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An Extremely Young Couple Assesses Their Heavy And Excessive Drinking And Their Short And Long-Term Hopes, Dreams, And Plans




Frank and Linda have been seeing one another for eight-and-a-half years. They met while taking the same telecommunications class at a small, countryside, liberal arts college located in the Midwestern part of the United States. While they were in actual fact good friends at first, they eventually began dating when they were in their first year of college.

Because both of them came from very old-fashioned backgrounds, neither one of them drank much beyond the testing stage when they first began dating. As the time passed by, nonetheless, they began to go to more sorority and fraternity parties, happy hours, keg parties, and football bashes. As a result, they gradually began to drink increasingly more the more they dated.

After they graduated from college, they both found jobs in a medium size city located nearly sixty miles from their undergraduate college. Then they eventually made up their mind to move in with one another.

With any noteworthy adjustment in an individual's life there is frequently something that starts the specific alteration in question. For Linda and Frank the idea of having children and buying a new house was this "catalyst." Stated more explicitly, for the first time in their lives, Linda and Frank began to critically evaluate their hazardous and abusive drinking and the long term adverse effects of alcohol on their health. As an example, they began to wonder if they would ever experience an alcohol overdose due to their irresponsible and excessive drinking.

Would their heavy and hazardous drinking adversely affect their ability to have children? How would they be able to continue spending a large percentage of their money on drinking if they were to start saving for a new house?

From a different line of reasoning, although neither one of them ever suffered from alcohol poisoning, received a "drunk driving" arrest, or experienced alcohol poisoning symptoms, they realized that their hazardous and irresponsible drinking was becoming a reality that they could not close their eyes to any longer. All of these queries without a doubt pointed to the same conclusion, namely that Linda and Frank needed to understand that they couldn't continue their heavy and abusive drinking if their goals, dreams, and aspirations were to be made real.

Once they arrived at this conclusion, they notified their drinking pals about their their goal of buying or building a new house, about their marital plans, and about their plans to start a family. They also told their drinking buddies that they still wanted to hang around with them but that they would be drinking responsibly from this time forward so that they could start realizing their future dreams, goals, and aspirations.

Surprisingly, all of their friends expressed relief because they too had been reflecting on their lives and concluded that their life-styles were totally centered around drinking. They also believed that they would have to change extensively if they were to become more adult-like and display more thoughtfulness for their health, their aspirations, and for their careers in the next ten or fifteen years.

After their heart-to-heart chat with their friends about their goals, dreams, and aspirations, Linda and Frank essentially started to have more significant relationships with all of their pals. The fundamental reason for this was the fact that all of them had the same frame of mind regarding their drinking behavior and their short and long-term plans, goals, and aspirations.