Health: oniomania, when buying becomes an addiction

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A shopping temple is, for Amandine, a paradise, but it is also the place of all dangers. At 34, she suffers from compulsive buying. A real disease that has a real name, oniomania. Impossible for her to enter a store without breaking down. That day, the sales assistant had promised herself not to spend anything. Like Amandine, more and more of them are breaking the taboo of overconsumption. And to share on social networks their advice for dropping out.

To store everything, Amandine has to rent a box. 140 euros per month, or 10% of his salary. Dozens of dresses, 80 jeans, 150 pairs of shoes, totally compulsive purchases. “When I bought these sneakers, I didn’t know what colors to choose. So I took yellow, I took green, I took blue, I took pink, I took brown. I have a complete box”she explains, acknowledging that she hasn’t worn every pair. Buying more and more to make up for a lack of self-confidence, to the point of going into debt. Amandine has taken out dozens of consumer loans: “I’m trying to move forward because I can’t continue living like this, but it makes me very unhappy. I would like to be more free, to say to myself: ‘I’m going here or there’. Ultimately, I can’t, I’m stuck with all my things”.

To get by, more and more shopaholics are consulting. According to Laurent Karila, psychiatrist, online shopping has reinforced the phenomenon of addiction: “On the internet, everything is available, so every morning, you have little alert emails, notifications, and all that never stops. In fact, for the person who is sick, the notifications are like showing cocaine to someone who is taking cocaine”.

Faced with these addictions, we were exceptionally able to film an astonishing therapy: Debtors Anonymous. Meetings modeled on those of Alcoholics Anonymous. But here, it is only a question of purchasing impulses. That evening, the fear of breaking down in the middle of the promotion period. Around fifteen men and women per session, the group effect can change everything. “We are faced with people who are absolutely not going to judge if you take a wrong step, because they have done it themselves. Thanks to the program, I look at my account every morning, I make my little notebook, I know where I am in my spending plan. It saves me”they explain to us.

Amandine began psychoanalysis with the same goal: to stop uncontrollable purchases, to relearn the value of things and, above all, her own value.