What Do Addiction and Debt Have in Common? Two Answers.

She told me shopping was her heroin and her credit card was her needle. A recovering addict and a man who has watched money go wrong since 1994 answer the same question, separately.

The premise

I asked Greg Downs a question I’ve been circling for thirty-plus years: what do addiction and money trouble have in common?

We came at it from opposite doors. Greg spent his career as a financial advisor to some of the wealthiest families in Palm Beach, and then got sober — and found that recovery taught him more about money than Wall Street ever had. He writes Financial Sobriety on Substack and is finishing a book, 12 Steps to Financial Sobriety. If you want a voice on money that comes from the recovery room rather than the trading floor, he’s the one to listen to.

I’ve been on the other side of the desk since 1994, sitting with people whose money had already gone wrong, trying to figure out why.

So here are two answers to one question. Neither of us read the other’s before writing. Read both, and tell us which one sounds like you.

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Greg’s Answer

I love this question!

Three years ago, I would have told you not much. But then I got sober.

I’ve spent countless hours in 12 step meetings and on therapy couches talking about all the reasons I drank:

I never felt comfortable in my own skin.

I never felt good enough.

I carried shame and guilt over things I had done.

I was bored.

I was happy.

I was sad.

I was angry.

I wanted to celebrate.

It was Saturday.

You get the idea. And perhaps you can spot the similarities.

I drank to change the way I felt, and I spent money for the EXACT same reasons.

How many of us have purchased something on Amazon late at night because we had a bad day and wanted to cheer ourselves up only to regret the package as soon as we see it on the doorstep? Or hid a purchase from our partner because we didn’t want them to know the real amount we spent? Or completely ignored a credit card statement when it came in the mail because facing reality was just too hard at that moment?

The goal being to change the way we felt or avoid the problem. See it now?

I grew up on a dirt road in the middle of Florida. We didn’t have much money, but we survived. When I started working in Palm Beach, I felt so out of place. I didn’t go to boarding school or have a grandfather that built railways. But if I spent like they did, then I fit in. And if I drank enough, I was funny enough to fit in. And I needed to fit in.

Both of those behaviors were just masking what was really going on inside of me. I never felt like I belonged. I lacked any sense of self confidence. I didn’t want anyone to know the “real” me because then I wouldn’t be invited back. The problem is both of those behaviors were temporarily good enough that I had to keep them up to continue getting the same fleeting relief.

The financial services industry treats money like a math problem when it’s actually a human problem. We are the most financially informed generation to ever exist yet are in worse shape financially than ever before. We don’t need a new budgeting app to format the numbers in a different way or another YouTube video explaining what compound interest is. What’s keeping us stuck is our internal beliefs around money.

That’s where sobriety comes in. The first step is getting honest about what’s actually happening and why. The 12 step rooms taught me to look at myself, without shame, and trust a framework that has helped millions change their behaviors for close to 100 years. I believe that same framework is what can make lasting change in our financial lives as well.

Money troubles, like addiction, don’t discriminate. I’ve worked with clients making $600,000 per year and clients making $60,000 per year that both spend more than they are bringing in so they appear more successful than they think they are. The extra zero doesn’t matter when we haven’t looked at the root cause.

If you know someone recovering from addiction, you’ve probably heard the phrase “one day at a time.” It means not worrying about tomorrow’s problems and instead focusing on not drinking or using today. I am proposing that we work on our money troubles one dollar at a time.

If you would like to subscribe to Greg, visit Financial Sobriety.

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Steve’s Answer

I’m not an addict. I’m not one of those troubled people who can’t handle a substance and sacrifice everything in life just to have it.

But is that really true? No. It isn’t.

Plenty of people are addicted to all sorts of things — and not the things that leave you in a gutter with track marks, bottles in a trashcan or wondering how you threw your life away. The ordinary kind. The kind with a receipt.

I’ve been helping people with money troubles since 1994, and when I tell you I feel like I’ve seen it all, it sure feels that way. But one woman summed up her financial problems in a way that answers today’s question better than I can.

She told me shopping was her heroin and her credit card was her needle.

Debt is just math wrapped in emotion. It’s the evidence that we made decisions for reasons other than logic and common sense. When you shop to soothe your anxiety, you’re feeding something. When you lose a small fortune day trading, your brokerage is your pusher. When you hand your paycheck to a casino, the casino isn’t your entertainment — it’s your dealer.

I wrote back in 2002 that money is an over-the-counter drug — a legal tool we use to make ourselves feel different, with a fix available 24 hours a day. When my organization surveyed 1,000 adults, 40 percent said their mood changes before or after a purchase. Sixteen percent spent to escape problems or relieve stress. Seventeen percent felt alone or empty inside and bought things to feel better. Just over half had repeatedly tried to cut back or stop. That was before the store moved into your pocket.

The researchers see the same thing. Asked to finish the sentence “I am most likely to buy myself something when…”, almost three-quarters of compulsive buyers answered with a negative emotion — I’m depressed, I feel bad about myself. They describe the buying itself as a “high,” “a rush,” feeling “powerful” or “out of control.” That’s not the language of budgeting. That’s the language of the substance. (Faber & Vohs, 2011)

A clinical comparison of compulsive buyers with people treated for gambling and other behavioral addictions found the same engine underneath: buying to lift a mood or cope with stress, then regret, shame, guilt, financial trouble — and repeated failure to stop (Granero et al., 2016). A meta-analysis across 16 countries puts compulsive buying at roughly 5 percent of adults. One in twenty. It isn’t rare. It just isn’t talked about, because nobody holds an intervention over a closet.

So this isn’t a moral failing alone. It’s your imprinted money personality (find yours here), the reward machinery in your head, and the plain fact that the behavior keeps happening because it works — it serves you in some way, right up until the bill arrives.

Take the man who was wildly overspending on the woman he loved because he could not imagine living without her. He was addicted to everything she was and represented. When he went bust, she left. His need to keep her drove every decision until he hit bottom.

Here’s the good news about being an addict: you have the hope of recognition, the possibility of change, and a real shot at getting out of the loop.

Chemical addicts have something the rest of us should borrow. They meet and cheer each other on. They hold up a friend who has fallen. They can look back from a better life and say: I saw what my addiction was doing to me, I hit bottom, and I clawed my way back.

Money addicts mostly hide. A study of more than 9,000 people found that shame — not guilt, shame — makes financial hardship worse, because shame makes you look away: skip the statement, dodge the call, avoid the bankruptcy that would actually help (Gladstone et al., 2021). The hiding is the disease talking.

So yes, addiction has a great deal in common with money, credit, and debt. But being broke is the symptom, not the problem. The problem is whatever is driving you to steer your own finances into a hole. Fix the driver and the math gets easy. Skip the driver and you’ll dig the same hole again with a fresh shovel.

You can go from hopeless to at peace. I’ve watched it happen more times than I can count. It starts the way it does in every recovery room: by saying, out loud, what’s really going on.

Where to start

If any of this sounded like you, the first step isn’t a budget. It’s telling one honest person — a doctor, a friend, Greg, a counselor, or me. If you can’t face that yet, write it down somewhere nobody will see it. The silence is the part that keeps you going back. That is exactly why I built the anonymous Debt Confessional: say what you are really feeling, with no name attached.

If you’ve got a story of your own, Greg and I would both like to hear it. Reply, comment, or forward this to the person you were thinking about while you read it.

Steve