Could You Be a Compulsive Shopper? :

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It's become a tradition in my family. After we drop our kids at camp near Augusta, Maine, we stop in Freeport on our drive back to Boston.

Freeport is the home of clothing retailer L.L. Bean, which is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It was a magnet for 'round the clock shoppers decades before the Internet. Freeport is now thick with outlet stores -- a perfect place to do "retail therapy" in the hours after you leave your beloved children.

There's no denying the pleasure in purchasing. And advertisers only get more skilled at parting us from our cash. But for some -- maybe as many as 1 in 20 according to a new study -- shopping is a compulsion or an addiction. Compulsive shoppers may get some pleasure, but they are also trapped in a terrible cycle. As shopping becomes an irresistible and sometimes senseless impulse, they buy things they don't need and can't afford. And the shopping leads to guilt, conflict in key relationships, trouble at work and financial difficulty, if not ruin. In some cases, the compulsion leads to criminal activity.At worst, an individual may commit suicide in response to feeling depressed or humiliated. That is an extreme and rare outcome, but experts are beginning to understand that compulsive buying can cause as much distress as very common mental disorders such as depression and anxiety.

Is Compulsive Buying an Illness?
Compulsive buying is not currently listed in the manual used in American psychiatry to diagnose mental health disorders, but it may appear in the next edition. For now, it's considered a problem of impulse control -- the inability to resist an impulse or temptation. There's an increasing sense of arousal or tension before acting and a sense of relief afterwards.

But there are experts who disagree. Some see compulsive buying as an obsessive-compulsive disorder and others see it as an addiction. It's possible that it's not a compulsion or an addiction at all, but a way to soothe painful feelings of depression or loneliness or part of the intense high or euphoria of mania.

Some experts even criticize the idea that we should call compulsive buying a medical or mental disorder. They suggest the problem is primarily a social one. Credit is too easy to get. Advertisers are too clever at selling us things. And modern shopping opportunities are always available.

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