Australian Stories

3 New Recovery Stories from Members of DA/BDA in Australia

DA Australia celebrates the 50th anniversary of Debtors Anonymous by publishing a series of recovery stories written by members of DA/BDA in Australia. DA Australia Intergroup plans to publish another nine stories over the next 18 months. If you would like to share your recovery story in the next group of three to be published in November 2026, please submit an Expression of Interest (EOI) by Sunday 16 August 2026

‘I was living with a level of stress that felt like it was eating me from the inside out’

‘Walking into my first DA meeting, I expected judgment. What I found instead were gifts.’

I came to Debtors Anonymous for the first time after a relapse in my beverage program. The trigger wasn’t hard to name — I was carrying over $130,000 in tax debt, running a business and living with a level of stress that felt like it was eating me from the inside out. I was waking most nights at 3am with the horrors, my heart racing and mind spinning, rehearsing worst-case scenarios. I couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t rest and I didn’t know how to ask for help in a way that wasn’t filled with shame.

Walking into my first DA meeting, I expected judgment. What I found instead were gifts — not money, but identification, understanding, and relief. People spoke about fear, avoidance, debt, and the constant pressure of ‘keeping it together’. I didn’t have to explain everything. I could just be there, tell the truth and breathe. The pressure lifted because I wasn’t alone anymore and because the program offered something I hadn’t been able to create for myself: a pathway, a structure, and a community that understood the insanity of debt and the emotional storm that comes with it.

As things improved I did what I had always done, I left. Life got better, I felt stronger and I told myself I was fine. And for a while it looked fine from the outside. But it didn’t take long before the wheels fell off again. Without the support of the program my old patterns returned: overworking, avoiding, magical thinking, blurry boundaries and the feeling that I could out-run reality if I just pushed harder. I came back to DA a few more times when things got bad, but I didn’t stay. I listened, I took a little comfort and then I disappeared again. Each time the pain grew. Each time the debt grew. Each time the consequences felt more frightening and more personal.

Eventually I reached a point where I couldn’t pretend anymore. More debt. More fear. More sleepless nights. More self-reproach. About ten years ago I returned to DA with a different kind of surrender — not dramatic, but real. I stopped trying to do it my way. I did the things I had not done before. I stayed. I got a sponsor. I worked the Steps. I learnt what it meant to be accountable with kindness rather than punishment. I began to practise the tools — not when I felt like it, but because my life depended on it.

I also got involved in service and that changed everything. I did service at every level I could and I discovered something I hadn’t expected: showing up for others helped me show up for myself. Service took me out of self-obsession and into connection. It gave me a place to belong and a way to practise integrity one day at a time. Sponsoring others deepened my own recovery, because I couldn’t pass on what I wasn’t willing to live myself.

Slowly, a new way of life formed. I learnt to separate personal and business accounts. I learnt to use multiple accounts with clear purposes. I learnt to create healthy savings. I learnt to face numbers without collapsing into fear, to let the truth be the truth and to take the next right action. The strangest part was this: the more honest I became, the less frightened I felt. I didn’t need to be ‘perfect’, I needed to be present, willing and teachable.

Today I have two businesses: one is a solvency business; the other is a passion project that fills me with joy. I have not incurred any new debt for nearly eight years. I’m almost solvent and I’ve paid off nearly $110,000 in debt. I have systems that support me: clear accounts, boundaries that are firmer and a relationship with money that is grounded in reality rather than panic. I still live life on life’s terms, but I’m no longer living with that constant dread.

The greatest gift hasn’t been the numbers, it’s been peace of mind. I can sleep. I can wake without terror. I can make decisions without the fog of financial denial. I can feel steady, even when things are uncertain, because I know I have a program, a community and practices that work when I work them. If you’re new or coming back again, I want to say this gently, you’re not alone, and you don’t have to do this by yourself. Keep coming back. Stay long enough for the change to reach the places where fear has been running. Do the things you haven’t done before. Let yourself be supported. For me, DA didn’t just help me manage debt, it helped me reclaim my life.

