Step One: The longest month of the year

Well, I guess it just seems like the longest month. How many times can I read, "Who cares to admit complete defeat?" and not feel that familiar twinge of oh, no, not again!

I can't say I got religion, after twenty years in the program of Debtors Anonymous, but I can say I got spirituality. In the beginning, I just wanted to get out of debt. Then my vision shifted to an urge to make piles of money. Gradually I began to realize that money was just a symptom of a deeper problem, the problem between me and life.

The promise of a spiritual awakening from working the Twelve Steps didn't seem like much of a reward to me in the beginning, but I showed up anyway, grumbling morosely the whole way. Despite my self-centered resentment, my life got better.

Here is what I did:

• I stopped borrowing money.
• I tracked my income and expenses.
• I learned to live within my means.
• I faithfully went to meetings.
• I worked the Twelve Steps with a sponsor.
• I sponsored others.
• I volunteered for service.

After eleven years, I paid off my credit cards and built a small cash reserve.
Around that same time, I finally got a job that met my needs.

Somewhere along the way, I found a tiny bit of humility. Enough humility to be glad that January is a long month. Hey, it's a start.

Keep coming back.

—Hope
compulsive debtor

=============================================================

"Hope Newlyfound" is an alias for an anonymous member of the program of Debtors Anonymous with twenty years of freedom from incurring unsecured debt (which means no credit cards, credit lines, bouncing checks, paying bills late, and borrowing from friends and family.)

Information about D.A. can be found at the Debtors Anonymous world service website, and locally in the Pacific Northwest at the Oregon intergroup website and the Seattle/Puget sound intergroup website. 

Step One: The foundation for a life of recovery and serenity

After reading Step One in the A.A. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions for the umpteenth time, I can say I'm pretty ready to move on to Step Two. But I've really enjoyed rereading the same few pages over and over again. It might seem boring to some, but the power of repetition is widely accepted in the marketing world, so why not in the Twelve Step world?

Every time we read Step One, I get a new perspective. New words seem to emerge from the murky background. It's like a window that never shows me the same landscape twice. One day I focus on the fatal nature of my malady, another day what jumps out at me is the idea that admitting my powerlessness is the ticket to a new life. I never know from week to week what nugget will roll out and land at my feet.

My life in Debtors Anonymous has had many unexpected shift and turns. I certainly never expected I would be here today... I didn't think I would be dead, exactly, but I was pretty sure I wouldn't actually feel alive. I'm not sure it's such a blessing to feel alive, but that is a luxury problem found only in the white developed world. Most people don't have time for such selfish introspection. Lucky me, I have the resources to contemplate the wretchedness of my own existence if I want to (and I often do). But I know many people, billions of people, would gladly trade places with me if they could.

My self-obsession knows no bounds. I am powerless over my brain. Today it's less inclined to kill me, I think, because the sun is shining. On the other hand, I have an intergroup meeting in an hour. My character defects surface in glorious fashion during business meetings. Sometimes I can appreciate the humor. Sometimes I get the joke.

More to be revealed. Be well.

—Hope
Compulsive debtor

=============================================================

"Hope Newlyfound" is an alias for an anonymous member of the program of Debtors Anonymous with twenty years of freedom from incurring unsecured debt (which means no credit cards, credit lines, bouncing checks, paying bills late, and borrowing from friends and family.)

Information about D.A. can be found at the Debtors Anonymous world service website, and locally in the Pacific Northwest at the Oregon intergroup website and the Seattle/Puget sound intergroup website. 

The persistent delusion

I want to believe that I can manage money like a normal person. I am loathe to admit I cannot. I hate feeling foolish and "less than." In my debting days, I pretended that I could handle credit cards. Even after twenty years of working the D.A. program, I still find myself thinking more money will solve all my problems. The persistence of the delusion is astonishing. I know this dis-ease is not about money, but money is the symbol by which I measure my self-worth. It is so hard to break that conditioning.

I believe this "money problem" will never get better as time goes on. In fact, I've been told it will get worse, that it is a progressive malady which can never be cured. When I first got to D.A., I never imagined I would still be going to meetings twenty years later. I thought I'd be out of debt in two years.

