Debtors Anonymous
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Debtors Anonymous
Debtors Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from compulsive debting.
Purpose
The primary purpose of Debtors Anonymous is to stop debting one day at a time and to help other compulsive debtors to stop incurring unsecured debt.
Who Can Join
Debtors Anonymous is open to anyone with a sincere desire to stop incurring unsecured debt. There are no dues or fees for Debtors Anonymous membership and the fellowship is self-supporting through voluntary contributions of its own members.
Debtors Anonymous is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution. The fellowship does not wish to engage in any type of controversy and neither endorses nor opposes any causes.
History of Debtors Anonymous
Like so many other 12-step fellowships, Debtors Anonymous began with a core group of recovering members of Alcoholics Anonymous. In this case, what would become the Fellowship of Debtors Anonymous started in 1968 with recovering Alcoholics Anonymous members discussing the problems they were experiencing with money. With the leadership of John H., the group began an eight-year odyssey of a spiritual nature to try to understand the causes and conditions behind their self-destructive patterns of behavior with money.
As can be expected, with little experience about wise money management, the fledgling group first focused on the many different symptoms: spending, shopping, saving and earning. Calling themselves the “Penny Pinchers” in the beginning, they tried using will power to control what they spent.
After a while, they started calling themselves the “Capital Builders,” convinced that their financial problems were due to their inability to save money. In an effort to make behavioral changes, they tried making daily savings accounts deposits. Unfortunately, this did not resolve their problems.
Over the next few years the group changed members as old ones drifted away and new ones joined. The members, still led by John H., continued to address the symptoms they were experiencing, yet they still failed. Besides Debtors Anonymous meetings, they also attended Gamblers Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, and other 12-step meetings trying to come up with ideas, hoping to find a definitive answer to their problems.
More years went by. Eventually the members realized that their money problems weren’t because of their inability to control or save the amount of money they spent or earned but rather their inability to become solvent.
In fact, it wasn’t until 1971 that the foundation of the Debtors Anonymous program began to unfold. The discovery and understanding that debting itself was the threshold of the disease and that only using a 12-step program of recovery (from Alcoholics Anonymous) would help them stop incurring unsecured debt – one day at a time – and to stay stopped.
But, two years later, the group disbanded. John H., eager to reassemble a group, finally did so in 1976 in New York at a scheduled Debtors Anonymous meeting at a church. Within a year, a second meeting was organized. By 1982, there were five meetings, all in Manhattan.
Struggling financially through most of its existence, Debtors Anonymous today is celebrating its 35th year (in 2011) as a Fellowship and its 25th World Service Conference in Detroit, Michigan.
There are more than 500 registered meetings in more than 15 countries worldwide. Debtors Anonymous has its own recovery book, a large stock of literature, and recently produced its first foreign-language literature.
How It Works
Meetings are an integral part of the Debtors Anonymous recovery program. While formats do vary from region to region and meeting to meeting, there are some common elements. These include reading of the preamble, a member chairing the meeting, announcements, a collection for the meeting’s financial support, and sharing by others.
A meeting may also dedicate time to read the Twelve Steps, the Twelve Traditions, the Signs of Compulsive Debting, the Tools of Debtors Anonymous and other literature.
Newcomers are encouraged to regularly attend meetings, through which they gain a sense of hope, identify with others and meet people who can help.
Getting started in Debtors Anonymous, newcomers are urged to record their expenses and their income, start reading Debtors Anonymous literature, working the 12 Steps (in order, and starting with Step One, preferably with a sponsor), finding a sponsor if you don’t have one, practice the principle of anonymity, and ask for assistance in a Pressure Relief Group to help you review your situation, formulate a spending and action plan.
Signs of Compulsive Debting
Many individuals may not think they have a problem with compulsive debting. To help sort this out, Debtors Anonymous posts the following signs of the disease on its website.
1. Being unclear about your financial situation. Not knowing account balances, monthly expenses, loan interest rates, fees, fines, or contractual obligations.
2. Frequently "borrowing" items such as books, pens, or small amounts of money from friends and others, and failing to return them.
3. Poor saving habits. Not planning for taxes, retirement or other not-recurring but predictable items, and then feeling surprised when they come due; a "live for today, don't worry about tomorrow" attitude."
4. Compulsive shopping: Being unable to pass up a "good deal"; making impulsive purchases; leaving price tags on clothes so they can be returned; not using items you've purchased.
5. Difficulty in meeting basic financial or personal obligations, and/or an inordinate sense of accomplishment when such obligations are met.
6. A different feeling when buying things on credit than when paying cash, a feeling of being in the club, of being accepted, of being grown up.
7. Living in chaos and drama around money: Using one credit card to pay another; bouncing checks; always having a financial crisis to contend with.
8. A tendency to live on the edge: Living paycheck to paycheck; taking risks with health and car insurance coverage; writing checks hoping money will appear to cover them.
9. Unwarranted inhibition and embarrassment in what should be a normal discussion of money.
10. Overworking or under earning: Working extra hours to earn money to pay creditors; using time inefficiently; taking jobs below your skill and education level.
11. An unwillingness to care for and value yourself: Living in self-imposed deprivation; denying your basic needs in order to pay your creditors.
12. A feeling or hope that someone will take care of you if necessary, so that you won't really get into serious financial trouble, that there will always be someone you can turn to.
The 12 Steps of Debtors Anonymous
The 12 Steps of Debtors Anonymous, adapted from and reprinted with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, are listed below.
1. We admitted we were powerless over debt -- that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive debtors, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
The Twelve Traditions of Debtors Anonymous
Similar to other 12-step fellowships, Debtors Anonymous has adapted the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve Traditions for its own use (with permission).
1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon Debtors Anonymous unity.
2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority -- a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
3. The only requirement for Debtors Anonymous membership is a desire to stop incurring unsecured debt.
4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or Debtors Anonymous as a whole.
5. Each group has but one primary purpose -- to carry its message to the debtor who still suffers.
6. A Debtors Anonymous group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the Debtors Anonymous name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
7. Every Debtors Anonymous group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
8. Debtors Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
9. Debtors Anonymous, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
10. Debtors Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the Debtors Anonymous name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
--Suzannekane 17:11, 2 June 2011 (MDT)