If you are seeking recovery from debting and other money issues see the list of DA/BDA meetings hosted in Australia

‘If I didn’t address my behaviour, I would spend all my savings and more’

‘Today the Promises are coming true in my life. I live in abundance and no longer fear where my next meal will come from’

My DA story begins in 2010 when I joined from a food program. I had so much recovery in that program that I was buying piles of secondhand clothes to keep up with my weight loss. It wasn’t so much the amount of money I was spending, but the fact that this one body could never wear all the clothes I was buying. I would spend the weekend going from one secondhand shop to another, thrilled by what I had found and excited to find clothes that fit. By the end of the weekend, I’d tip the bags out onto my bed and marvel at the cubic metre of bounty. This was until my eyes were opened and I saw the insanity of what I was doing.

I had a good job at the time, earning an executive level salary, but I was always broke and struggled to pay for the basics, let alone an unexpected expense. The tipping point came when I had a flat tyre; I had $67 in the bank and my credit cards were maxed out. I recall standing in my parent’s lounge room crying because I was so frightened about how I would manage. I had no savings, no assets and no clue how to manage my money.

I’d always had credit cards since my first one at age eighteen. I maxed them out numerous times, paying them off with windfalls or consolidating the debt into a personal loan. I never had savings and never understood the concept of saving up for something. Imagine having to wait for something I wanted! Unheard of! I used credit cards, personal loans, store credit cards, laybys and loans from Mum and Dad. Somehow, I always paid the rent and put food on the table, but I couldn’t save a deposit for a house (back in the 1980s and 90s when it was affordable) and never went on a nice overseas holiday with my young son. However, I had plenty of clothes, jewellery, books, makeup and endless piles of STUFF!

I had a friend who was also a single parent and she was studying to become a nurse, working part-time, paying down a mortgage, and somehow, she managed an overseas trip every two years with her son. Her income was probably a quarter of what I earned and yet she was living abundantly and I was living like a pauper surrounded by useless stuff. Something was off in how I was living my life and I was totally in the dark about how to fix it. My food program couldn’t solve the issue, and it was only when I attended my first DA meeting in 2010 that I started to understand the nature of my problem.

I have a compulsion to live beyond my means and I was blind to the truth of it. My first meeting was at 8pm on Wednesday night in the old Rainbow Recovery Room in Surry Hills in Sydney. I have such fond memories of that space. From day one, I experienced the gentleness and compassion of DA. I came in with approximately $11,000 in credit card and personal-loan debts. Within two years, by the grace of God, I had paid off those debts, saved enough money for my first overseas trip and saved the deposit on an investment unit. My income hadn’t radically changed; I just wasn’t spending around the clock. I worked the Steps, used all the Tools and did a lot of service. I was on the first Sydney Intergroup and helped organise a couple of conventions.

Despite having so much recovery in all my 12 Step programs, things started to change for me in 2013. I was having problems at work and realise now that I was being systematically bullied. There were issues in my family life, I started struggling in my food program and my mental health was deteriorating. By 2014, I had left recovery and was back out in the darkness and despair of the disease.

Fast forward six years to 2020. My Mum was approaching her 90th birthday, and decided to sell the family home. She gave me my share of the inheritance and for the first time in my life, at 58 years old, I could buy a place of my own. I found a beautiful home where Mum could have her own space and live out her life.

Even though the early inheritance covered the entire cost of the house, I decided to get a mortgage so I could undertake some renovations. It all went well for about a year; interest rates were low and I achieved the important renovations I wanted. I still had $140,000 sitting in my mortgage offset account. The sensible thing would have been to put that money back into the loan. Instead, I started spending it. By late 2021, the worst of Covid had passed and the borders were once again opened. My granddaughter had been born overseas in 2020 and I hadn’t met her yet. Of course I thought I had piles of money to spend, because I had that money sitting in my offset account. I started travelling overseas every few months, spending thousands every time. I was moving money around, playing a shell game with myself, only the seed was disappearing.

