it to cope with life, and that’s alcohol abuse.

Obviously you’ve crossed a line, but it takes a lot of willpower to resist a quick release when you’re at your lowest point. Suddenly it’s a lot harder to limit your alcohol consumption to a few drinks on the weekend.

But according to social worker David Hartman, alcohol abuse can even manifest on a smaller scale too.

“Kids who are rationalizing their use of alcohol, like, ‘I can’t talk to boys unless I drink,’ or ‘I can’t have fun unless I drink’ […] all those things are denying the impact that alcohol has,” Hartman said.

After all, if you can’t handle the little things of life sober, what are you going to do when the bigger problems, like a breakup or family problems, occur?

The thing is, no one wants to admit they’re losing self-control on any level. In the same Oracle-conducted survey, 65 percent of students admitted to knowing a teenager with an alcohol problem, while only 3 percent of students thought that they had an alcohol problem themselves; the numbers don’t quite match up.

According to the CDC, teens who start drinking before the age 15 are five times more likely to develop alcohol dependence later in life than those who begin drinking after age 21. Alcohol dependence, or alcoholism, is a physical addiction to alcohol and is the most severe type of alcohol problem.

Obviously not everyone who drinks in high school will go on to develop alcoholism or alcohol abuse, but just because drinking is fun now doesn’t mean it won’t ever lead to alcohol problems later on down the road.

Whether or not you’re going to drink in high school and how much you’re going to drink is your decision, but you should first feel like you can refuse a drink and become aware of why you’re drinking in the first place. Then it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it to take another sip.