Augie and Merissa have been seeing one another for seven-and-a-half years. They met while taking the same anthropology class at a small, countryside, private liberal arts college located in the Southern part of the United States. While they were basically 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 strict backgrounds, neither one of them drank much beyond the testing stage when they first started to date. As the time progressed, nevertheless, they began to go to more keg parties, sorority and fraternity parties, happy hours, and football bashes. As a result, they steadily began to drink increasingly more as time passed by.

Their Social Life Commonly 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 Nightspot on the Weekends

After they graduated, they both found jobs in a relatively small city located approximately sixty miles from their undergraduate college. Then they finally decided to move into the same apartment together.

Because they were far removed from the college drinking scene, however, their social life generally consisted of going to restaurants three or four nights per week, going to professional sporting events, going to parties with their friends, going to happy hour with their friends, and going to the local cabaret with their buddies on the weekends. In short, Merissa and Augie started to drink in an abusive manner.

Now that they were living in the same apartment together and beginning to get more earnest about their relationship, however, they started thinking about buying a house, becoming more responsible, getting married, and having children.

With any big change in a person’s life there is generally something that triggers the particular modification in question. For Augie and Merissa the idea of having children and buying a new house was this “source of change.” Stated more explicitly, for the first time in their lives, Augie and Merissa started to critically assess their hazardous and excessive drinking and the long term alcohol effects on their health.

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

Would their heavy and abusive 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 accountable would they be if they had children and continued to drink in an abusive and excessive manner? How would they be able to face their parents and tell them about their long term dreams, hopes, and plans while they still drank in an excessive and hazardous manner while having fun as they did when they were in college? What would their heavy drinking do to their relationship? How would their excessive and abusive drinking affect their mental health?

From a different slant on things, although neither one of them ever suffered from alcohol poisoning, received a DUI, or experienced alcohol withdrawals, they realized that their irresponsible and abusive drinking was becoming a thorny issue that they could not overlook any longer.

After Giving Their Situation Much Thought, Augie and Merissa Concluded That Their Aspirations, Goals, and Dreams Would not be Completed if They Continued Their Heavy and Irresponsible Drinking

All of these questions undoubtedly pointed to the same conclusion: Augie and Merissa needed to realize that they couldn’t continue their abusive and heavy drinking if their dreams, hopes, and aspirations were to be completed.

Once they settled upon 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 pal around with them but that they would be drinking responsibly from this time forward so that they could start realizing their future hopes, plans, and dreams.

Much to their disbelief, all of their buddies expressed relief because they too had been reevaluating their lives and concluded that their life-styles were totally focused on drinking. They also thought that they would have to change notably if they were to become more mature and display more thoughtfulness for their health, their careers, and for their aspirations in the next ten or fifteen years.

After their heart-to-heart conversation with their pals about their goals, dreams, and aspirations, Augie and Merissa 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 attitude regarding their excessive and hazardous drinking and their relatively short and long-term aspirations, goals, and plans.