Merissa and Augie have been going out for five years. They met while taking the same travel and tourism class at a relatively large, countryside, private liberal arts college located in the Northern part of the United States. While they were only good buddies at first, they finally started to date when they were in their first year of college.

Because both of them came from very old-fashioned backgrounds, neither one of them drank very much beyond the experimental stage when they first started to date. As the time passed by, then again, they began to go to more football bashes, sorority and fraternity parties, keg parties, and happy hours. As a result, they little by little began to drink increasingly more the longer they saw one another in a dating capacity.

Their Social Life Typically 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 Bar and Grill on the Weekends

After they graduated from college, they both landed jobs in a large city that was roughly eighty-five miles from their undergraduate college. Then they at long last made up their mind to move into the same apartment with one another.

Given the fact that they were far removed from the college drinking scene, nevertheless, their social life frequently 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 nightspot with their friends on the weekends. Stated another way, Merissa and Augie began drinking in an irresponsible and excessive manner.

Now that they were living with each other and starting to get more earnest about their relationship, nevertheless, they started to think about becoming more responsible, getting married, buying a house, and having children.

With any pivotal adjustment in an individual’s life there is generally something that triggers the specific change in question. For Merissa and Augie the thought of buying a new house and having children was this “vehicle for change.” In a word, for the first time in their lives, Merissa and Augie began to critically assess their drinking and the long term alcohol effects on their lives.

How Would Their Heavy and Excessive 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 excessive drinking adversely affect their ability to have children? How would they be able to continue spending most 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 at their current pace? How would they be able to face their parents and tell them about their long term hopes, dreams, and aspirations while they still drank in a hazardous manner while having fun as they did when they were in college? What would their drinking behavior do to their relationship? How would their abusive drinking affect their mental health?

From a different line of reasoning, although neither one of them ever suffered from alcohol poisoning, received a DUI, or experienced alcohol withdrawals, they realized that their abusive and irresponsible drinking was becoming a troublesome issue that they could not discount any longer.

After Giving Their State of Affairs Some Serious Thought, Merissa and Augie Arrived at the Conclusion That Their Hopes, Dreams, and Plans Would not be Reached if They Continued Their Hazardous and Irresponsible Drinking

All of these uncertainties undeniably indicated the same conclusion: Augie and Merissa needed to comprehend more clearly that they couldn’t continue their excessive and irresponsible drinking if their plans, dreams, and hopes were to be brought to fruition.

Once they got to this conclusion, they told their drinking buddies about their marital plans, about their plans to start a family, and about their goal of buying or building a new house. They also told their drinking buddies that they still wanted to associate with them but that they would be drinking in strict moderation from this moment forward so that they could begin realizing their future dreams, hopes, and plans.

Unpredictably, all of their friends expressed relief because they too had been recalculating their lives and concluded that their life-styles were much too frequently centered around drinking. They also believed that they would have to change significantly if they were to become more mature and exhibit more concern for their goals, their health, and for their careers in the next twenty or twenty-five years.

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

Tags

Diets, Fitness & Weight Loss News, Lose Fat, Muscle Building and Toning, Weight Loss Tips