A Young Couple Appraises Their Abusive and Excessive Drinking and Their Short and Long-Term Dreams, Plans, and Hopes
Merissa and Augie have been in a dating relationship for four years. They met while taking the same social stratification class at a medium size, coun...
Merissa and Augie have been in a dating relationship for four years. They met while taking the same social stratification class at a medium size, countryside, private liberal arts college located in the Northern part of the United States. While they were chiefly good buddies at first, they finally started dating when they were in their second year of college.
Due to the fact both of them came from very conservative backgrounds, neither one of them drank very much beyond the casual drinking stage when they first began dating. As the time advanced, nevertheless, they began to go to more football bashes, sorority and fraternity parties, keg parties, and happy hours. As a consequence, they in a step-by-step fashion began to drink increasingly more the longer they interacted with one another.
Their Social Life Generally Consisted of Going to Parties With Their Friends, Going to Restaurants Three or Four Nights Per Week, Going to Happy Hour With Their Friends, Going to Professional Sporting Events, and Going With Their Friends to the Local Disco on the Weekends
After they graduated from college, they both found employment in a relatively small city that was just about seventy-five miles from their undergraduate college. Then they eventually decided to move in with one another.
Since they were far removed from the college drinking scene, however, their social life regularly consisted of going to restaurants three or four nights per week, going to parties with their friends, going to happy hour with their friends, going to professional sporting events, and going to the local bar with their friends on the weekends. In brief, Augie and Merissa started to drink in an excessive and abusive manner.
Now that were living with one another and starting to get more earnest about their relationship, then again, they began thinking about having children, becoming more responsible, buying a house, and getting married.
With any significant change in a person’s life there is regularly something that prompts the specific modification in question. For Merissa and Augie the idea of buying a new house and having children was this “catalyst.” To put it simply, for the first time in their lives, Augie and Merissa started to reflect on their excessive drinking and the long term effects of alcohol on their health.
How Would Their Heavy and Abusive 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 hazardous drinking adversely 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 a hazardous and excessive manner? How would they be able to face their parents and tell them about their long term dreams, goals, and aspirations while they still drank in an irresponsible and excessive 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 heavy and hazardous 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 withdrawal symptoms, they realized that their abusive and irresponsible drinking was becoming a problem that they could not discount any longer.
After Giving Their Circumstances Some Serious Thought, Augie and Merissa Grasped the Fact That Their Goals, Aspirations, and Dreams Would not be Fulfilled if They Continued Their Hazardous Drinking
All of these uncertainties unmistakably resulted in the same conclusion: Merissa and Augie needed to realize that they couldn’t continue their irresponsible drinking if their plans, hopes, and dreams were to be completed.
Once they got to this conclusion, they alerted their drinking pals about their plans to start a family, about their goal of buying or building a new house, and about their marital plans. They also told their drinking buddies that they still wanted to hang out with them but that they would be drinking responsibly from this point forward so that they could begin realizing their future plans, dreams, and hopes.
Much to their wonder, all of their friends expressed relief because they too had been mulling over their lives and concluded that their life-styles were too focused on drinking. They also believed that they would have to change significantly if they were to become more adult-like and display more respect for their careers, their plans, and for their health in the next twenty or twenty-five years.
After their heart-to-heart discussion with their pals about their hopes, plans, and dreams, Augie and Merissa in reality started to have more meaningful relationships with all of their pals. The fundamental reason for this was the fact that all of them were on the same wave-length regarding their hazardous and irresponsible drinking and their relatively short and long-term plans, aspirations, and goals.