In fact, for a true compulsive buyer, rising food costs and gas prices, possible layoffs and a hike in mortgage rates might even trigger a perverse reaction: Stressed by financial difficulties, many problem consumers will escape their worries with a trip to the store, a browse on a favorite shopping site or an impulse call to a shopping channel.
Whether it's the growing number of treatment programs springing up or the worsening economy, the number of people coming forward for help appears to be growing. April Benson, a New York psychologist who has pioneered a telephone-based form of group therapy for compulsive shoppers, reports, "There's more and more traffic to my website, I'm getting more and more requests. I have to imagine that's in part due to the economic times."
If those seeking treatment are any gauge, compulsive shopping is an overwhelmingly female condition. Some 80% of those who come forward, say experts, are women. Koran says there's every reason to believe that men are just as likely to buy compulsively. But "men don't come for help," he says.
Gender differences are very real, however, in the tastes and habits of compulsive shoppers. Women, say those who treat the condition, overwhelmingly buy clothes, jewelry, makeup and gifts for other people -- largely objects of self-adornment they imagine will enhance their image in the eyes of others. Though many male compulsive shoppers are clotheshorses, experts say they are more commonly "collectors" of things -- electronic gadgets, CDs, watches, pens, books, cars. Men, says Koran, tend to have impulse-control problems around shopping when they feel agitated, angry, elated. Depression and boredom are more often the moods that send women to market.
For both, purchases bring a rush of relief from uncomfortable feelings: Patients frequently describe a "rush" of arousal and a release from the unpleasant feelings that generally build in the hours and days before a shopping expedition, says Koran. Indeed, brain-imaging studies have shown that even in normal subjects, anticipating a purchase prompts activity in many of the same pleasure-seeking circuits that are activated when addicts succeed in finding a "fix."
But disinterest, guilt and remorse tend to set in quickly. Their purchases are often stowed in the back of a closet or in a basement, their price tags never removed. The resulting ill feeling begins building again, and a compulsive shopper will frequently feel the need for another shopping fix. The cycle continues.