I've heard that scientists have developed a pill to treat compulsive shopping addiction. I don't know if this is true or not. I've never been a shopaholic (except when on vacation). I'm more of a deprivation addict (at least around town). I wonder if there is a pill to treat the delusion that one is "special."

To a normal person, compulsive debting must seem like a joke. Like the nonalcoholic says to the alcoholic, "What's the big deal? Why don't you just stop drinking?" the normal person says to the compulsive debtor, "Why don't you just stop overspending? Why don't you just earn more money? Why don't you just get a decent job? Why don't you just cut up your credit cards?"

It sounds like no-brain territory to a normal person, but not to the compulsive debtor.

My family and most of my friends never understood my angst around earning. My father thought daughters should stay at home forever, my mother thought I was just lazy and refusing to work like normal people have to, my friend said I would earn money when I finally decided to earn money...I never felt truly understood until I was at my first D.A. meeting.

Step One was an admission of my powerlessness over debt. It was not an abdication of my responsibility to earn my way in the world. I'm not helpless, and the situation is not hopeless. There is hope, and I found it in the program of Debtors Anonymous.

=============================================================

"Hope Newlyfound" is an alias for an anonymous member of the program of Debtors Anonymous with twenty years of freedom from incurring unsecured debt (which means no credit cards, credit lines, bouncing checks, paying bills late, and borrowing from friends and family.)

Information about D.A. can be found at the Debtors Anonymous world service website, and locally in the Pacific Northwest at the Oregon intergroup website and the Seattle/Puget sound intergroup website. 

Finding an enduring strength in Step One

I really don't like Step One.

There, I said it. I admit it, I don't like admitting my powerlessness over debt. My pride smarts just a little bit, still, after twenty years, when I say I'm a compulsive debtor at my D.A. meetings. Ugh. It's so lame to admit I'm not "normal" like other people, that I can't handle debt, that money confounds me, that math terrifies me, that my first thought is always how I can get something for nothing. It's embarrassing and profoundly humbling.

The Step One readings in the A.A. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (the ubiquitous A.A. 12 & 12) remind me that I won't find even a tiny shred of enduring strength until I first admit complete and utter defeat. That means only when I admit I've been beaten by debt will I begin to receive the gifts of the D.A. program.

Argh! Ok! I've been trounced. I'm on the floor. I give up! I surrender! I am as willing to accept direction as only the hopeless, desperate, and dying can be.

The first thing the nice, anonymous people at my first D.A. meetings told me to do was stop debting. Don't dig the hole any deeper, they said. I had already cut up my credit cards and cancelled my credit lines. I felt pretty smug: Check!

The second thing they told me to do was track my income and expenses and use that information to create a spending plan. That was harder to do, but I finally managed to develop a rudimentary spending plan, using the 16 D.A. spending categories. That's how I found out I was basically living life for my creditors. The kind people in D.A. said, "Don't do that anymore. Take care of your needs first, and if you have money left over, then pay your creditors." Wha—?

I was chagrined to discover that cutting up my credit cards was easier than making a daily choice to live a solvent, healthy life for me. I didn't value my life all that much. And with the weight of $20,000 on my shoulders, I felt obligated to put my creditors first. I wanted so desperately to be out from under that burden. But before D.A., when I gave my creditors more than I could afford, I found myself back in the hole, digging myself deeper into debt.

Eventually I learned how to live a balanced life, save a little, and pay off my debt, all at the same time. I found out it is possible to pay off my creditors. I found out there is life after debt (every day is a new adventure in avoiding incurring new debt). I found out the slow path to serenity involves building cash reserves. Seems so simple. It is, but it isn't easy.

To maintain my solvency, it's been essential for me to be a part of a local D.A. community, to work the Steps with sponsees, and to do service. I like my life now, so I need to be willing to do whatever it takes to pass it on to others, because that is how I will get to keep it myself.

So, think of me when I'm sitting in a meeting sighing at hearing Step One for the umpteenth time. Slowly, slowly, I become willing to receive the gifts of the D.A. program.

