Augie and Merissa have been going out for four years. They met while taking the same website design class at a relatively large, countryside, liberal arts college located in the far Western part of the United States. While they were mainly good buddies at first, they finally started dating when they were in their second year of college.
Because both of them came from very traditional backgrounds, neither one of them drank very much beyond the social drinking stage when they first started to date. As the time went by, however, they began to go to more keg parties, happy hours, football bashes, and sorority and fraternity parties. As a result, they slowly but surely began to drink more as time passed by.
Their Social Life Usually Consisted of Going to Parties With Their Friends, Going to Restaurants Three or Four Nights Per Week, Going to Happy Hour With Their Friends, Going to Professional Sporting Events, and Going With Their Friends to the Local Cabaret on the Weekends
After they graduated, they both got jobs in a medium size city that was 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 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 to the local cabaret with their friends on the weekends. In brief, Merissa and Augie started to drink quite abusively.
Now that they were living in the same apartment with one another and starting to get more unwavering about their relationship, then again, they began to think about buying a house, becoming more responsible, having children, and getting married.
With any significant alteration in an individual’s life there is commonly something that causes the specific alteration in question. For Merissa and Augie the notion of having children and buying a new house was this “change agent.” Stated more explicitly, for the first time in their lives, Merissa and Augie started to critically review their excessive drinking and the long term alcohol effects on their health.
How Would Their Heavy and Excessive Drinking Affect Their Relationship With Their Parents, Their Mental Health, Their Finances, Ability to Have Children, and Their Relationship With One Another?
Would their heavy and excessive drinking unfavorably 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 begin saving for a new house? How responsible would they be if they had children and continued to drink in an abusive and irresponsible manner? How would they be able to face their parents and tell them about their long term dreams, goals, and aspirations while they still drank in an abusive 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 irresponsible and abusive 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 withdrawals, they realized that their heavy and hazardous drinking was becoming a problem that they could not close their eyes to anymore.
After Giving Their State of Affairs Considerable Thought, Merissa and Augie Arrived at the Conclusion That Their Goals, Aspirations, and Dreams Would not be Reached if They Continued Their Heavy and Excessive Drinking
All of these inquiries undoubtedly led to the same conclusion: Merissa and Augie needed to grasp the fact that they couldn’t continue their heavy and hazardous drinking if their dreams, aspirations, and goals were to be fulfilled.
Once they settled upon this conclusion, they alerted 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 friends that they still wanted to associate with them but that they would be drinking responsibly from this moment forward so that they could start realizing their future dreams, aspirations, and goals.
Unpredictably, all of their pals expressed relief because they too had been deliberating on their lives and concluded that their life-styles were totally focused on drinking. They also believed that they would have to change notably if they were to become more mature and show more care for their plans, their careers, and for their health in the next fifteen or twenty years.
After their frank chat with their friends about their dreams, aspirations, and goals, Merissa and Augie in essence started to have more meaningful relationships with all of their pals. The main reason for this was the fact that all of them had a similar outlook regarding their hazardous and heavy drinking and their relatively short and long-term plans, aspirations, and goals.
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