My spending was out of control again, but I didn’t know it. I would go to a major hardware store with a family member who was very wealthy, and I would spend $700 at a time, while they would spend only $100. It was like I was in a trance. I was living the ‘lifestyles of the rich and famous’ without being rich or famous. Before I knew it my offset account was reduced by another $60,000 and interest rates were increasing rapidly. I was starting to get seriously worried about how I would pay my mortgage, as I was retired and had no capacity to increase my earnings. One day, my relative offered to pay off my mortgage and I could in turn repay them interest free. Such a generous offer, but something felt wrong. We spoke about it again, and whilst they were was still happy to help me, they said it was on the proviso that I address my spending habits ‘so I didn’t end up in the same hole’.

They saw something in me I had been blind to. My spending was out of control and if I didn’t address my behaviour, I would spend all my savings and more. At that point, I remembered DA. Thank God!

I attended my first DA zoom meeting at 8pm on Wednesday 19 April 2023. It was the old Rainbow Recovery Room meeting in a zoom format. I was nervous as I’d never used zoom before and didn’t know how it worked or what the protocols were. Somehow, I managed to connect and there, to my joy, were two people who were my close friends from my first DA recovery. This was God telling me I was in the right place. My next meeting was the Saturday BDA meeting and another two of my close friends were there. My Higher Power had well and truly saved me and brought me back to recovery and sanity.

Since then, I haven’t spent a single dollar from my offset account. One of the faces from those first zoom meetings became my Sponsor, and another my Success Buddy. I’ve worked the Steps, slowly, deliberately and with more honesty than ever before. I’ve admitted things I never thought I would. I now have nothing to hide and nothing to run from. I use the DA Tools to the best of my imperfect ability with love and compassion. Whatever I do, I feel held by this beautiful gentle program.

I still do the travel I want to do, without spending my savings. Soon after Mum passed away, in late 2023, my Higher Power gave me casual work that I’m good at and enjoy, where I am appreciated for what I contribute and they pay me well. I’ve had multiple overseas holidays to have adventures and visit family.

Today the Promises are coming true in my life. I live in abundance and no longer fear where my next meal will come from or if I can afford to replace a tyre. DA and my Higher Power saved me, and I am so very grateful.

More information about Debtors Anonymous & Business Debtors Anonymous

‘I owed everybody money in my circle of family and friends’

‘Today I am a published writer, earning 100% of my salary doing something I love’

I was sitting in my office and the landlord wanted me out. My rent was three months in arrears and I was behind on apartment rent as well. I had outstanding phone, electricity and gas bills and owed everybody money in my circle of family and friends. I had three years' worth of personal tax returns outstanding, two years of company tax returns to do and I'd racked up a credit card debt of over $21,000. I was self-employed with no new invoices to be issued and no old invoices out there still to be paid. .

I was homicidal and suicidal. In the rooms of recovery, people often say, ironically, ’my best thinking got me here’. My best thinking, literally, was to call a man I knew from the rooms of DA/BDA who I'd heard share. Ordinarily, I didn’t have much to do with him, but I knew he had good recovery.

I rang him and explained my situation. ’What do you want to do?’ he asked. I told him I had no idea, that's why I was calling him. ‘Do 90 meetings in 90 days’ was his reply. Even down the phone line I think he could hear me roll my eyes at the thought. I agreed to do 30 meetings in 30 days to start with. He told me to send him through an email listing the 30 meetings the moment I got off the phone, and added this: ’Don't debt one day at a time and expect miracles’.

That phone call was only seven minutes long. A second before the call I was in a rock bottom of despair. Immediately after the call I had hope.

My journey in DA and BDA had started about five years earlier, with about ten years recovery in another fellowship. I knew that 12 Step programs worked, yet for some obscure reason, in DA/BDA I did the exact opposite of what I was doing in my other program. In that fellowship I was going to a lot of meetings, I was sponsored and had sponsees, I'd worked through the 12 Steps, I was doing service and attending group consciences, and I had a home group. In DA/BDA I went to one meeting a week, I didn't have a home group and waited for a while before I worked the Steps. I used to say that the other fellowship was my ’primary program’ when in fact what I think today is that this disease of debting would have me dead just as quickly as that other disease.

