Shopping Bulemia ; Meet the Sex and the City Generation Who Are Seduced Into Spending a Fortune On Clothes the Stars Wear - but Then, Disgusted and Guilty, Return Them

Daily Mail › November 07, 2005

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Summary

OUR national credit card debt has just soared to a terrifying Pounds 34billion. Shopping has become the most widespread addiction in the Western world and there are moves to have compulsive shopping recognised as a psychiatric illness.

Shopping bulimics is the name for the growing number of women who 'binge shop' in stores before symbolically ridding themselves of guilt by returning what they've just purchased.

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Extract

Shopping Bulemia ; Meet the Sex and the City Generation Who Are Seduced Into Spending a Fortune On Clothes the Stars Wear - but Then, Disgusted and Guilty, Return Them

Dr Tamira King, of Brunel University, says: 'Buying goods with no intention of keeping them is a growing phenomenon in the UK.

Our research demonstrates that 80 per cent of women admit to this behaviour.' The addiction to shopping bulimia was neatly summed up by one sufferer: 'It's a bit like gambling.

When I'm buying I'm losing, and when I'm returning I'm winning.' Here, four shopping bulimics tell their stories.

STEPHANIE BAILEY, 26, a marketing executive, liv...

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