Splurge On The Verge

Sujata is under psychiatric care. But she doesn’t think her shopping sprees have anything to do with that. She first went to the doctor a few years ago to be able to cope better with her divorce. Today, unknowingly, Sujata is using shopping as a crutch to get over her failed marriage, cope with her loneliness and massage her ego. Her doctor is trying to subtly coax her into looking at alternate ways of feeling good—exercising or socialising maybe—but he never directly tells her to stop shopping. Most shopaholics are often in denial.

Sujata is a classic case of oniomania, the medical term for compulsive buying. The who classifies oniomania as an impulse control disorder together with kleptomania (impulse to steal) and pyromania (impulse to light fires). Medically, this is different from an addiction because addictions imply physical dependence. Oniomania is both the inability to control an irrational urge to splurge and also sometimes self-medication against depression. The human mind craves the stimulation of new and different things, and shopping exhilarates the oniomaniac.

And they are growing rapidly in number. Studies in the UK, US and Germany indicate that the overbuying syndrome today affects between 2 to 10 per cent of the adult population in the West. In India too, doctors see this as a growing trend. Though there are no studies to prove it—no corporate house will, for obvious reasons, fund such research and the government has no money to spare for such upper class triviality—about 1-5 per cent of the urban population is estimated to be suffering from some sort of spending disorder.Each one of us, say doctors, has a potential shopaholic inside us. Each one of us needs to watch out for tell-tale signs. Does shopping give you a rush? Are you buying things you don’t need? Are you living life between shopping binges? (See box for more details). And as glitzy shopping centre after shopping centre turn on their neon charm, as credit gets cheaper and advertising more seductive and persuasive, the urban Indian is finding it increasingly difficult not to succumb to the quagmire. Says Dr Sanjay Chugh, founder-chairman, International Institute of Mental Health: "The problem already exists in huge numbers but only a few come for help. What we are seeing is the tip of the iceberg." In the last two years, Chugh has treated more than a dozen people for oniomania.

The financial problems that come with reckless spending are only the first stretch of a one-way road to psychological hell. Dr Samir Parikh, consultant psychiatrist at Max Healthcare, outlines a typical oniomaniac. A 24-year-old woman (it could be a man as well, though women are more prone to the disorder) comes to him feeling down in the dumps. She is a call centre executive earning about Rs 12,000 a month. She acquired a credit card soon after she got the job and started shopping regularly. But the buying soon turned wild and within a couple of months she had huge bills to settle and had to acquire several other credit cards to pay off her earlier debts leading to anxiety, mood swings and problems at home and work. She then decided to seek help. The apparent problem is anxiety, but Dr Parikh explains that this is actually a case of impulse control disorder of the oniomania type.

Oniomania cuts both ways. It could lead to depression or it could be a symptom of an underlying depression or stress. A typical case of the second type is Rajesh Raman, a middle-aged executive who was not sleeping well, talking a lot, making grandiose plans and was in general constantly elated for no apparent reason. He was also on a shopping rampage. He had spent Rs 5 lakh (far beyond his means) on a plasma TV and a digital camera. He was also travelling frequently for pleasure and would often indulge in big-ticket shopping like buying diamonds for his wife. All this of course on credit card. His family decided that his behaviour was strange enough to require psychiatric help. It was discovered that he was spending so much because he was convinced he would soon win a lottery! In Raman’s case, says his doctor, shopping was the giveaway, he was actually suffering from manic excitement that needed to be treated. Medication calmed him down, but when he realised how much he had spent he went into depression.

Oniomaniacs live a rollercoaster emotional life. The post-shopping feelgood lasts for a couple of hours or a few days followed by guilt at having spent so much needlessly and then there is another shopping binge to get rid of that feeling—a vicious cycle. But haven’t most of us used retail therapy some time in our live to shake off the blues? The act of going shopping alone isolates us from our environment and helps us heal. It acts as a balm against loneliness and despondency. Nothing wrong with that, argue doctors, as long as you can afford it. "But if we are increasingly using the material route to fill a vacuum within or if we are using the shopping experience for a positive reinforcement of the self, we better watch out," feels psychiatrist Dr Avdesh Sharma.