=============================================================

"Hope Newlyfound" is an alias for an anonymous member of the program of Debtors Anonymous with twenty years of freedom from incurring unsecured debt (which means no credit cards, credit lines, bouncing checks, paying bills late, or borrowing from friends and family.)

Information about D.A. can be found at the Debtors Anonymous world service website, and locally in the Pacific Northwest at the Oregon intergroup website and the Seattle/Puget sound intergroup website. 

Freedom from fear is more important than freedom from want

Even after twenty years in D.A. recovery, the title of this post* still has the power to strike terror into the heart of my internal debtor terrorist. At my core, I am a drooling, drippy, screaming bundle of unmet needs and unfulfilled wants. I'm a two-year-old child hell bent on cookies. I'm a pseudo-adult, self-centered in the extreme, who gets cranky and morose when she doesn't get her way.

It's a painful way to live. But what if fear is the just the method my limited human brain uses to save me from imminent destruction, the only way it knows how (which unfortunately kills me slowly)?

I've used many methods to relieve my fears over the years. You may have also tried some of these: potato chips and chocolate ice cream, Singapore Slings, indiscriminate sex with near-strangers, various social drugs popular in the 1970s and 80s... I'm sure you can imagine that once I woke up from my haze I felt more fear than ever, fear on top of fear. Not exactly a solution to my fear problem.

The question is, can I be liberated from my internal terrorist?

I think the answer is yes. There is a way to erase my fears, at least for a little while. If you aren't a fan of the Twelve Step model, here is where you may roll your eyes and click away in disgust. No judgment here; twenty years ago, that would have been me, if we'd had the internet back then.

This new approach may not be as fun as the methods I used to use, but the side effects are a lot more tolerable. How do I do it?

I just picture my bundle of fear wrapped up in a big, big hanky. I tie it up in my mind, neat and tidy, and attach a hot air balloon to it. Then I launch it into the stratosphere, metaphorically speaking, with a prayer: Here you go, god, whatever you are, you take care of this stinky fearful mess! And voila, there it goes, on its way to a power greater than myself.

I know it sounds stupid, but it works. When I remember that I can surrender my fear to a higher power (and when I choose to surrender my fear), I experience a noticeable lightening of my spirit. I'm able to breathe more easily. I can move out of paralysis into action. I can focus on how I can be of service with the gifts I've been given instead of lamenting my lack and limitations. It works. It's weird.

The odd thing is, I don't have to believe in God or anything religious; I don't have to know what a higher power is or what it does or how it functions, or even if it really exists... I just have to come to believe there might be a power greater than myself that can and will remove my fear, such as I'm able to let it go at the time I ask.

It's like the greatest money-back guarantee in history. I give up nothing but a little willingness and in return I am inundated with peace and serenity.

It usually lasts for twenty seconds or so, before my fear washes back over me and I'm back in the stinky messy bog. The good news: my vacations into the sunlight of the spirit last longer than they used to. And I'm pretty sure that if I keep asking to have my fear removed, that eventually I'll get the joke and be able to bask in the sun a bit longer. I might even get one of those spiritual awakenings everyone keeps talking about. Hey, it could happen.

Thanks for letting me share. Happy new year in recovery.

—Hope

*This statement can be found on page 122 of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous.


====================================================================

"Hope Newlyfound" is an alias for an anonymous member of the program of Debtors Anonymous with twenty years of freedom from incurring unsecured debt (which means no credit cards, credit lines, bouncing checks, paying bills late, and borrowing from friends and family.)

Information about D.A. can be found at the Debtors Anonymous world service website, and locally in the Pacific Northwest at the Oregon intergroup website and the Seattle/Puget sound intergroup website. 

Plagued with terminal uniqueness

You might think that just because I cut up my credit cards and cancelled my credit lines, thereby making it very difficult to incur new unsecured debt, that I would be considered "recovered" in Debtors Anonymous. After all, isn't that why I came to my first meeting, to stop debting?

Well, and to figure out how to get out of debt, that $20,000 of credit card debt I have referred to as a "mountain." Actually, by the time I attended my first D.A. meeting, I had already cut up my credit cards and cancelled my credit lines. I thought I was something pretty special when I waltzed in the door of my first meeting. I was merely seeking a new perspective on  money, I told myself. I would learn the secret to paying off my mountain of debt and be out of those D.A. rooms so fast you wouldn't see my dust trail.

