LET us be very clear: this book is not about giving up money. We're not against money. Anyone who says that money doesn't matter has never had to live without it, and we've had to live without it too often to be cavalier about the discomfort. All of us need money. Most of us would like to have more of it than we do. But more money is not always the answer; better use of it is.

Whenever we teach our Money Drunk seminars, we always joke, "Okay, who has the aspirin?" Everyone laughs but ... invariably, the crowd meets us with crossed arms and frozen, skeptical faces. Even for a seasoned teacher it can be very intimidating to stand in front of so much anger and so much pain. We start our work. We watch them fidget, scoff, rage, get stomachaches, hot flashes -- even tears. Looking at the room from across the podium we always take a deep breath, glance at each other for strength, and remind ourselves, "This is never easy."

But as we watch people move from denial and frustration into a hint of hope, their body language changes. The muscles in their faces loosen up. They uncross their arms, take a few deep breaths, start to relax. Then the laughter of shared experience begins as people identify with the questions we ask. We always remind them that we know the right questions because we had to ask them for ourselves. Slowly, our students come to believe that maybe, just maybe, their long years of confusion and pain about money will finally end. For the first time, viewed as an addiction, their money problems make sense. Like newcomers to Alcoholics Anonymous, they begin to feel free -- even hopeful.

ANATOMY OF A MONEY DRUNK

Throughout our lives, money was difficult. Mark's money problems started early. With parents who fought over finances and constantly fled bill collectors, he learned to view everything in terms of money.

As Mark says, "I had my first paper route when I was eleven years old, delivering the Washington Post to over a hundred subscribers. It was quite a job and now that I think back on it I don't know why an eleven-year-old would try to tackle that big a job, except that I thought we needed the money. I was probably right.

"From there I had a string of paper routes and then bagged groceries until an early marriage in my junior year had me working full-time to raise a family and going to night school. Even today it hurts me to see high school kids marry or try to raise children, because I know firsthand how hard it is going to be.

"But we tried our best. I went to night school and got a job in construction where I would meet the first in a string of abusive bosses whom I now realize triggered the 'reenactment' of my turbulent childhood. Needing the money badly, believing the boss's promises of promotion and bigger pay, I did not see how destructive and harmful he was.

"The important thing is that this pattern of making bad choices in jobs and working for abusive bosses and doing things I hated continued throughout what was to become my addicted twenties. I slid from one bad situation to another, always hoping for the miracle job or deal that would suddenly save me from the hopelessness of my financial situation.

"I worked eighty hours a week to be a restaurant 'manager,' making less an hour than the people I managed; I worked for others in construction trying to learn as I went; I worked all sorts of menial jobs for hourly wages, waiting for the foreman to see my potential, for someone to save me. But despite constantly working I never had any savings, owned a home, paid off a car, or even owned much furniture.

"By the time I was twenty-eight years old, quick money, big money had become the focus of my life. I had decided that money was the answer. I worked hard, nights as a bartender and days as a clerk at the Chicago Board of Trade, surrounded by successful people by day and by night. I watched the men at the board make millions and resented them for it, still waiting for them to give me a break, and at night I served them drinks and told them jokes, trying to be one of the guys.

"Then I got a high-paying job with the same hard-drinking traders. It was a lethal combination. I made thousands of dollars a week as a broker doing things for men who had gotten famous and rich doing them. I asked no questions; I just did my work and collected my pay. After all, I reasoned, I didn't invent the system. I was making great money; I was invincible.

"Then I lost my job for drinking. I was devastated. I hit bottom, hard. I lost everything. And I got sober.

"I had success in early sobriety. I finished college, went to graduate school, manufactured products in the Far East, lectured on business, and began to pursue a lifelong dream of being a writer for the first time since my youth. But my hunger for money continued to cause me problem after problem.

"I got my old job back and made good money for a while until someone offered a deal I couldn't -- didn't -- refuse because I thought it would make me rich faster.

"I got the opportunity to develop a new product. My new partner showed me how it would make me a lot of money if it worked, and he even had a few thousand dollars to pay me while I did it.

"My addiction to money blinded me to the reality of the situation, and I ended up selling four years of my work for those few thousand dollars and the promise of a big payoff some day.

"My new partner raged often. Reminding me of the violence of my childhood, he was also verbally abusive. He had 'given me the privilege' of working with him on his idea and I was grateful. Such was my self-esteem at the time. I borrowed from family and friends; I signed for a ninety-five-thousand-dollar loan.

"When I eventually went bankrupt after a series of disasters overseas regarding delivery of our product, I hit my financial bottom. After years of sobriety, the irony of going broke sober hit me right over the head."

