The holiday season unofficially opened the day after Thanksgiving with a bang as shoppers raced through big-box retailers’ doors and stampeded department store employees-searching for the perfect gift on Black Friday.
The term originally referred to the start of the shopping season when most retailers began to turn a financial profit, recording their profits with black ink in their ledgers, rather than red. Today, it’s portrayed as a national retail holiday when bargain-hungry shoppers willingly get up before dawn to spend, and perhaps save, hundreds of dollars, but with increased annual spending and ever-earlier store openings each year, shopping has become a serious, and overlooked, addiction for some.
“Six percent of women and 5.5 percent of men had symptoms consistent with compulsive buying disorder, and compulsive buyers were younger and more likely to have reported incomes under $50,000,” according to a recent nationwide telephone survey of 2,513 adults conducted by Stanford University.
These compulsive buyers spend uncontrollably until they are deep in debt, but this type of shopping and buying is not the same as occasional impulse buying, in which many people engage.
University senior Kirsten Cooper said she doesn’t consider herself to be a shopaholic, although she spends more than the average person and goes shopping at least once a week, in addition to shopping online, she said.
“My problem is I buy a lot of things I don’t need,” Cooper said. “If I’m in a bad mood, that’s what I go and do.”
Using shopping as a distraction from feelings of loss or anxiety is a common behavior of shopping addicts, said Terrence Shulman, a therapist and Certified Addiction Councilor, specializing in shoplifting and shopping addictions.
Shopping binges “often happen during a time of stress, a time of loss, when people have feelings of emptiness,” Shulman said. Some shopping addictive behaviors include compulsive, bargain, image and trophy-or high-class item-shopping, according to Shulman.
“You take yourself away from whatever the problem in your life is,” he said.
He described the addiction as a “vicious cycle” of spending, feeling guilty about purchases and then shopping more, something Cooper identified herself.
“I find myself feeling guilty for the things I’m not able to do” because of overspending, Cooper said, adding that the holiday season is the worst time of the year for indulging in excessive purchases, especially unnecessary ones.
The National Retail Federation, the world’s largest retail trade association, calculated consumer spending during the 2005 winter holiday season at $438.60 billion, making it the most profitable spending season. Back-to-school spending was the second largest retail period, although eight times less, with sales at $54.20 billion.
Although Black Friday is not the busiest shopping day of the year (the busiest shopping day usually falls between Dec. 5 and 10), the 2006 Black Friday Weekend Survey, conducted by BIGresearch reported that more than 140 million shoppers went shopping during this past weekend.
The survey, which polled 3,090 consumers between Thursday and Sunday, reported that weekend shoppers spent an average of $360.15, up 18.9 percent from last year’s $302.81,” according to the NRF.
Shulman said the holidays are a difficult time for overspending, and the season often puts people over the edge.
“I think we live in an addictive society,” Shulman said.
People want a piece of the celebrity life, which the media glamorize, and that includes designer clothing and the latest technological gadgets, he said.
While Cooper said she isn’t in debt, she doesn’t have much in savings and tends not to think about how much she is spending while she is shopping.
“The majority of people, in my opinion, who suffer from shopping addictions, tend to use credit cards,” she said, adding that this is the reason she doesn’t have one and makes her purchases in cash or check only.
“If I know that I have a spending problem, it would probably be the worst thing to do,” Cooper said of getting a credit card.
Shulman recommends creating and sticking to a budget, and finding alternative holiday presents, such as cleaning, house-sitting, making gifts or throwing a holiday party and making a dinner for friends.
“There are a lot of creative ways to show appreciation for people in our lives without spending an arm and a leg,” Shulman said.
For more information on shopping addictions, go to www.shopaholicsanonymous.org.
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