1. What used to be "pregaming" is now the whole party. A night is no longer split into pregaming, going out, and the after-party. Nor, after that, the hotel lobby. You can have a few drinks at your house and feel perfectly satisfied instead of like, "This is the beginning of the most epic night ever." (You have long learned that it will never be the most epic night ever.)

2. You don't save water bottles so that you can bring vodka sodas with you in the cab on the way to the club. Fortunately, you have enough disposable income by this point to buy a drink when you get there. Furthermore, such "roadies" now gross the shit out of you.

3. You get tipsy off a bottle of semi-nice wine instead of the second cheapest vodka mixed with that old mango-orange-you-don't-know-why-you-bought-this-flavor-in-the-first-place juice that's been sitting in your fridge.

4. Shots make you want to barf.

5. Ditto any sort of cocktail that involves dressing a shot or two of alcohol up in a thick sweater of syrupy liquor/juice/plain sugar.

6. If that "Shots! Shots! Shots!" song comes on, you will pick up your purse, and walk right out the door. Hard pass on that song. Hard. Pass.

7. You party hardest when you're at a wedding. Only because it's just about the only time you're in the presence of alcohol for five to seven hours at a time with little else to do but drink it.

8. When you wake up in the morning, you can count the exact number of drinks you had the night before. Because you no longer stay out and drink for so long that you lose count of every lemon drop, tequila, and sambuca (WHY, EW, WHY) shot you had over the course of the night. Oh, and that wine you had before you even left your house. (You and your roommate used to try to remember all of this the morning after and it was like, LOLZ.)

9. You don't consume five kinds of alcohol in one night. And you chase your drinks with water or seltzer because you're Good About That now.

10. Going out can be done in flat sneakers and cutoffs. When you see girls going out in stilettos and bandage dresses that keep riding up their butts when they walk, you feel a sense of calm knowing that your own phase of self-imposed sartorial nightclub discomfort has passed.

11. Nightclubs hurt your soul.

12. If the bar is too crowded or loud, you'll leave to go to a different one. Where you can hear yourself think and move your arms and have a real conversation with the people you came with.

13. You know it's dumb to wait in lines to get into places. Because you know booze tastes the same whether there's a line outside to buy it or not.

14. Your favorite drink is now one that "doesn't make you sleepy." But one that ALSO isn't an energy drink because you've read those studies and you'll pass.

15. A lot of the time, you prefer to just stay in and watch a movie. Because you don't want to worry about getting home in time to get to bed early enough to make your 10 a.m. yoga class, and you most definitely don't want to drink so much that you feel disgusting when you get there.

16. When you hear "open bar," you automatically envision big, long, ugly lines that you do not want to wait in. You'd rather pay for drinks than fight a huge crowd of people for free ones that probably have so little alcohol in them they just taste like Emergen-C dissolved in water.

17. You actually wash your face, brush your teeth, and put on pajamas when you get home, rather than just face-plant onto your bed. Sometimes, you even floss. Because you are in your late 20s now, and you have your shit together like that.

RELATED:
The Stages of Partying, by AgeThe 18 Best Things About Being in Your Late 20s16 Signs You're Finally, Actually Becoming a Grown Up

Follow Amy on Twitter.

Headshot of Amy Odell
Amy Odell
editor

Amy Odell is the former editor of Cosmopolitan.com. Chief amongst her interests are cats and Beyonce. She is a feminist (thank you for asking) and ex-fashion journalist. She is the author of the hilarious book of essays, Tales from the Back Row: An Outsider’s View From Inside the Fashion Industry.