People told me, "Slow down, recovery begins when we stop incurring new debt. You aren't recovered yet, and, because compulsive debting is a progressive illness, you may want to consider the possibility that you may never qualify as 'recovered.'"

I did not want to consider that possibility. However,  it gradually began to be clear to me that I might have a bigger problem than just racking up charges on credit cards. However, I thought I was a special case.

Compulsive people tend to be pretty self-focused in their attempts to get what they want. This self-focus is not the good kind, you probably figured that out. The good kind of self-focus is where we set healthy boundaries with others and brush our teeth twice a day. No, the self-focus I'm talking about is the bad kind, the kind where every single thing that happens in the world is somehow all about us. If it is something good, we take credit for it somehow, or turn the conversation toward how we would have done that good thing, if only we'd had the [money/time/interest]. If it is something bad, we either take the blame for it somehow, or we once again declare how we would have handled it if only someone had bothered to ask for our opinion.

In a conversation, it can go like this:

The other person says, "My car needs an oil change."

A normal person would say something like, "Oh really? When are you taking it in?" or maybe, "Where do you plan to take it?"

Not me. My debtor brain immediately turns the topic to me and my car, if I have one. "I just found out my car is terminal," I would say if I was looking for sympathy. Or if I was looking to impress the other person, I would say something like, "I'm trading my Focus in on a Maserati." That will shut them up.

If I don't have a car, I would whine, "It must be nice to have a car. Wish I had a car. I have to take the bus. No wonder I can't [get a decent job/go on a vacation/write my novel]." Woe, woe is me.

There's nothing that happens on earth, big or small, but that I can't turn it into something about me. It's sick, it's sad, but it's the reality of my debtor brain. I think I'm special and unique, and that's how every day my brain is trying to kill me. Terminal uniqueness is the phrase we use in D.A. I hear people say morosely, "I deserve so much better," and I have to chuckle: I know I'm not alone.

Terminal uniqueness is a spiritual malady with a spiritual solution. That is not what I wanted to hear twenty years ago when I strolled into my first D.A. meeting, but that is the experience, strength, and hope that I was given. Sort of like, I thought I deserved a Maserati, but I've learned that a Focus can be a useful vehicle in its own way. Not what I wanted or expected (given my unique status), but now I can (usually) be grateful and accept the gifts I'm given.

A month of Step Ones

At the two D.A. meetings I regularly attend, we spend a lot of time focusing on the "Step of the month." I don't know if those A.A. guys planned it this way, but I find it both convenient and satisfying to study one step a month for an entire year and then begin the cycle again. January, then, is for studying Step One. Today it sounds fresh and new. By the end of January, I will be thoroughly sick of Step One.

Step One, for those who might not know, goes like this: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable." (You can find info about the A.A. program here.) D.A., like many Twelve-Step groups, has permission from Alcoholics Anonymous to adapt the language of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions to accommodate our specific affliction. Therefore, instead of claiming powerlessness over alcohol, I substitute the word debt. When I "take" Step One, I admit that I am powerless over debt and my life is unmanageable.

Step One is the foundation from which all recovery grows. According to the Twelve-Step model, some people are afflicted with a compulsive behavior—drinking, for example, or borrowing money, or eating too much, or gambling ... you name it, really. If there is a behavior that humans can do to excess, there is probably a Twelve-Step program to address it. By definition, a compulsive behavior is something we feel compelled to do. In my case, it was using credit cards, which caused me to incur "unsecured debt." Unsecured debt is debt that is not secured with collateral.

I went to my first D.A. meeting on January 15, 1995. I know this because I recently found a journal entry stating this fact. I had actually learned about D.A. about six months previously, from my dear friend who eventually took me to my first D.A. meeting. We had been meeting weekly over dinner to "do our money," a process I don't remember now, except that it involved studying a book (not published by D.A., but written by a controversial member of D.A.) about how to work the D.A. program. I am guessing that at some point it became clear, to my friend if not to me, that I was going to need more help than a weekly meeting with a friend would provide.

