Hi. My name is Mike. And I’m a recovering credit addict.

Ten years ago and fresh out of high school, I was every credit company’s wet dream. I was a twenty-something child of America’s ever growing consumerist culture with a want – a need, a hunger – to spend. And lenders were all too happy to oblige. I could’ve wallpapered my granny’s two-story house with the daily credit offers I received in the mail.

The mindset of a credit addict is not entirely different from the flawed comprehension of finances we have as children. My mother would visit the ATM, punch a few numbers, select how many 20’s she wanted, and – BAM! – hit the jackpot every time. As a child, I never questioned the source of this money. It never occurred to me that this cash was attached to a bank account with a finite amount of cash available to my dear Mum.

It’s the old adage: out of sight, out of mind. Credit cards allowed me to enjoy a seemingly limitless cycle of spending without consequence. Sure, the bills would come some day. But that day was far enough into the future that I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

I spent three years living high on someone else’s money: high end televisions, a $50,000 sports car, an overpriced wardrobe from Nordstrom, jetting off to Montreal every few weeks for booze and endless parties. With a six-figure salary, I could’ve paid cash for my stockpile of material goods, but I chose to charge it all on plastic and spend my own hard-earned cash.

Then the very real and plausible happened. That which I most certainly wasn’t expecting let alone planning for: I lost my job. The incoming vice president of my company’s web division decided that “the whole internet thing” really was a dead end. So they closed shop.

In the two months that followed – in the undertow of the dot-com bust – I fell irrevocably behind on every one of my bills: car payment, rent, utilities, credit cards. Everything.

Fast-forward six months and I’d defaulted on all my debts. I was forced out of my apartment, moved in with my girlfriend, lost my car, and received a steady, daily stream of nastygrams from creditors and, worst of all, the federal government crying foul about my student loans.

What followed were some of the worst years of my adult life – financially and emotionally. I was categorically denied credit at every turn. I believe – though can’t prove – that my poor credit cost me several high-paying job offers. And my girlfriend and I were nearly turned down for our dream apartment together because of my credit history.

It wasn’t until 2006 that I finally qualified for an auto loan on my own. At 19% interest.

After fighting with the credit bureaus – via countless nasty e-mails, letters and phone calls – for years, my credit scores now hover around 600. It’s been a slow climb out of the hole I dug myself into, but I’m slowly putting that past behind me.

Credit addiction and its inevitable fallout not only affect your financial health, but your personal wellbeing too. Like any addiction, I believe it is possible to kick the habit. It just takes a great deal of willpower, patience and a serious shift in one’s financial mindset.

Or, as in my case, hitting financial rock bottom was a good kick in the arse as well.

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