Though doctors don’t classify oniomania as an addiction, it often comes in tandem with other true-blue addictions. Someone with an eating disorder or a problem with alcohol could also end up an oniomaniac. Shalini Mathur, a 37-year-old mnc executive, found that her eating binges were often followed by a shopping spree. She would gain five kilos, get depressed and make a beeline for the shopping arcades. And buy heaps of undersized clothes in the hope that she would lose weight soon. But she wouldn’t get thinner and invariably end up with piles of clothes she would never fit into. She was using one addiction to get over another, until finally took medical advice. It’s also not uncommon for men and women who have kicked an addiction such as alcoholism to replace it with irrational shopping sprees.

Women are far more likely to fall into the trap of extreme retail therapy than men for sociological as well as purely chemical reasons. Women are more prone to depression because serotonin deficiency is more common among women; serotonin is a brain chemical, the lack of which can lead to mood swings. Many anti-depressants focus specifically on boosting serotonin levels in the brain.

Chugh says that more than 60 per cent of the women who come to him for different reasons say they regularly use retail therapy to beat depression. "The act of shopping for many people releases what is called pleasure hormones or endorphins that distract the mind and lifts the spirits in the same way as taking the drug opium might work for some people," explains Chugh.

Among women, the ones most vulnerable to oniomania are lonely, middle-aged housewives who don’t have anything evidently wrong in their lives. "But many such women feel the need to reassert control over their lives," says Sharma. "And shopping gives them that control. For instance, the sheer act of bargaining makes them feel in control of the situation." There is also positive reinforcement of the self when you enter a shop and become the centre of attraction.

On the other hand, men, when depressed, say psychologists, more often tend to withdraw into themselves or resort to other deviant behaviour like alcoholism. But they do go on shopping binges—the only difference being that while women tend to spend more on personal accessories, men go for gizmos and gadgets. "They’re spending a lot more on what they see as assets that can be used by the whole family, for example the latest digital camera, but actually it is a self-gratifying trip for them," says Sharma.

Of course, the growing obsession with consumption as social status and self-esteem has a direct correlation with the increasing number of oniomania cases. "We have not gone through the steps of development like the West. From deprivation we’ve moved straight to plenty. Therefore the overemphasis on material gain," feels Dr Nimesh Desai, professor of psychiatry at the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences. The depression, he says, that excessive materialism leads to is nothing but the gap between aspiration and reality. As he puts it, "The market raises the bar of aspiration but reality has not gained in height." Therefore people need to overspend, go beyond their means to achieve standards set by society. "Today we are not postponing gratification," says psychiatrist Dr Achal Bhagat. "Buying has become a symbol of success for the not-so-successful as well as the successful."

Priya passed her school board examinations with flying colours, and got into one of the city’s best colleges. But that was not enough to make her feel good. She was a lower-middle-class girl who had done her schooling from a Kendriya Vidyalaya and was embarrassed about it. She felt she needed to change the way she dressed to be one among her new peers. Priya went shopping for clothes with the Rs 1,200 various relatives had gifted her, but soon the money ran out. When her parents refused to give her any more cash, she bartered her new cell phone—which was her father’s reward to her for scoring above 90 per cent for a few more dresses and on her way out stole a T-shirt as well. Once at home, overcome by guilt, she confessed to her parents who brought her to an ngo working with problems facing young people.

Priya is just one among millions of young Indians who measure their self- worth by what they possess. They have caught the bug early and as life becomes more competitive and complex, as the pressures build and urban fatigue starts to set in, they could be heading for serious psychological and emotional trauma. Indian urban society could be sitting on a bomb ticking away inexorably. Products are only going to get more numerous and attractive, shop displays more beguiling, advertisements more compelling.

But it would be simplistic to blame it all on the environment. The retail boom, big business, media and advertising industries are the easiest whipping boys to find in any society. As Parikh says, the real problem is internal, the environment acts only as a trigger. The fact that, according to surveys done by ksa—Technopak, urban consumer spending rose by 12 per cent in 2002, and 16 per cent in 2003, is by no means a negative statistic.

The alcoholic needs alcohol as a crutch, the smoker finds it in tobacco. The oniomaniac’s problem is not the alluring window display but the willingness to sacrifice her free will to it. As Sujata says: "I just like to buy things. I buy whatever I like." I shop, therefore I am. But it’s actually, I shop wild, therefore I am under psychiatric care.

(Some names have been changed)