Joining D.A. was not easy. A few months after my first meeting, I wrote this in my journal:

I've been skulking around the edges of this group, terrified that someone will notice me, and terrified that no one will notice me. I want to be a part of the group, but I resent all the rules and rituals. I want you to accept me as I am, a tall order when I can't even accept myself.

In the early days, I was not ready to admit powerlessness over anything. Admit utter defeat? Not likely! The thought of admitting to anything but being utterly self-sufficient made me furious. I didn't want to belong to a Twelve-Step group. I wasn't against recovery: I just thought it wasn't for me. No, let me be honest: I thought I was too good for Twelve-Step recovery. I thought I was smart, special, privileged, and exempt. I thought I could just breeze through, pick up a few money management tips, get out from under my $20,000 mountain of debt, and be on my way. None of the rules applied to me. Certainly not Step One.

Never in my dreams did I imagine I would still be in D.A., twenty years later. But here I am.

My abuse of credit was driven by a deeply rooted and grandiose belief that I deserved to have what I want, right now, without earning it or paying for it. What's more, I believed the world owed me because I was special, unique, and exempt from things like holding a regular job.

Oddly enough, I also believed that I deserved nothing, not even space on the planet, and that I should have been killed at birth. A deep self-hatred lurked underneath my grandiosity.

How these two opposing views could occupy space in the same brain is just one of the bizarre paradoxes of Twelve-Step recovery. It doesn't really matter. What is clear is that both viewpoints are equally insane and based on self-centered fear.

Now I choose to believe that I have an "allergy to money," like alcoholics have an allergy to alcohol. No matter how much I try to control it, manage it, hoard it, or figure it out, money makes me do the emotional equivalent of sneezing, coughing, dripping, and hacking. My brain stretches the same $10 bill twenty ways, trying to force it to meet all my needs. I'll hoard a bit of cash as if money has abandoned me forever, or I'll quickly spend all I have in a frenzy of retail madness. There are no red cones to keep me in line when it comes to money, no boundaries, no limits, no rational guidelines... when it comes to money, my brain is trying to kill me.

That is why I need Step One. I'm normal in many ways, but not with money, not with debt. I can't control money. I can't manage it. I can't borrow like a "normal" person. There is no normal for me when it comes to debt. I can pretend, but sooner or later, my true colors appear. I'm a debtor, a compulsive debtor, and no matter how hard I try, if I incur debt, my life will be completely unmanageable by me. I am powerless over debt.

Another paradox of the Twelve-Step world: admitting my powerlessness opens the door to a new power. What a long strange journey.

I got the debtor blues

cold blue sky and trees that appear dead but might not be

In January, 1995, I realized I had a problem.

Well, lots of problems, really, if I'm being rigorously honest: sour relationships with significant people in my life, a poor sense of self, a mountain of debt ($20,000 seemed like a mountain to me), and a profound and perplexing confusion about earning and spending money.

I wasn't sure what was wrong, except for the mountain of debt, but I was very sure that I deserved better, that I was special, and that problems with money couldn't happen to me.

At the time, all I could think was, how will I ever get out from under this debt?

Little did I know that the debt I had accumulated was simply a symbol of some deeply embedded personal characteristics of which I was completely unaware—but not in that ignorance is bliss kind of way.

I was fortunate to have a friend in Alcoholics Anonymous who knew of a program called Debtors Anonymous (D.A.). My friend took me to my first D.A. meeting in Los Angeles, CA, and thus I embarked on the beginning of a new life.

If you are having problems with money or debt and think that you are a compulsive debtor, chronic overspender, or compulsive underearner, you may find relief and recovery in the program of Debtors Anonymous.

I was told early in recovery that if I want to keep what I've been given, I need to pass it on to others who want what I've received. This blog is a chronicle of my recovery in Debtors Anonymous. Now I live in the Pacific Northwest, where we have a couple local D.A. websites (Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington).

I will endeavor to build on this foundation by sharing as often as possible about what I have learned. There is hope in D.A.

Thanks for letting me share.

—Hope