As Mark would come to realize, he was re-creating the crisis atmosphere around money that he had experienced as a child. He was not able to dismantle that pattern of childhood dysfunction without help.

For Julia, coming from a financially secure home, money problems had emerged later in the form of what we have come to call financial anorexia. (Her story will appear in Chapter 7, The Poverty Addict). She has always found it hard to spend money on herself or to charge adequately for her work. For her -- as for Mark -- money, the lack of money, and the mismanagement of money had dominated and sabotaged her happiness.

REVELATION

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.

We gathered tools from our extensive workshop experiences, from whatever addictions theory seemed relevant, and from sources as disparate as Julia's aunt Bernice, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-III-R (the handbook of modern psychiatry), and Benjamin Franklin.

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.

For ourselves, we have watched our incomes double. We've enjoyed the establishment of solvency and the gradual repayment of debts. We have seen the focus of our lives change to serenity and fulfillment instead of the former money madness that left us no peace.

To cite a few specific examples, we can sit in a room and discuss wages calmly. We can negotiate wisely and fairly, having learned to avoid ambiguity. Having lost the compulsion to spend, we know how to get several bids for a job and make the wisest purchase. (This alone has saved us thousands of dollars.) We have also learned how to say no when a project doesn't suit us.

By consistently keeping exact track of where our money comes from and how we spend it, we have learned to care for ourselves now, no longer waiting for the great day in the future when we will have enough to, say, buy new clothes, take a trip, get a decent car, have a savings account, enjoy hobbies, pursue our creativity.

Most important, we have begun to judge ourselves by our own standards, by our deeds instead of by our incomes or material possessions. We have also used our stories and those of many others to illustrate the many concepts of recovery we will present here.

In addition to the numerous personal stories used to illustrate the various disguises that money addiction may take and the effects of growing up in a money-drunk home, we will also define the different types of money drunks we have encountered -- such as the Big Deal Chaser, the Maintenance Money Drunk, the Poverty Addict, the Cash Co-Dependent, and the Compulsive Spender -- and show you what "the Way Out" looks like for each one of them.

We will also explore the deeply imbedded American misconceptions that help to make money so addictive: money as love, as success, as sex appeal, as security, as power, and finally, as God.

Some of you may be reading this book out of concern for someone else. Some of you are worried about your own relationship with money. We would encourage you to go slowly in assessing your situation. Use this book to explore, not condemn, yourself or others.

Here you will find a broad spectrum of true stories that will allow you to recognize and identify the money-drunk syndrome in yourself or in a loved one. Hundreds of money drunks have contributed to this work. Many of them were still in denial. Their stories, like their lives, were filled with pain and confusion. Others followed the way out and were rewarded with peace and newfound financial freedom. The following quote is from a letter we received from Kathleen, a former student:

I thank you for classes which challenged me to keep moving on this.... I have been recording, nonjudgmentally, every cent I have spent since we were assigned that exercise in early 1990. My husband started noticing how I seemed to have money left over at the end of a budget period; he started recording his expenses, too. At the beginning of 1990 we were several thousand dollars in debt. By the end of 1990 we were almost debt free and managed a fabulous vacation to Ireland. By April 1991 we owed nothing to anyone and were able to make a down payment on a home of our own. Last month we moved in! We do not know how this tool works, and we don't want to know. We plan to keep using it.

You may find it hard to read this book. It is easier for most people to talk about their sex lives than about their money. Do not let that discourage or deter you.

Like our students, you may suddenly become sleepy, space out, or develop a stomachache, a headache, or a pain in the neck. Alternatively, you may completely forget what you are doing and become numb, or suddenly find yourself furious -- barking across the room at your wife, your husband, or even your boss. This displaced anger is very common. What you are really angry about is the wreckage and confusion of your financial affairs, and this anger will pass.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

We will be guiding you through two important processes at once: First, we will be teaching you what the money addiction is, who has it, how to recognize it, and how to break through whatever denial you may have about it.

Second, we will be helping you lay the groundwork for recovery, setting your life on a course toward solvency and financial freedom.

If you will work with the tools in this book for 90 days, we promise you increased financial clarity and emotional relief. First read the main body of the book so that you may understand the basic concepts and the types of money drunks, then start at the beginning of the simple activities suggested and follow our program, week by week, day by day for 90 days. The basic program works for every type of money drunk, but occasionally we will introduce specific modifications for each type.

You do not need to understand why it works. You simply need to use it. If you do, we promise you will realize a future of hope and health and solvency.

Has your life been unmanageable because of money? This book will help you to determine your problem areas -- and show you a way to get sober.