Shopaholics!

Is your closet overflowing with never-worn clothing, the price tags still waving in the breeze? Is your attic bulging with boxes and boxes of shoes that have never touched pavement? Do you buy new makeup weekly or compact discs by the fistful? You might be a shopaholic.
Manhattan psychologist April Benson, author of "I Shop Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying and the Search for Self," has seen firsthand how destructive compulsive shopping can be.
"One patient of mine got fired because she was compulsively shopping on the Internet all day. There are other people who neglect their children and park them in the mall constantly because that is what they need to feed their habit. Lots of marriages break up over compulsive buying. In fact, we don't call it compulsive buying unless there is some significant impairment in some aspect of your life." Famous shopaholics in history include Marie Antoinette, Mary Todd Lincoln, William Randolph Hearst, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Imelda Marcos and Princess Diana. Their addictions ranged from clothing (Jackie O, Diana) to art and antiques (Hearst) to shoes (the heralded Marcos collection) to gloves (Mrs. Lincoln owned 84 pairs of them).
What do women want? In order of preference, most female compulsive shoppers buy clothes, shoes, jewelry, makeup and compact discs.
Men? Clothing, shoes, electronics (TVs, stereos, computers, etc.), hardware and CDs.
Sounds normal enough, right? So how does compulsive shopping differ from your last trip to the mall?
"Well, they don't buy one CD, they buy 10 CDs at a time," says Black. "They might buy five skirts, all the same, perhaps in different shades or slightly different styles, where a normal buyer would identify a need for something new or attend a sale and buy one item."
Adapted from moneycentral