They say the first step to recovery is facing up to your problems, so here goes nothing: hi, I’m Nettie, and I’m an online shopping addict.
It started small—when college began, I realized that since I was stuck in the middle-of-nowhere Indiana I would be forced to get creative in order to keep my norts and t-shirts ever-so-stylish wardrobe fully functional. So I signed up for a few auction-type shops: HauteLook, Lyst, etc. Then I discovered Tobi—the holy grail of going out clothes.
I won’t bore you with a list of stores that soon had my credit card number, shipping address, and email address on lock. Suffice it to say, it is a number that reaches well over the number of fingers and toes I currently possess. Still, I kept at it. The emails would roll in, alerting me to the fact that Victoria’s Secret’s semi-annual sale was coming up, or that I had a $15 rewards card at DSW (damn you DSW, how can I pass those up?!).
Once I had built up a good stock of stores to choose from, the problem became how easily an order could be placed. See a necklace you like? Just add it to cart, check out and ALL YOUR INFORMATION INSTANTLY POPS UP. J Crew knows more about the places I’ve lived than most of my friends, and that makes ordering a new color of the 3-inch chinos the decision of a moment.
Finally, after seeing me in a brand new pair of shoes for the third day in a row while home for a weekend, my mom asked: “how are you affording all this?”
The answer, sad but true, “I’m not.”
I realized, in that sobering moment, that I had burned through most of my savings and had only a few hundred dollars left to my name. After a couple summers working hard to save up, I was startled by how quickly it had all slipped through my fingers.
It wasn’t just that I was upset with myself for spending so much of my money on clothes and accessories that I (for the most part, at least) hadn’t needed. It was more that I truly saw how quickly an addiction could begin. It seemed that my drug of choice wasn’t alcohol or cocaine, but the thrill of “placing my order now.”
We’ve all seen “Confessions of a Shopaholic” right? First acknowledging how absolutely stunning Isla Fisher is, let’s focus on the scene where she finally faces up to the obscene number of bills that have piled up while she tries her best to ignore them. Steady tequila shots get her through the shock, and while that’s a great fall back if I ever get to that point, I would really prefer not to.
So I’m deleting “sale” emails without reading them, telling websites not to save my credit card numbers in their system, and doing my best to buy clothes in person, after trying them on. The immediacy of online shopping is a hard buzz to come down from, but I’m doing my best.
After all, “Confessions of a Shopaholic” made a great rom-com, but I’m not sure how well it would do as a documentary.
