Shopping has always been my drug of choice. Whether I’m happy and excited, anxious and uncertain, or feeling alone and depressed, I have always used shopping as my quick fix and coping mechanism.  There is no better high than going shopping. But like most addictions, the high is short-lived. After I get the bags to my apartment, the rush of happiness quickly deflates, leaving me with the same feelings I had before the shopping adventure. I caught myself before spiraling downward into a full-blown credit crisis of my own. But many people who have struggled with shopping addictions and are beginning to recover have recently been talking about a new factor that has made the struggle that much harder: Online Shopping.

E-commerce is one of the most innovative and successful developments to hit the fashion and beauty world.  I cannot imagine a world without Net-a-Porter, Bluefly, Ebay or Gilt Groupe. E-commerce opened a Pandora’s Box of endless spending opportunity for fashion and beauty shoppers: auction alerts, 24-hour customer service, convenience, comparison shopping to the best sales, discounts, and deals.

No more missing store hours! No more schlepping various shopping bags around. Often it’s 24-hour delivery and beautiful packaging sitting at your doorstep like a carefully wrapped Christmas present. Most importantly there is now access to global fashion regardless of where you live. Urban and rural fashion lovers unite!

Add to all of this the convenience and privacy of shopping at home and it’s not surprising that shopping online is a curse for struggling shopoholics. But online shopping addiction is not just a risk for recovering shopoholics. It has, in fact, created a whole new category of addicts: Internet Shopping Addicts.  Over the last fifteen years, Internet Addiction Disorder, the problematic use (and abuse) of the Internet–from Facebook to emails to chat rooms and online shopping–has become a major focus of research that has been formally recognized by the American Psychological Association.

One of the largest centers focused solely on internet addiction, the Center for On-Line Addiction, previously focused on internet sex addicts, chat addicts, and gambling addicts but within the last decade has turned their attention to the latest online addiction: shopping. Compulsive and impulsive behaviors, found in traditional shopoholics are simply transferred to the online world and, in some cases, enhanced because it can be easily hidden from family and friends.

The recognizable advantages of online shopping are accessibility and convenience. What pushes consumers over the edge into addiction is the excitement of “finding the deal”.  Daily alerts and email notifications for the latest fashion and beauty sales –in particular the sites that have an auction platform like eBay or limited time only sales like Gilt Groupe –evoke a high similar to gambling.  This “high” is not just emotional but physical: a chemical response in your brain (serotonin and dopamine release making you feel good) stimulates the need to purchase. Daily email notifications for upcoming sales with a time limit and “first come first serve” shopping mentality is the perfect hook into loyal, fashion savvy, obsessed shoppers. Women are more likely to buy fast, furiously and without thinking when they find themselves in a race. Competing with millions of consumers in a limited time frame with limited product, the time-sensitive deal has emerged as the “crack” of e-commerce.

I never make rational decisions when under pressure so it makes sense that people shopping online in a time sensitive situation are more likely going to point and click immediately to ensure they got the product before anyone else did, regardless if they wanted it or not. I can’t tell you how many times I have impulsively bought something just because it was a high end designer that I would never be able to afford if it wasn’t 50% off, leaving me many times with the wrong size or something that just sits n the closet but I never end up wearing.

I adore Gilt Groupe and because I know that everyday at noon the sale will open, I need to be somewhere where I can access the Internet to get my daily fix. What a rush, what an achievement to get the item that I truly want in time, and that I would never be able to afford otherwise. So many of my friends and family are also members. I always laugh when I think about how many of us, no matter where we are, come together for the first five minutes, aligned on the internet, many days at noon.  Clicking without Thinking! Shopping without blinking!

Most of these sites are set up so that transaction process is easy and instant.  Once they have your information and credit card, it becomes insidious – I mean automatic. Shoppers simply point-click-repeat without realizing how much they are spending until they receive their credit card statement.  Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, a financial expert and author of “Zero Debt: The Ultimate Guide to Financial Freedom,” states that consumers spend 20-40 percent more when using a credit card over cash”(www.lemondrop.com).  In my case, she nailed it.  I am 100 times less likely to buy something if I have to pay cash in hand. With a credit card, I just shop, swipe and buy without thinking about it because the cost is not tangible.  When shopping online women tend to spend more and more often, without really realizing how much they are charging. Avis Cardella, author of the new book “Spent: memoirs of a Shopping Addict”, pointed out in a recent Wall Street Journal article, that shoppers feel “more pain when we have to part with cash as opposed to credit card.” He later posited, “I imagine shopping online or via hand held device, anesthetizes even further.”

Although online shopping addiction has always included both men and women (surprisingly men outspend women), a new demographic, Generation Y, (those born between 1977 and 1994) is poised to be the dominating generation in this arena.  According to the New York-based think tank for luxury brands, LuxuryLab,’s last “Generation Next Forum,”

Gen Y currently spends $150 billion a year on consumer goods. That’s five times more than their parents did at their age. They also influence another $50 billion in purchases made by others. Indeed, according to a recent report by Harris Interactive, one in every three-consumer dollars spent in the United States today is influenced by someone under the age of 18. Gen Y’s profound influence in the marketplace is directly linked to their familiarity with digital media.., 96% percent of Generation Y is active on at least one social networking site.

Mastering the online world is the key to success in contemporary society, but the easy access to buying products makes it that much more of a risk of creating a new generation of internet shopoholics. The most difficult part of this disorder is that so many times it goes unnoticed, unreported and untreated. Maybe there should be a warning on E-commerce sites: online shopping can become addictive. Shop at your own risk!