Sherry and Bruce have been dating for eight years. They met while taking the same music composition class at a relatively small, rural, Church affiliated liberal arts college located in western Texas. While at first they were simply classmates, they quickly became friends and their relationship started to develop even further when they started to date when they were in their sophomore year of college.
Since Bruce and Sherry came from old school, deeply religious families, neither one of them drank very much beyond the trial phase like they did while they were in high school. The more they dated, nevertheless, the more they began developing their social life outside of the classroom by regularly attending various activities such as soccer pep rallies, impromptu keg parties, hanging out with their friends at happy hour, and attending sorority and fraternity parties. Because drinking was so common during or after these activities, Sherry and Bruce started to drink increasingly more as their dating relationship progressed.
After they graduated with a BA degree, Sherry and Bruce decided to move to the big city that was located roughly seventy-five from their college and find an apartment that they could share. A few weeks after they moved in with one another, they were fortunate to find fairly good jobs in the same medium-size company.
After working for around six or seven months, Sherry and Bruce started to develop a small circle of friends. Much like they had done while they were at college, most of the events and activities they went to with their friends somehow revolved around drinking. Not surprisingly, the more they partied with their friends, the more they engaged in excessive and careless drinking.
Something started to change in their lives, however, after Bruce and Sherry had been living together around two years. As unlikely as it sounds, as their drinking continued, their relationship still managed to deepen. Now, however, instead of thinking about where the next party was, they actually started talking about getting married, having a family, and moving into a house. In a word, Bruce and Sherry started thinking about becoming more responsible adults.
With most significant changes in a persons life there is typically something that sets off the particular change in question. For Bruce and Sherry, the idea of moving out of their apartment and into a house, getting married, and starting a family was this change agent. Furthermore, for the first time that they could remember, they began wondering whether their hazardous drinking could negatively affect their health in the near future.
As Bruce and Sherry started to think more seriously about their partying and their drinking, a number of additional questions quickly emerged. For example, would their hazardous and abusive drinking negatively affect their ability to have children? How would their excessive drinking affect their mental health? How would they be able to face their parents and tell them about their long-term aspirations, dreams, and hopes while they still drank in a careless and immature manner as they did when they were in undergraduate school? How responsible would they be if they had children and continued to drink in a careless and unhealthy manner? How would they be able to continue spending most of their money on drinking if they were to begin saving for a new house? And finally, what would their hazardous drinking do to their relationship?
From a different way of looking at things, even though Bruce and Sherry never suffered through an alcohol overdose, experienced alcohol withdrawal symptoms, or received a DUI, they became conscious of the fact that their immature and irresponsible drinking was becoming a thorny issue that they could not sweep under the rug anymore.
The more that Bruce and Sherry questioned their party lifestyle and their drinking, the more they came to the same conclusion: if they were to reach their goals, hopes, and aspirations, they would have to stop drinking in a careless and immature manner.
Once Bruce and Sherry arrived at this deduction, they had a conversation with their friends and told them that they had decided to stop their partying and excessive drinking because they had plans to get married, have children, and to move into a house. Much to their surprise, their friends expressed relief because they too had been reflecting on their lives and decided that their abusive drinking was stopping them from realizing their goals and aspirations.
After their heart-to-heart discussion with their friends about their future plans, hopes, and aspirations, Bruce and Sherry were pleased to discover that they started to have even more meaningful relationships with all of their friends. The major reason for this was the fact that all of them now possessed a similar attitude concerning their party lifestyle and how their excessive and careless drinking was adversely affecting their short and long-term goals, aspirations, and plans.
Denny Mitchell writes about alcohol intervention, alcohol signs, alcoholism facts, and facts about excessive drinking. For more info please visit problems with drinking.