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.

Because Sherry and Bruce came from very old-fashioned families, neither one of them spent a lot of time drinking, unlike many of their college friends. As their dating relationship progressed, nonetheless, they got more involved in an increasing number of extracurricular activities such as fraternity and sorority parties, attending happy hour with their friends, football pep rallies, and spontaneous keg parties. Due to the fact that alcohol was so accessible at all of these events, over time they began to drink more and more as the semesters went by.

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 Sherry and Bruce began to question their party mentality and their drinking behavior, quite a few additional questions quickly materialized. As an illustration, how would they be able to face their parents and tell them about their long-term aspirations, hopes, and dreams while they still drank in an immature and careless manner as they had done while they were in college? How responsible would they be if they had children and continued to drink in a hazardous manner? What would their irresponsible drinking do to their relationship? How would their abusive drinking affect their mental health? Would their careless and excessive drinking negatively affect their ability to have children? And finally, how would they be able to continue spending most of their money on drinking if they were to begin saving for a new house?

From a different perspective, even though Sherry and Bruce never received a DWI, suffered through alcohol withdrawal symptoms, or experienced an alcohol overdose, they recognized the fact that their excessive and careless drinking was becoming an issue that they could not ignore any longer.

The more that Bruce and Sherry thought about their drinking behavior, the more they reached the same conclusion: if they continued to drink in a hazardous way, their plans, hopes and dreams would probably not be reached.

Once Sherry and Bruce came to this conclusion, they had a discussion with their drinking buddies and informed them that they had determined that they were going to quit their partying and abusive drinking because they had plans to move into a house, get married, and start a family. Much to their amazement, their friends voiced a similar sentiment because they also had been pondering their future and came to the conclusion that their irresponsible drinking was adversely affecting their ability to achieve their dreams and their plans.

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 and alcoholism, alcohol deaths, alcohol detox, alcohol intervention, and about alcohol facts. For more info, please visit facts about alcohol withdrawals.

Tags: Mental Health

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