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.

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"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.