Out from Under : With Aid of Debtors Anonymous, O.C. Consumers Pay the Piper

Samantha pulled out her Mervyn’s card, the only one that still had available credit. She needed a fix.

“I thought, OK, I have about $50 on the card, and if I can buy a dress for $30 or $40 and my card goes through, I’ll have something new.

“It was like, OK, I’m an OK person. If this card goes through, it’s not that bad that I have nothing to eat.”

But it was that bad.

Samantha was not only hungry, but she was also homeless--and deeply in debt. The last thing she needed was more debt, but there was no stopping. “If I could spend money, it was as if I had money,” she says.

Samantha’s debts--with the help of a handful of wallet-sized plastic cards--mounted to $20,000 before she caught herself.

Today, at 30, she has a job as an elementary school teacher and health benefits for the first time in her adult life. She’s slowly paying off what she owes, and creditors don’t threaten anymore. On Feb. 1 she celebrated five years without once incurring unsecured debt or using plastic.

Joining Debtors Anonymous, a 12-step, self-help fellowship based on Alcoholics Anonymous, helped her turn things around, she says. Like other members of Debtors Anonymous in this story, Samantha follows group guidelines by using only her first name in the media.

“If I debt, I die,” she tells fellow debtors at a meeting in Lake Forest, “because if I debt, it just spirals me down into being homeless again.”

Like members of Alcoholics, Narcotics, Smokers, Gamblers and Overeaters Anonymous, compulsive debtors, as they call themselves, say they practice the destructive behavior to escape life’s troubles.

Each week in mall-abundant Orange County, there are half a dozen DA meetings. In L.A., there are 50 a week. The Debtors Anonymous program is one of myriad groups spawned by AA, founded by two alcoholics more than 60 years ago to help those struggling with alcoholism help one another find “recovery.”

Debtors Anonymous was started in New York in 1976, and there are now about 500 meeting groups worldwide. The first L.A. group met in 1982; a few years later, the first Orange County group was established.

Many of Samantha’s fellow DA members are accountants, stockbrokers, tax attorneys, economics professors and financial advisors.

Ironic? These members explain that overspending has little if anything to do with dollars and sense.

Bernard, a financial advisor, racked up $90,000 in unsecured debt during the extravagant ‘80s, he says. Indeed, he never even missed a car or house payment, thanks to a lot of creative account juggling.

“While I obviously have the intellect and knowledge to know how not to have gotten into debt,” he says, “I did.”

Bernard, who has been attending Debtors Anonymous meetings for a year, has whittled his debts down by about $20,000 in the past year.

Joining DA was “a great relief,” says Bernard, who despite his own problem says he has had a successful career as a financial advisor to others.

“Out there in everyday society, this is obviously something I can’t talk about. Most people can’t talk about it,” he says.

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No one really knows how many chronic overspenders there are among us, but it’s well documented that more and more Americans are plunging deeper into debt.

In 1996, more than $1 trillion was charged to credit cards, with about a third of that being paid off in installments, according to the Consumer Federation of America. Most personal bankruptcy is brought about by heavy credit card and other consumer debt, according to bankruptcy lawyers.

Last year, the number of personal bankruptcy filings hit a record high of 1.1 million, according to government statisticians. That’s up 26% from 1995, with the largest number of filers in California.

One study done at the University of Minnesota estimated that nationwide, nearly 5 million people, or 2% of the population, wrestle with overspending.

There are distinct types of overspenders, said Lewis R. Baxter, a UCLA psychiatry and pharmacology professor specializing in obsessive and compulsive disorders and depression.

Manic-depressives may spend wildly during manic periods and appear to revel in it, he says. Conversely, “true compulsives don’t want to do it, but are driven--compelled--and have this horrible feeling if they don’t.”

People in a third group, which he calls “impulsive spenders,” seem to get some sort of pleasure from the habit. They may feel remorse, but seem to forget all that and overspend again. “They will say, ‘Well, just one more time,’ ” he says.

Although “there’s a huge amount of data showing a biological underpinning” of certain forms of the behavior, more research is needed in that area, Baxter says.

Meanwhile, in addition to treating some patients with medication or behavior modification, he has sent many of his clients to DA.

Psychologist James Crossen, director and founder of the Addiction Studies Program of Los Angeles Mission College, also strongly recommends the Debtors Anonymous program to overspenders.

Messages in the media play a big role in sending people shopping, he says.

