A Young Couple Assesses Their Hazardous and Excessive Drinking and Their Short and Long-Term Dreams, Hopes, and Plans

Merissa and Augie have been in a dating relationship for five years. They met while taking the same social stratification class at a relatively large, countryside, private liberal arts college located in the Northern 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 third year of college.

Since both of them came from very old-fashioned backgrounds, neither one of them drank very much beyond the experimental stage when they first began dating. As the time advanced, nevertheless, they began to go to more sorority and fraternity parties, happy hours, keg parties, and football bashes. Consequently, they in a step-by-step fashion began to drink more as time passed by.

Their Social Life Frequently Consisted of Going to Restaurants Three or Four Nights Per Week, Going to Parties With Their Friends, Going to Professional Sporting Events, Going to Happy Hour With Their Friends, and Going With Their Friends to the Local Tavern on the Weekends

After they graduated from college, they both landed jobs in a relatively large city located around ninety miles from their undergraduate college. Then they finally decided to move into the same apartment together.

Due to the fact they were far removed from the college drinking scene, nonetheless, their social life generally consisted of going to happy hour with their friends, going to parties with their friends, going to professional sporting events, going to restaurants three or four nights per week, and going to the local tavern with their pals on the weekends. Stated simply, Augie and Merissa started to drink in an excessive and irresponsible manner.

Now that were living with one another and beginning to get more steadfast about their relationship, nonetheless, they began thinking about buying a house, getting married, having children, and becoming more responsible.

With any major change in an individual’s life there is usually something that elicits the specific transformation in question. For Augie and Merissa the idea of having children and buying a new house was this “vehicle for change.” Stated more explicitly, for the first time in their lives, Merissa and Augie began to critically appraise their irresponsible and abusive drinking and the long term effects of alcohol on their lives.

How Would Their Heavy Drinking Affect Their Finances, Their Ability to Have Children, Their Relationship With One Another, Their Mental Health, and Their Relationship With Their Parents?

Would their irresponsible and abusive drinking negatively affect their ability to have children? How would they be able to continue spending nearly all of their money on drinking if they were to start saving for a new house? How adult-like would they be if they had children and continued to drink in an abusive and hazardous 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 irresponsible manner while having fun as they did when they were in college? What would their hazardous and abusive drinking do to their relationship? How would their hazardous and irresponsible drinking affect their mental health?

From a different viewpoint, although neither one of them ever suffered from alcohol poisoning, received a DUI, or experienced alcohol withdrawal symptoms, they realized that their excessive and abusive drinking was becoming a problem that they could not ”sweep under the rug” any longer.

After Giving Their Situation Considerable Deliberation, Augie and Merissa Grasped the Fact That Their Goals, Aspirations, and Dreams Would not be Met if They Continued Their Heavy and Irresponsible Drinking

All of these queries plainly indicated the same conclusion: Merissa and Augie needed to discover that they couldn’t continue their heavy and excessive drinking if their dreams, aspirations, and hopes were to be made real.

Once they came to this conclusion, they told their drinking pals about their plans to start a family, about their goal of buying or building a new house, 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 in strict moderation from this time forward so that they could start to realize their future hopes, dreams, and plans.

Shockingly, all of their buddies expressed relief because they too had been reassessing their lives and concluded that their life-styles were much too frequently focused on drinking. They also understood that they would have to change extensively if they were to become more accountable and display more forethought for their careers, their aspirations, and for their health in the next fifteen or twenty years.

After their candid discussion with their buddies about their hopes, aspirations, and dreams, Augie and Merissa in reality started to have more meaningful relationships with all of their pals. The main reason for this was the fact that all of them had the same way of thinking regarding their hazardous and heavy drinking and their relatively short and long-term aspirations, goals, and plans.