Thought for today:

Compulsive debtors, in a desperate need to escape the grief of financial self-destruction,  have sometimes turned to drugs, alcohol, food, sex, gambling, or other compulsions.   When overspending and debting no longer work, when debating’s degrading aftereffects destroy all peace of mind, we sought escape.

The outcome is never good.  We make matters worse.  We may become dually-addicted.  Running from our money madness costs us more than just money.

A member shares:

“I felt hopeless for a long time before getting into DA.  I couldn’t even live paycheck to paycheck, because I was under earning and overspending.  I had no hope for things to improve.

“Only alcohol’s oblivion seemed to calm my nerves.  I drank as soon as I got home from work, to ease the tension. Eventually I had ‘eye-openers’ in the morning.  I tried weaning myself off of alcohol by using drugs – pot mostly.

“All this time I was becoming unemployable and disgusting to be around.  I wasn’t motivated to do anything.  I resigned myself to a destiny of being poor, grungy, and outcast.

“I sought therapy – and even wound up in debt to the therapist!  It was then that the therapist recommended Debtors Anonymous.  I resented them telling me that I might be a compulsive debtor.

“Since then, I’ve gotten help for my debting behaviors in DA, and I got help for substances in other Twelve Step fellowships.”

Treating the core issue

In Debtors Anonymous we can recover our livelihoods and our lives.  The Twelve Steps, Twelve Tools get us there.  Not debting, one day at a time, helps our entire lives.

The more we deepen our vision of gratitude the better our chance for recovery from the core money issue of debting, under earning, and overspending.  The more gratitude we have, the more insurance we are taking out that we won’t go back to debting.

Eventually we can pass along this message to other suffering debtors by doing Twelfth Step work.

Ask: