Can shopping become an addiction?

The name itself gives the game away: ‘shopaholic’. Get it? Of course we do: by borrowing, as it does, from ‘alcoholic’, it deliberately implies that the two problems have something in common.

This is not mere over-indulgence, the name insists; this is a disease. A condition, a syndrome, whose ‘victims’ — just like those in the grip of alcohol — deserve your heartfelt compassion.

Now scientists in the U.S. claim they have found a pill which can cure shopaholics. Psychiatrists tested a medication called memantine, normally prescribed to prevent deterioration in patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer’s disease. The results showed that after eight weeks, men and women taking the pill reduced the amount of time they devoted to shopping and the amount of money they spent.

Read more here.