“You’re talking about a culture that’s very well controlled by television” and its advertisements, Crossen says, “and a society that’s completely committed to commercialism and materialism and indebtedness and using plastic.”

Depression, low self-esteem and denial are characteristic of overspenders, whose parents commonly suffer or suffered from the same problem or addictions like alcoholism, Crossen says.

Samantha’s mother and father worked and owned a home. Materially, all her “middle-class family needs and wants were met,” she said in an interview after a DA meeting.

But her father, while now a sober member of AA, drank heavily during her youth and was aloof.

“The only thing he’d do for you was give you money, like buy your love,” she says. “I learned to equate money with love, even though we weren’t wealthy.”

She was also confused by the financial habits of her mother, “who was real tight, then would splurge,” she says, and became a chronic “under-earner,” a common problem among DA members.

“It’s about not feeling worthy of making or having money, or having such low self-esteem that you get a minimum-wage job when you have a PhD,” Samantha says.

The only requirement for membership in Debtors Anonymous, the group states in its information pamphlet, is a “desire to stop incurring debt.”

Even solvent debtors are welcome, the pamphlet says.

“Some of us have been compulsive spenders, showering ourselves with things we neither needed nor wanted,” the pamphlet says. “When we felt needy or lacking, we splurged on something we could not afford. We spent impulsively, incurred debt, felt guilty, promised never to do it again, and only repeated the same cycle the next time the feeling of ‘not enough’ came up.”

DA members believe that compulsive spending is a disease caused by emotional and spiritual problems. They begin recovery by practicing abstinence from incurring debt.

For some, that means closing all remaining credit card accounts. It’s common to see severed plastic cards dangling from members’ key chains.

Many members keep a record of everything they spend--scribbling notes on a small pad when they shop, go to a restaurant or the movies--and develop a disciplined spending plan.

“It brings me clarity,” says Dave, a marketing consultant. “I know what my needs are for that given day and what I’m going to commit to those needs.”

Members also put themselves on systematic--but reasonable--debt-repayment schedules, Samantha says.

“We pay ourselves first, then our creditors. I make sure all my needs are met--food, entertainment, gas, new clothes, things for my home--not spending extravagantly or compulsively, of course. Then I pay off debt.”

Members also practice AA’s 12 steps, which espouse such principles as honesty, accountability, selflessness and atonement and a belief that “a power greater than ourselves,” which many call God, can help with their problems.

Atheists and agnostics may balk at that, but members note that the program is not allied with any particular faith or doctrine. The “higher power,” Samantha says, “just needs to be other than you,” and some see it as the collective power of DA members.

After five years in DA, Samantha is still $14,000 in debt. It took her awhile to get and keep a steady job, and her debt repayment is slow as she pays one creditor at a time, writing a check for $80 each month.

Recovery doesn’t mean perfection, she says, and sometimes she’s late with the payments and creditors call.

“But it doesn’t make me feel bad; it doesn’t ruin my day,” she says. “And they don’t call me names.”

No dues or fees are charged members of Debtors Anonymous, although a basket is passed to help pay for meeting room rental and pamphlets. Information:

* Orange County Debtors Anonymous, P.O. Box 11235, Santa Ana, CA 92711-1235. (714) 224-5009.

* Southern California Debtors Anonymous, 11500 Olympic Blvd., Suite 400, Los Angeles, CA 90064-1528. (310) 479-1098 or (310) 855-8752.

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Some Traits of Days Spent Compounding Troubles

Are you an overspender? Some of the signposts Debtors Anonymous has identified:

* Frequent use of the term “borrow” for such things as cigarettes, pencils, etc.

* Borrowing small amounts of money from friends.

* Associating use of a charge card with being “grown up.”

* A different feeling when buying things on credit than when paying cash--a feeling of being in the club, of being accepted.

* An inordinate sense of accomplishment in merely meeting normal financial obligations.

* Inordinate apprehension when applying for a loan.

* Unwarranted inhibition and embarrassment in discussions about money.

* A lack of concern about commitments that don’t have to be paid this month.

* Unusual difficulty remembering what obligations should take precedence.

* Unrealistic expectations that there will be funds available in the future to meet obligations incurred in the present.

* Inordinate feeling of euphoria upon opening a charge account.

* A feeling that someone will take care of you if necessary, so that you won’t really get into serious financial trouble.

* The underlying feeling that you need someone else to help you solve your financial problems.

Source: Debtors Anonymous