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Augie and Merissa have been in a dating relationship for four-and-a-half years. They met while taking the same globalization and international affairs class at a small, countryside, private liberal arts college located in the Northern part of the United States. While they were only good friends at first, they finally started to date when they were in their first year of college.
Given the fact that both of them came from very old-fashioned backgrounds, neither one of them drank very much beyond the testing stage when they first started to date. As the time proceeded, however, they started to go to more sorority and fraternity parties, happy hours, keg parties, and football bashes. As a result, they over time began to drink more the more they dated.
Their Social Life Regularly Consisted of Going to Happy Hour With Their Friends, Going to Parties With Their Friends, Going to Restaurants Three or Four Nights Per Week, Going to Professional Sporting Events, and Going With Their Friends to the Local Tavern on the Weekends
After they graduated, they both got jobs in a small city that was located approximately seventy-five miles from their undergraduate college. Then they eventually decided to move into the same apartment together.
Since they were far removed from the college drinking scene, nonetheless, their social life commonly consisted of going to happy hour with their friends, going to professional sporting events, going to parties with their friends, going to restaurants three or four nights per week, and going to the local cabaret with their buddies on the weekends. Stated more precisely, Merissa and Augie began drinking in an irresponsible and excessive manner.
Now that they were living with each other and beginning to get more committed to their relationship, nevertheless, they started thinking about having children, becoming more responsible, buying a house, and getting married.
With any momentous change in a person’s life there is usually something that produces the specific change in question. For Augie and Merissa the notion of having children and buying a new house was this “mechanism of change.” In brief, for the first time in their lives, Merissa and Augie began to critically review their excessive and hazardous drinking and the long term effects of alcohol on their lives.
How Would Their Irresponsible and Hazardous Drinking Affect Their Ability to Have Children, Their Relationship With One Another, Their Relationship With Their Parents, Their Mental Health, and Their Finances?
Would their irresponsible and hazardous 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 begin saving for a new house? How responsible would they be if they had children and continued to drink in a hazardous and abusive manner? How would they be able to face their parents and tell them about their long term dreams, aspirations, and goals while they still drank in an excessive and hazardous manner while having fun as they did when they were in college? What would their excessive and irresponsible drinking do to their relationship? How would their excessive and heavy 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 irresponsible drinking was becoming a troublesome issue that they could not turn their backs on any longer.
After Giving Their State of Affairs Much Thought, Merissa and Augie Concluded That Their Goals, Dreams, and Aspirations Would not be Met if They Continued Their Heavy Drinking
All of these queries unmistakably indicated the same conclusion: Merissa and Augie needed to get a more complete picture of the fact that they couldn’t continue their abusive and hazardous drinking if their dreams, hopes, and aspirations 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 marital plans, and about their plans to start a family. They also told their drinking pals that they still wanted to hang out with them but that they would be drinking responsibly from this moment forward so that they could start realizing their future goals, dreams, and aspirations.
Much to their amazement, all of their friends expressed relief because they too had been deliberating on their lives and concluded that their life-styles were much too frequently focused on drinking. They also felt that they would have to change drastically if they were to become more mature and exhibit more thoughtfulness for their careers, their goals, and for their health in the next twenty or twenty-five years.
After their frank discussion with their friends about their aspirations, dreams, and goals, Augie and Merissa in effect started to have more meaningful relationships with all of their friends. The key reason for this was the fact that all of them had a similar mentality regarding their heavy and excessive drinking and their short and long-term plans, aspirations, and goals.
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