Self Improvement

Augie and Merissa have been seeing one another for six years. They met while taking the same dance class at a relatively large, countryside, Church affiliated liberal arts college located in the Western part of the United States. While they were mainly 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 social drinking stage when they first began dating. As the time passed by, then again, they started to go to more football bashes, keg parties, sorority and fraternity parties, and happy hours. As a result, they over time began to drink increasingly more the longer they saw one another in a dating capacity.

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

After they graduated, they both landed jobs in a relatively large city located nearly fifty miles from their undergraduate college. Then they at long last decided to move in with each other.

Because they were far removed from the college drinking scene, then again, their social life regularly consisted of going to happy hour with their friends, going to restaurants three or four nights per week, going to parties with their friends, going to professional sporting events, and going to the local nightclub with their buddies on the weekends. To come to the point, Merissa and Augie started to drink in an abusive and hazardous manner.

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

With any major change in an individual’s life there is usually something that initiates the particular change in question. For Augie and Merissa the notion of buying a new house and having children was this “mechanism of change.” Stated more explicitly, for the first time in their lives, Merissa and Augie started to reflect on their drinking behavior and the alcohol long term effects on their health.

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

Would their abusive and excessive drinking negatively affect their ability to have children? How would they be able to continue spending almost all of their money on drinking if they were to start saving for a new house? How mature would they be if they had children and continued to drink in a hazardous and irresponsible manner? How would they be able to face their parents and tell them about their long term hopes, dreams, and plans while they still drank in an excessive 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 and excessive 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 withdrawal symptoms, they realized that their abusive and excessive drinking was becoming a problem that they could not turn their backs on any longer.

After Giving Their Situation Considerable Deliberation, Augie and Merissa Finally Understood That Their Aspirations, Dreams, and Goals Would not be Met if They Continued Their Drinking Behavior

All of these questions undoubtedly pointed to the same conclusion: Augie and Merissa needed to grasp the fact that they couldn’t continue their irresponsible and hazardous drinking if their hopes, aspirations, and dreams were to be fulfilled.

Once they got to this conclusion, they informed their drinking buddies 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 pal around with them but that they would be drinking responsibly from this point forward so that they could begin realizing their future aspirations, goals, and dreams.

Much to their surprise, all of their pals expressed relief because they too had been pondering the direction of their lives and concluded that their life-styles were much too often centered around drinking. They also thought that they would have to change substantially if they were to become more accountable and exhibit more thoughtfulness for their plans, their careers, and for their health in the next twenty or twenty-five years.

After their frank chat with their buddies about their dreams, goals, and aspirations, Merissa and Augie actually started to have more meaningful relationships with all of their buddies. The fundamental reason for this was the fact that all of them had a similar attitude regarding their hazardous and irresponsible drinking and their relatively short and long-term plans, aspirations, and goals.