Compulsive shopping can lead to addiction and financial ruin. The need to shop can indicate a chemical imbalance, and treatment may involve medication and counseling. Support groups can be effective in controlling addictive behavior. The shopaholic must want to quit for treatment to be successful.
Deciding if you’re a shopaholic depends on your definition of the word. The term meant someone who enjoyed shopping, maybe a little too much. Now, being called one can mean that you are a compulsive shopper who spends beyond your limits, buys things you don’t need, and uses shopping as a way to temporarily feel better.
Some believe that the compulsive shopper is actually suffering from an addiction. Addiction is defined as having a compulsion to commit a behavior, being unable to stop a behavior and continuing the behavior despite harmful consequences. Research now shows that addictive behavior often provides a momentary lift in mood. A wave of “good feeling” that produces hormones rewards a shopaholic when he buys something. Unfortunately, the lift is not permanent and the person has to go out and shop more to find the next hormonal boost.
The shopaholic often starts looking for more and more “highs,” however, which results in more spending. Once the shopper starts harming their life by spending, or compulsive shopping interferes with relationships, then true addiction exists, particularly if the person cannot stop.
This person often spends beyond their means, so they may sacrifice money for food, rent, utilities, or simply not be able to pay off rising credit card balances. Once a shopaholic spends beyond their limits, illness, such as drug addiction, can worsen. The person may indulge in compulsive theft or may steal money from others to continue shopping. What started out as a joy at finding some good business can end in financial ruin and even a criminal case.
There is help to end such compulsions, which are equally likely to occur in men and women. The need to go shopping, just like the need for any other mood-regulating activity or drug, suggests that the person may have a chemical imbalance. Often restoring the chemical balance, through medications such as antidepressants, can help curb the urge to shop, but that’s only half the equation. When a person becomes a shopaholic, they are not only physically dependent on shopping for chemical balance, but also emotionally dependent on the experience.
The same goes for people addicted to substances like nicotine. Battling physical addiction is not the same as battling habitual smoking behavior. In addition to needing chemicals to alter brain chemistry, a shopping addict must learn how to break up the habitual shopping. This can be especially challenging since most people need to shop once in a while, and it’s nearly impossible to go “cold turkey” and stop completely. People with this condition will likely still need to shop occasionally for things like groceries, and this can lead to a setback in battling addiction.
What seems to help are support groups or one-on-one counseling to control addictive behavior. There are many organizations to help compulsive shoppers, and one-on-one counseling can help a person create strategies to tame the addiction. Group counseling can be particularly effective in preventing people from regressing to compulsive shopping.
Just like any other addict, the shopaholic must want to quit. Very little can be accomplished until there is a sincere desire to end the behavior. For some people, this only occurs when they hit rock bottom. It is hoped that recognizing the signs early can help a person curb the behavior in their childhood so it doesn’t become an addictive behavior that controls their life.
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