Getting Healthy

Augie and Merissa have been in a dating relationship for seven years. They met while taking the same marketing class at a relatively small, country, liberal arts college located in the Midwestern part of the United States. While they were simply good friends at first, they finally started dating when they were in their second year of college.

Given the fact that both of them came from very conventional backgrounds, neither one of them drank much beyond the casual drinking stage when they first started to date. As the time advanced, however, they started to go to more football bashes, sorority and fraternity parties, happy hours, and keg parties. As a result, they gradually began to drink increasingly more the longer they saw one another in a dating capacity.

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

After they graduated from college, they both got jobs in a relatively small city that was approximately ninety miles from their undergraduate college. Then they finally made up their mind to move into the same apartment with one another.

Since they were far removed from the college drinking scene, nevertheless, their social life as a rule 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 nightclub with their pals on the weekends. In brief, Augie and Merissa began drinking in an abusive and hazardous manner.

Now that they were living in the same apartment together and starting to get more committed to their relationship, then again, they began to think about buying a house, having children, getting married, and becoming more responsible.

With any big adjustment in a person’s life there is generally a trigger the particular transformation in question. For Augie and Merissa the notion of having children and buying a new house was this “mechanism of change.” Stated simply, for the first time in their lives, Augie and Merissa began to critically assess their drinking and the long term alcohol effects on their lives.

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

Would their abusive and heavy 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 mature would they be if they had children and continued to drink in an irresponsible and excessive manner? How would they be able to face their parents and tell them about their long term hopes, aspirations, and dreams while they still drank in an irresponsible and abusive manner while having fun as they did when they were in college? What would their excessive and abusive drinking do to their relationship? How would their irresponsible and hazardous 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 irresponsible and hazardous drinking was becoming a reality that they could not ”sweep under the rug” any longer.

After Giving Their Situation Much Deliberation, Merissa and Augie Arrived at the Conclusion That Their Aspirations, Hopes, and Dreams Would not be Met if They Continued Their Drinking Behavior

All of these inquiries plainly led to the same conclusion: Merissa and Augie needed to comprehend more clearly that they couldn’t continue their excessive and abusive drinking if their dreams, goals, and aspirations were to be completed.

Once they settled upon this conclusion, they advised 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 hang around with them but that they would be drinking responsibly from this point forward so that they could start to realize their future hopes, aspirations, and dreams.

Much to their disbelief, all of their buddies expressed relief because they too had been reassessing their lives and concluded that their life-styles were much too often centered around drinking. They also believed that they would have to change drastically if they were to become more responsible and exhibit more thoughtfulness for their health, their careers, and for their aspirations in the next twenty or twenty-five years.

After their frank chat with their friends about their plans, dreams, and hopes, Merissa and Augie essentially started to have more meaningful relationships with all of their buddies. The main reason for this was the fact that all of them had the same attitude regarding their heavy and irresponsible drinking and their relatively short and long-term goals, aspirations, and plans.

Related posts:

1. A Young Couple Reviews Their Abusive and Irresponsible Drinking and Their Short and Long-Term Dreams, Hopes, and Plans
2. A Married Couple Gets Anxious About Their Irresponsible and Excessive Drinking and Ponders Whether They Exhibit Any Signs of Alcohol Dependency
3. A Woman Manifest Symptoms of Alcohol Dependency and Depression and Schedules an Appointment to See Her Medical Practitioner About Her Irresponsible and Excessive Drinking
4. A Thursday Evening Out With School Friends at a Local Saloon Leads To Irresponsible Drinking and Alcohol Poisoning
5. When Excessive and Irresponsible Drinking Results in Serious Health Problems