Bruce and Sherry have been dating one another for six years. They met while taking the same small systems computer applications class at a medium size private liberal arts college located in eastern Pennsylvania. While they were basically classmates the first semester at school, the second semester of their first year they because friends and just before the start of their second year, they began dating.

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 and got their Bachelor of Arts degree, Bruce and Sherry decided to find an apartment in the big city located approximately sixty-five miles from their undergraduate college. Soon after they moved in with one another, they found employment in the same small company.

After working at their place of employment for approximately two or three months, Bruce and Sherry found some other young couples that liked to party and drink. In fact, much like their undergraduate days at college, most of the functions and events they went to with their friends had something to do with heavy drinking. As a consequence, the more they hung out and partied with their friends, the more they engaged in abusive and dangerous 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 Sherry and Bruce reflected on their drinking and their party mentality, the more they arrived at the same conclusion: if they were to achieve their dreams, hopes, and aspirations, they would have to give up their irresponsible drinking.

Once Bruce and Sherry arrived at their short term game plan, they had a meeting with their friends and let them know that they had determined that they were gong to stop their hazardous drinking and their partying because they wanted to move into a house, get married, and start having children. To their wonder, their friends articulated a similar attitude because they had also concluded that their excessive drinking and partying was negatively affecting the realization of their future plans and goals.

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.