Augie and Merissa have been seeing one another for seven years. They met while taking the same physical education class at a relatively small, country, private liberal arts college located in the Southern part of the U.S. While they were in actual fact good buddies at first, they at long last began dating when they were in their second year of college.
Since both of them came from very ”old school” backgrounds, neither one of them drank very much beyond the testing stage when they first began dating. As the time passed by, however, they started to go to more sorority and fraternity parties, keg parties, happy hours, and football bashes. Consequently, they little by little began to drink increasingly more as time went by.
Their Social Life Usually Consisted of Going to Professional Sporting Events, Going to Restaurants Three or Four Nights Per Week, Going to Parties With Their Friends, Going to Happy Hour With Their Friends, and Going With Their Friends to the Local Bar and Grill on the Weekends
After they graduated, they both found jobs in a medium size city that was located just about seventy miles from their undergraduate college. Then they finally decided to move into the same apartment with one another.
Because they were far removed from the college drinking scene, however, their social life commonly consisted of going to professional sporting events, going to restaurants three or four nights per week, going to happy hour with their friends, going to parties with their friends, and going to the local discotheque with their pals on the weekends. Stated simply, Augie and Merissa started to drink in an abusive and excessive manner.
Now that they were living with each other and beginning to get more committed to their relationship, then again, they started to think about becoming more responsible, having children, buying a house, and getting married.
With any major adjustment in a person’s life there is typically something that prompts the specific adjustment in question. For Merissa and Augie the thought of having children and buying a new house was this “mechanism of change.” Stated another way, for the first time in their lives, Merissa and Augie started thinking about their excessive and abusive drinking and the long term effects of alcohol on their health.
How Would Their Heavy and Irresponsible Drinking Affect Their Ability to Have Children, Their Relationship With Their Parents, Their Mental Health, Their Finances, and Their Relationship With One Another?
Would their abusive and hazardous drinking unfavorably affect their ability to have children? How would they be able to continue spending so much money on drinking if they were to begin saving for a new house? How responsible would they be if they had children and continued to drink in a hazardous and excessive manner? How would they be able to face their parents and tell them about their long term plans, hopes, and dreams while they still drank in an excessive and abusive manner while having fun as they did when they were in college? What would their drinking behavior do to their relationship? How would their excessive and abusive drinking affect their mental health?
From a different perspective, although neither one of them ever suffered from alcohol poisoning, received a DUI, or experienced alcohol withdrawals, they realized that their abusive and excessive drinking was becoming a troublesome issue that they could not ”sweep under the carpet” any longer.
After Giving Their State of Affairs Much Deliberation, Augie and Merissa Finally Realized That Their Hopes, Dreams, and Plans Would not be Completed if They Continued Their Heavy and Abusive Drinking
All of these questions without a doubt indicated the same conclusion: Merissa and Augie needed to learn that they couldn’t continue their heavy and excessive drinking if their hopes, dreams, and plans were to be accomplished.
Once they got to this conclusion, they notified their drinking pals about their goal of buying or building a new house, about their plans to start a family, and about their marital plans. They also told their drinking buddies that they still wanted to hang around with them but that they would be drinking responsibly from this time forward so that they could begin realizing their future aspirations, dreams, and hopes.
Much to their amazement, all of their friends expressed relief because they too had been contemplating their lives and concluded that their life-styles were much too frequently centered around drinking. They also felt that they would have to change fundamentally if they were to become more adult-like and display more consideration for their health, their plans, and for their careers in the next five or ten years.
After their candid discussion with their friends about their goals, aspirations, and dreams, Merissa and Augie essentially started to have more meaningful relationships with all of their buddies. The primary reason for this was the fact that all of them had a similar outlook regarding their irresponsible and abusive drinking and their relatively short and long-term plans, aspirations, and goals.
