Depression Can Be Fun Magazine Interviews
Stella Magazine
SHOPAHOLICS
For some women the act of shopping can morph from a simple pleasure into an uncontrollable compulsion, with the ‘high’ received from each purchase becoming dangerously addictive.
Compared with other addictions such as drugs, sex or alcohol, research into the phenomenon is still in its infancy. None the less, shopping addiction, properly called oniomania, is now so common that the term ‘shoporexia’ has been coined, with some studies suggesting that one in four women is affected.
But what is it like to be in the grip of a shopping addiction?
HELEN MCNALLEN, 41, spent £400,000 in just 18 months in the throes of an addiction so serious she had to be hospitalised. Helen is divorced and lives in Sheffield.
‘I’d buy eight pairs of sunglasses at once, splash out on diamond jewellery and spend £10,000 in art galleries’
In my case shopping addiction was the manifestation of clinical depression, triggered by the stress of my career as a City trader. In those days I was the last person anyone would have expected to be suffering from mental illness. But in 1999, after taking a new job that involved horrendously long hours, work began to get on top of me. Still, as the only female trader on an all-male trading floor, I felt an absolute determination to prove I could cope.
Within six months of joining the company I was so tired I spent every weekend in bed, and in January 2000 my GP diagnosed me with mental and physical exhaustion. I was admitted to a psychiatric clinic in Windsor where I stayed for two weeks, telling my colleagues I had a virus.
Afterwards I considered myself ‘fixed’, went back to work and forced myself to plough on, too ashamed and embarrassed to do anything else. Exactly a year later I snapped. I don’t remember any of it, but I tried to jump off a building. I spent the next three months in the Priory and was diagnosed with clinical depression.
My mental state was so severe that I was in bed for the next two years, and my husband virtually gave up his job as a cameraman to care for me full time. In 2003, following a second stint in the Priory during which I had a course of electroconvulsive therapy, I started showing manic symptoms and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And that was when I started shopping.
By then my husband, Duncan, and I were living in Edinburgh, and we were both pleased that, rather than staying at home all day, I was now going into town and visiting the shops. First I bought myself a set of new suits for when I went back to work. I also got a personal shopper in Harrods and Harvey Nichols in order to help me look fashionable again.
Given what I’d been through, it seemed to everyone – and to me- that I was just putting my life back together. But within a few months my shopping had picked up pace from what might be considered normal to what was definitely abnormal.
I’d walk into a shop and buy ridiculously expensive designer shoes with six-inch Perspex heels, which I knew I would never wear. Even if I dropped into my local health-food shop for a pot of yogurt, I’d come out having spent £150. I’d buy eight pairs of sunglasses at once, splash out on diamond jewellery and spend £10,000 in art galleries, as though I had all the money in the world. In fact, I was paying for everything using overdrafts and credit cards.
With hindsight – and therapy – I can see I was spending in a desperate bid to buy back the status that I’d once had, and to make myself feel capable again. I kept thinking that if I bought just one more thing I would feel happy again.
Duncan was the only person who realised how serious the problem was, but when he tried to tell people no one believed him. My father even told him that it was impossible I had a shopping addiction as I’d always been so sensible with money.
Most nights Duncan tried to reason with me, trying to make me understand that I was putting us at risk of losing our home. But it was like reasoning with an alcoholic: impossible. I would lie, shout, scream and then threaten to kill myself.
In June 2004 I went to see a psychiatrist and was admitted to hospital in Edinburgh. It was then that I had an epiphany like experience in which I realised the seriousness and utter folly of my situation.
With help I managed to turn my life around, but it was too late to save my marriage. Although we’re still friends today, the debts I’d run up caused too much resentment, and it was impossible to move beyond the patient/carer roles I had created.
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