SingleNights

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.

Due to the fact that Bruce and Sherry came from extremely conservative, highly religious families, neither one of them drank much beyond the experimental phase. As their dating relationship deepened, however, they started to attend more spur-of-the-moment keg parties, basketball pep rallies, sorority and fraternity parties, and they routinely went to happy hour with their buddies. Since alcohol was so available at these functions, they began drinking increasingly more as time 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 at their jobs for about four or five months, Sherry and Bruce started to develop friendships with a few other couples. Not unlike their college days, moreover, most of the activities and events they attended with their friends somehow, someway centered around drinking. As a result, the more they associated with their friends the more they engaged in hazardous and irresponsible 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 major changes in a persons life there is often something that severs as a catalyst for the change. For Bruce and Sherry, the thought of getting married, moving into a house, and having children was this catalyst. Not only this, but for the first time in their relationship, they began questioning their drinking behavior and wondering if their excessive drinking could eventually affect their health in a negative way.

As Bruce and Sherry began to question their drinking, a number of other questions quickly arose. For instance, what would their abusive drinking do to their relationship? How would they be able to continue spending most of their money on drinking if they were to begin saving for a new house? How would their irresponsible drinking affect their mental health? How would they be able to face their parents and tell them about their long-term dreams, hopes, and aspirations while they still drank in a reckless manner as they did when they were in college? How responsible would they be if they had children and continued to drink in an immature manner? And finally, would their abusive and hazardous drinking negatively affect their ability to have children?

Looking at things a little differently, although Sherry and Bruce never experienced alcohol withdrawal symptoms, got arrested for driving under the influence, or suffered from an alcohol overdose, they understood the fact that their hazardous and abusive drinking was becoming a serious problem that they could not afford to disregard 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 opening up to their friends about their future aspirations, hopes, and plans, Bruce and Sherry were happy to find out that they began having even better and more sound relationships with all of their drinking buddies. The primary reason for this was the fact that all of them now maintained a similar viewpoint regarding their party mentality and how their irresponsible and abusive drinking was negatively affecting their short and long-range goals, hopes, and aspirations.

Denny Mitchell writes about alcohol detox, symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, blood alcohol tests, problem drinking, and facts about alcohol. For more information please visit warning signs of alcoholism.