Bacardi O is my kryptonite—when my nose comes within 15 feet of the rancid smell of orange and that “superior" Puerto Rican rum, it's enough to make me gag, eliciting memories of one particular fall night during my sophomore year of high school. I’d had wine many times before, never really cared for the taste of beer and thought it was time to give hard liquor a go. After my friend Marisa’s parents went out for a Saturday night dinner, four of my friends and I decided to sneak into the liquor cabinet and take out anything we could sneakily replace with water—Bacardi O was the chosen one. After mixing it with some Sprite in a classic red Solo cup and cranking up Destiny Child’s “Jumpin’ Jumpin’” (a turn of the century classic, of course), we were all having fun. The cups continued to floweth as the night wore on, but once The Writing's on the Wall had run its course, we realized we’d finished the 750mL bottle of B.O. (as I now affectionately refer to that one-night beverage of choice) and the room was spinning. I tried to lay down on Marisa’s couch, but that only made it worse. Then came the sounds of my friend Sierra vomiting off of Marisa’s deck, followed by the smell of the said B.O.-saturated vomit wafting into the house. And, that did it for me.

I spent the next half hour hugging porcelain in Marisa’s bathroom until my friends dragged me into our designated driver’s car because Marisa’s parents were about to come home and they couldn’t see us in the state we were in. So, I spent the remainder of the evening ridding my body of its remaining contents of Bacardi O via regurgitation in the back of our local diner’s parking lot. Not my finest moment, to say the least. But, some good did come out of it—at that point I knew, four mixed drinks was way beyond my limit.

All of you probably have a similar story—though I’d hope it’s just one. It takes just one puking session to make you realize that you definitely had too much of whatever it was you were obliviously sipping or chugging and I’d imagine that’s enough to help you learn not to repeat your boundary crossing alcohol consumption line again. Still, however, many people do not “know their limit,” as they say, when it comes to drinking. A study from Britain’s YouGov, according to BBC News, found that only 36 percent of adult women and 50 percent of adult men knew their recommended daily drinking limits were two to three units and three to four units respectively, where a unit is as 10 milliliters or approximately 8 grams of pure alcohol. (You can go to Know Your Limit’s site to find out how many units you’re consuming regularly.) But among those, not all stuck to that limit—44 percent of those who were aware of the suggested daily drinking limits (which, of course, vary based on the size of the person) said that they had not learned to stick to the recommended number of drinks. Additionally, much to researchers’ surprise, younger people were more up to date on these limits—32 percent of drinkers aged 18 to 24 correctly stated that a large glass of wine contains three units, compared with almost half, 18 percent of those who were over 55.

While we might have beat our parents’ and grandparents’ knowledge on that front, 32 percent is not something to pat ourselves on the backs for. That means 68 percent still don’t know how much alcohol it takes to get drunk, or way past the point of being drunk. According to the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, as reported by MSNBC, 65 percent of the 11 million underage drinkers in the United States binge drink (i.e. consume more than five drinks on one occasion).

Alcohol no doubt decreases our inhibitions and that’s probably why we like it—it gives you the balls to approach the guy or girl you’ve had a crush on all year, to dance and not care who’s watching, and to let go of other stressors going on in your life. But, it shouldn’t give you the ability to completely lose control of your life. “There’s a thin line between losing your inhibitions and losing control of yourself, and that's the line you don't want to cross,” says Naomi Rockler-Gladen in “College Drinking: Know Your Limit.” “Losing your inhibitions may cause you to engage in silly, loud, or unusually bold behavior. You may look back on these things in the morning and cringe, but there probably won't be any dire consequences (unless you die from embarrassment). However, when someone loses control of their behavior, that's when they can put themselves in danger or become a danger to others… There's a point when the lousy effects of alcohol outweigh the fun effects.” And that point is probably already past your limit.

What it comes down to is just holding yourself accountable for what you can handle—your best friend might be toasted after two shots and another might be able to chug a six pack easily, but you have to know what’s right for you. We all have our signs. You know those mannerisms that surface as the drink count rises. My sister tends to flip her hair Kelly Kapowski-style when she’s had enough and one of my best friends in high school use take guys’ baseball hats off and wear them backwards when she reached the line of intoxication. Like the following poll question from Ramen Addict on Yahoo! shows, there are as many different answers to the “How do you ‘know your limit’ with alcohol?” question as there are responses, from continuously smiling to the urination urge.

It’s easy to know when you’ve had too much (see the notorious B.O. Incident of ’00 above as a reference), but, as statistics indicate, it’s not as easy to know when you’ve had just enough. “If you feel good after four drinks, this doesn't mean you'll feel good after eight drinks, when you're puking and hungover and feel like you've been run over by a rhinoceros,” Naomi Rockler-Gladen explains in “College Drinking: Know Your Limit.” “More is not better.” Don’t wait for the room to start spinning and the gag reflex to get triggered to cut yourself off. If you’ve had an experience similar to mine, simply subtract the number of drinks you had that time by one or two and you should be fine. “Remember,” as Rockler-Gladen advises, “it's highly unlikely that tomorrow morning, you're going to regret that you didn't drink enough. It's much more likely that you're going to regret getting wasted.” And never be able to look at [insert name of appropriate alcoholic beverage of downfall here] again.