Do you impulsively buy things you don’t need or can’t afford?

Do you buy things and hide them?

Do you continually drain your savings account or fail to have one?

Do you lead a restricted life due to lack of money?

Our society focuses tirelessly on all forms of addiction—from sex, to alcohol, to television—yet one addiction is rarely discussed: the addiction to money. According to authors Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan, the anxieties that surround our finances may be the result of a powerful and destructive addiction. This step-by-step guide to recovery examines the signs of money addiction, illustrates the five types of “money drunks,” and lays out an easy-to-follow ninety-day program for gaining financial solvency. Complete with expense charts, tips and activities, and diagnostic questions, Money Drunk/Money Sober provides hope for recovery from one of America’s most pervasive addictions.

When we began teaching and writing together five years ago, not only was financial mismanagement the major problem for many of our students, but we also discovered that we both experienced a current of dis-ease around money that neither of us could quite explain. On the surface, all was well, yet we both felt subtly out of control. What was wrong, we wondered.

We became aware of our behaviors and attitudes about money. We underwent mysterious mood swings and realized we were either vague, euphoric, or depressive when it came to talking about money. It had an element of hype that both of us found toxic. What could we do about it, we wondered again.

At the time, both of us were involved with financial partnerships in which clarity was hard to come by. Our partners promised us the moon and delivered far less. Whenever we questioned their behavior too closely we were made to feel intrusive or guilty. If we pressed, emotional fireworks followed. Over time we found ourselves walking on eggshells, reluctant to encounter explosive dramatics on the job. There was a haunting familiarity to all of this for both of us. In a word, it felt like an alcoholic family. Our partners were out of control and we were enabling them to remain that way, by pretending their behavior (and ours) was normal.

“It’s as if they’re drunk or something,” I told Mark one night on a long call during which we were, as usual, trying to make sense of our financial dealings.

“Money drunk!” I suddenly shouted. The minute the words were out, Mark and I knew we had a potential diagnosis.

For over a decade, we had worked on our own recoveries from addictive patterns. Julia had long taught creativity seminars in classes that included many recovering alcoholics and addicts, and for many years Mark had held in-hospital addictions seminars. As writers and teachers, we had worked with people in recovery from substance abuse, eating disorders, sexual addictions, and other compulsive behaviors. When it came to alcohol, drugs, food, or compulsive sex, we knew addictive behavior when we saw it. And now we were seeing it around money. Ours and theirs.

Well versed in addictions theory, we had the insight that a money addiction might present the same addictive patterns as an addiction to any mood-altering chemical and yield to the same treatment of awareness, acceptance, and action. These money behaviors made sudden sense viewed in terms of a binge cycle: tension, spending, relief, remorse, a period of abstinence or control, then tension, and the cycle begins again.

For us, the knowledge of the dynamic we were dealing with gave us immediate relief and clarity. We began to chart a way out for ourselves and our students. And it began to work. Soon, others came to ask us about their money problems. Because we were teachers, we started to teach.

FROM MADNESS TO METHOD

This work, undertaken first for ourselves and later for others, enabled us to extricate ourselves from previously baffling and destructive involvements. Our own lives went from feeling mysteriously money drunk to feeling money sober. Working with others in our seminars and in private counseling sessions, we found our tools effective for them as well. We have written Money Drunk/Money Sober in order to share our experience and our hope. Because we are teachers, we believe we can teach these principles to you.

We have interviewed, learned from, and taught hundreds of money drunks. We know unequivocally that we have identified the problem and mapped a way out.