Addiction can have a devastating effect on your finances.

A hole in your pocket

Having had a single mother make

sacrifices to afford him an education at one of the most prestigious private

schools in Johannesburg, Max*(29), as a young black man, found the

responsibility to succeed daunting in an environment where he experienced

bullying and rejection.

But he stuck it out. University would

be the next step; at least there he could experience freedom and live his life

on his own terms — little did he know what storm was brewing ahead.

“My addiction manifested in various ways as a

teenager. I use the word ‘manifest’ because my addictive behaviour started long before my engagement with

drugs.

As a teenager I was always wanting

more of anything that would make me feel like I fitted in and was accepted by

others.

When I started using drugs, I also

used sex, food, shopping and gambling to fill the bottomless hole inside me. If

it could give me a high or instant gratification, I would use it to make myself

feel or not feel, depending on my mood," he says.

Max described his cocktail of drugs: cocaine (coke), alcohol, marijuana and methcathinone (cat) as his “best friend” despite the fact that he was living a lie to hide his failures by coming up with multiple excuses as he kept changing courses at the university.

“I couldn’t stop and when I stopped

for brief periods of time, I realised I could not stay stopped. My dependence

matured cunningly over time, never halting, never receding and always

progressing”.

“My plan was simple - I had to make

sure I always had enough money.”

“My range of entrepreneurial pursuits

ranged from charging fellow students to write their assignments, to

transporting my dealer in a car handed down to me from my mom.”

He struck gold when he started a

tutoring business which led him to hiring 15 of his fellow students to tutor

children from wealthy homes.

From his business, he says he would

rake in enough money to pay his friends weekly and take home roughly

R10 000. The money would last him a week.

His business failed just as quickly as

it gained success.

“I started losing my first group of

clients because of my shoddy business ethics. To be honest, I was high during

most of my interactions with them and their kids,” he explains.

“My staff started leaving. Parents

started speaking negatively about me and just as quickly as my business boomed,

it exploded into an ugly mess.”

“Fast forward to two years later, I

landed up walking into a rehab, a university drop-out, with failed businesses,

unemployable and fully dependent on my mother.”

Max admits, money was just a means to

an end and the financial consequences never crossed his mind. For him,

addiction masked the pain caused by his failures, and six years into sobriety

he’s still dealing with guilt but his attitude towards money has changed.

“Today, I value people and my

relationships more than money. If I had a choice between being rich and poor

and isolated from the love of my family, I would choose to be poor. Money has

given me access to great opportunities and now I use it to help others.”

Addiction can be linked to poverty 

Kagiso* (20) from the township of Mamelodi,

Pretoria, says Heartlines’ Values and Money team opened his eyes to the

financial consequences of his addiction.

He’s been addicted to cat and coke for over five years, and coming from a poor home he never had the opportunity to further his studies.

His grandmother is the only person in his

family that has an income which she receives from her pension grant.

“I spend about R3000 per month buying

drugs. For a long time I lied to my grandmother about needing money for things

like clothes and toiletries when I actually needed it to buy drugs,” he admits.

Realising that this was not enough to fund

his habit, he found a job as a mechanic, where he says he steals car parts in

exchange for cash.

Kagiso says for the first time he’s

starting to think differently about money and wants to make better choices.

“I know that if I get caught I’ll lose my

job and I have a child that I’m not supporting. My grandmother is struggling

financially and I realised that my actions have been selfish.”

The truth about financial recovery

An unfit mother. Seriously, how did this happen?

Katy* is still struggling to come to terms with

the fact that she’s been branded as incapable of looking after her 14-year-old

daughter, at the mature age of 49.

But then again, maturity came late because she spent most of her adult life addicted to, marijuana, alcohol, LSD, ecstasy, coke, cat and having money.

She decided to clean up her act four years ago,

when losing her daughter opened her eyes.

In her addiction, Katy managed to study, get a

job in IT, date, fall pregnant, and give birth to a beautiful girl. But she

also took out loans to live a life beyond her means.

“I had an

addiction to credit, I kept taking more credit than I could afford,” she

explains.

“I had a credit

card, an overdraft and a loan which was about ten times my salary, I needed to

have money, not because I wanted to buy anything special but because I wanted

to spend.

Having gone into

rehab, Katy’s managed to turn her life around.

She attended

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings and just over two years into sobriety she

was introduced to Debtors Anonymous (DA).

“It’s for people who are addicted to credit, those who under earn and

those who over spend. Basically, people who are living off money they don’t

actually have. It uses the same principals as AA but it deals with the issue of

debt. 

Unfortunately there are no DA meetings in

South Africa, so she attends meetings via Skype to America and the UK.

 “I’ve

been paying off my debt for six months with great difficulty, but I'm no longer

creating debt so I have a chance to restore my finances. There’s lots of repair

work to do still on all levels, but at least I've started.” 

She is also in the process of starting DA meetings in South Africa because she is aware that there are others who share a similar experience.

She’s living proof that any bad situation can be

turned around and that there is grace for one to start over.

*The names in this article have been changed.

If you would like our Values & Money facilitators to speak in your community about adopting positive money values, email info@heartlines.org.za or call us at 011 771 2540.

For financial addiction advice go to www.debtorsanonymous.org