When I was 16 I was focused on getting my driver's permit and trying not to fight with whichever parent of mine sat next to me in the passenger seat. I was focusing on doing well in the sports that I played in high school because competing has always been a priority to me. I was passionate about staying close with friends and hungout with them every weekend. I was instilled with the values that underage drinking was dangerous and nothing good became of it. I viewed alcohol as an adult thing and I was simply just a kid.

The 16 year old me is very different than the 16 year olds growing up after me. According to sadd.org, "Alcohol use remains extremely widespread among today’s teenagers. Nearly three quarters of students (72%) have consumed alcohol (more than just a few sips) by the end of high school, and more than a third (37%) have done so by eighth grade."

Today's teenagers are living different lives. Even though it may seem extreme, some are spending Friday nights passed out in lawns, looking to older siblings to buy them alcohol, and stealing from their parents to afford trips to the liquor store.

While college may seem like the perfect opportunity for kids who didn't party as much in high school to finally get their chance at cracking open a cold one, this isn't always the case. Entering college with this mindset will ruin you. It will be too much and you will overuse and overdo your new alcohol freedoms easily, crossing the line between what is normal and what is abusing.

Eventually you will wake up in your lofted bed to find an empty bag of Doritos as your only companion and you still wearing last night's outfit. Your breathe will smell stale and your hair will have a million knots that seem impossible to untangle. Your eyeliner will be goopy and your body will ache even though you haven't done one ounce of physical activity since high school. You will stare at your reflection and find bruises and cuts that weren't there the night before and scratches that make it look like you have been in a fight. These are no victory wounds, these are no badges of honor, these are pain, these are proof that sometimes an innocent night out doesn't turn into an oh-so-innocent morning.

Alcohol gives you no power, yes it has the ability to temporary dissolve pain and the properties to make you feel invincible, but these feelings won't last forever. Eventually the warm fuzzy feeling of being whole goes away leaving you with nothing but a massive headache in the morning and no motivation for your schoolwork.

So let's stop glamorizing drinking issues and substance abuse as just being a "college student's normal behavior" because not every student is waking up with little to no recollection of the night before and bruises all over their bare body. Not every student is embarrassed of the videos of themselves on their friend's snapchat story. Not every students' first priority is to shower so they can regain some sense of purity.

The realities of college parties are not always fun. Our clothes are stained with colorful bubbles, solo cups are practically begging to be spilled and knocked over. The soles of our shoes are sticky and everything we brought with us got lost through out the night, including our phone charger with our phone at 1%. We lose our friends, we lose our decision making, and sometimes we can get to the point where we lose control over our own bodies, which is maybe the scariest concept of all.

These are the realities that people who go out every weekend will be sure not to tell you when they talk about their night. They will show you only the peachy fuzzy feeling they got when they danced on that elevated surface.

So was it all really worth it? Does a successful night have to mean blacking out and getting so intoxicated that you don't remember everything you did. Does it have to start with 3 shots before you even get to the party. What I have learned from college is that sometimes the wounds just simply aren't worth the pain.