Linda and Frank have been seeing one another for seven years. They met while taking the same environmental and urban studies class at a relatively small, rural, liberal arts college located in the Eastern part of the United States. While they were basically good pals at first, they finally started to date when they were in their first year of college.

Given the fact that both of them came from very "old school" backgrounds, neither one of them drank much social drinking stage when they first started to date. As the time progressed, nevertheless, they began to go to more keg parties, football bashes, sorority and fraternity parties, and happy hours. As a result, they in a step-by-step fashion began to drink increasingly more as they proceeded in their relationship.

After they graduated, they both found employment in a small city located approximately sixty-five miles from their undergraduate college. Then they decided to move in with one another.

With any significant change in an individual's life there is often a trigger the specific adjustment in question. For Linda and Frank the thought of buying a new house and having children was this "source of change." Stated more forcefully, for the first time in their lives, Linda and Frank started to critically assess their excessive and abusive drinking and the alcohol long term effects on their lives. As an example, they began to wonder if they would ever experience an alcohol overdose due to their heavy and excessive drinking.

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

From a different viewpoint, even though neither one of them ever experienced alcohol poisoning, received a "driving under the influence" arrest, or experienced alcohol poisoning symptoms, they realized that their abusive and hazardous drinking was becoming a thorny issue that they could not close their eyes to any longer. All of these inquiries clearly resulted in the same conclusion, namely that Frank and Linda needed to identify more completely with the fact that they couldn't maintain their irresponsible and excessive drinking if their dreams, hopes, and aspirations were to be attained.

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

Much to their amazement, all of their buddies expressed relief because they too had been recalculating their lives and concluded that their life-styles were too focused on drinking. They also felt that they would have to change extensively if they were to become more mature and manifest more thoughtfulness for their goals, their careers, and for their health in the next five or ten years.

After their candid chat with their buddies about their aspirations, dreams, and hopes, Linda and Frank actually started to have more meaningful relationships with all of their friends. The fundamental reason for this was the fact that all of them had a similar mentality regarding their abusive and irresponsible drinking and their short and long-term plans, goals, and aspirations.