In my other program I knew my recovery date. However, in DA/BDA I had no idea when I last debted. Now, with this rock bottom that actually eclipsed all other previous rocks bottoms, I had a financial recovery date and was determined to not debt one day at a time as I moved forward.

I emailed my list of 30 meetings to the man I'd called, the man who was to become my sponsor and who was to take me through the Steps. 30 meetings in 30 days would indeed soon turn into 90 in 90, and this was at a time when very few meetings existed online, and there weren’t many face-to-face meetings I could attend. Very often, late at night I would dial into phone meetings in the USA, and sometimes the UK. My home group was a Sunday morning BDA meeting here in Sydney, a meeting I had started, along with three other members. Now I was back there and sharing, ’Hi I'm R----. This is day three.’ I became the treasurer of that meeting. The group didn't have a bank account, so I would have a bag of cash — sometimes hundreds of dollars — that would sit in a cupboard in my apartment, whilst I wondered where the money for the day's food was coming from. My determination to stay debt-free meant that I never touched one cent of that money, nor was I ever tempted.

At the time of my rock bottom, I had $10 in my bank account. With very little in the way of Debtors Anonymous conference approved literature back then, there was a book I knew of that had been written by a DA member (now sadly departed) that I'd heard others talk about. I used $8.99 of my last $10 to download a digital copy of that book, which became my bedtime reading. In the book, the author talked about how money would sometimes trickle in, and other times gush; how some days would be excruciatingly painful, and other days not so. The author was right. This was my experience.

One of the first things I did was to pick up the phone to every single one of my creditors, be they a friend, family member or institution. I explained what was going on. I gave them my email address, my home address, my phone number, and told them that I was not hiding from any of them, that I had every intention of paying back every dollar, but that first there would be a month's moratorium whilst I worked out how I could make that happen (with the help of my sponsor, my Higher Power, and this program).

With no work in my chosen field, I was prepared to accept any kind of paid employment as long as it wouldn't compromise me morally or ethically. Dog-sitting, child-minding, and working a market stall were just some of the tasks that helped the income trickle in. Then came a test of humility. Some years before, in a previous working life, I had helped a friend save his import business from going under. I had been paid handsomely to sit in the boardroom of his company, strategising, whilst having to recommend cutting staff, saving his business in the process.

One afternoon following my rock bottom I ran into this friend, who had heard I was looking for work. My heart leapt with the prospect of money gushing in once more. ’I'm afraid I can only offer you a job on the warehouse floor, picking and packing boxes.’ This meant I would be working side-by-side with the friends and colleagues of those I had recommended he let go. I tried to get people to talk me out of having to do this. I even ran the idea past a sponsee in my other program, who said to me, ’But you're broke aren't you?’

I did go and work on that warehouse floor for a few months. It was a lifesaver. That Christmas I made cards and presents for friends and families, such was the absence of money in my spending plan. I must have bought many, many Christmas presents across the course of my life, most of which I can't remember. However, I will never forget the rocky road, flecked with edible gold leaf, I made that year, such was its triumph!

I was working to a ’Survive’ spending plan, but I had a vision of not staying that way, trusting the program and my God. So I wrote a next level spending plan called ’Thrive’, and one beyond that named the ’F--k it's Good to be Alive’ spending plan. As I write this, it's eight years and four months on since my rock bottom. My old career took a left turn when I was working Step 11 and my Higher Power presented me with a renewed career path— a path I would not have chosen for myself. Truly a 'God Job' which has become my vision career. Today I am a published writer, earning 100% of my salary doing something I love, something I am privileged to do. This year I will be returning to study at university, and launching a podcast as a companion piece to a book I've co-written with a psychologist that will be in bookshops within a matter of months.

That same man I made the phone call to is still my sponsor. That home group I started with two or three others is still my home group. I have paid off over $50,000 in debt; my debts are cleared. I am just above the ’Thrive’ spending plan, and yes, it is very good to be alive. All thanks to Debtors Anonymous and Business Debtors Anonymous.

More information about the 12 Steps & 12 Tools of Debtors Anonymous

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