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The universe has good news for the lost, lonely, and heart-sick.
The sugars are here, speaking straight into your ears.
I'm Steve Allman.
I'm Cheryl Strayed.
This is Dear Sugars.
Hi, Steve.
Hi, Cheryl.
So today we're going to talk about spending addictions.
Yeah, you know, I'm so glad we're doing this because when it comes to spending addictions, we have trouble recognizing that it's not just being a shopaholic and it's fun and so forth.
There are real addictions out there.
Don't muddy the waters with your petty little problem.
But it's not petty.
It's huge for some people, as we know from our inbox.
Right.
And actually has.
Like any addiction, has had many negative consequences families destroyed, enormous debts accrued.
We're going to talk to somebody today, Buzz Bissinger, who has really struggled with this and wrote beautifully about this in GQ magazine.
He's the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Livingston Award.
And of course, he's the author of Friday Night Lights.
Mm-hmm.
Great book that was turned into an amazing television show.
And movie, yeah.
And movie too, yeah.
He's published work in Vanity Fair, the New York Times Magazine, and Sports Illustrated.
Let's give him a call.
Let's do it.
Hello?
Hi, Buzz.
This is Cheryl Strayed.
Thank you so much for agreeing to talk to us.
I have my co-host, Steve Almond, here.
Hi, Buzz.
I'm a big fan of your writing.
Oh, well, thank you.
Thank you.
So we're talking about spending addictions today and we'd love if you could share with us and our listeners your story.
Let's go back to the beginning.
How did this begin for you?
I think it began about 10 years ago.
I think it was, frankly, precipitated by my wife, Lisa.
Got a job overseas at New York University in Abu Dhabi.
And, you know, that's kind of hard to make a weekend trip.
I was on my own and I was an empty nester.
My last son had just gone off to college.
And when I was on my own, I sort of just started the shop.
I think it was related to repression in my case.
I think it was related to trying to figure out my sexual identity.
Clothing for me is very... linked to sex.
And so it was one box, two boxes, three boxes, four boxes.
I mean, no one knew except the UPS guy who probably thought I was insane.
And, you know, I got a sexual rush every time I opened a box.
And, you know, in some cases, wouldn't even wear it out.
And it just would not stop.
And it got worse and worse.
And frankly, I wrote a book.
It was a memoir about one of my sons.
And it didn't do well.
And that is when I hit the wall.
I mean, I just felt depressed.
I thought I don't really give a crap about anything.
Then, you know, ultimately went into rehab.
Did it take you some time to come to the conclusion that it was an addiction?
I mean, a lot of people diminish this experience.
I think we say, oh, you're a shopaholic and it's not really an addiction.
I'm curious what your experience with that was.
Well, I hate the term shopaholic because I think it minimizes what this is.
I mean, this is an addiction.
When you're spending $600,000 on leather in three years, that's an addiction.
That's insane.
When you have over 100 pairs of leather pants and over 100 pairs or 150 pairs of leather jackets and 200 pairs of leather gloves and obviously I'm a leather fetishist That's an addiction.
And, you know, it's like any addiction.
It can destroy.
It can certainly destroy financially, but it can destroy relationships.
Right.
It harmed my relationship to my wife.
So I really hate this idea that.
Oh, you know, it's like that movie shopaholic, and it's kind of cute.
It's ridiculous.
And I know because of rehab and 15 years of therapy.
Mm-hmm.
Buzz, can you point to the moment where you realized you needed to address it?
Get into rehab, whatever it was.
What was the low point?
I think it happened in 2014 because there were a lot of things going on within me.
I began to abuse myself physically.
I mean, you know, I would burn myself.
I would cut myself.
I would, you know, play with, frankly, with leather asphyxiation hoods by myself.
And then I knew this was getting dangerous because, you know, you can...
Kill yourself.
And that combination of factors said you know, I'm really going down a rabbit hole and I need more than just once a week therapy.
I really need something very, very intensive.
And it helps, but it doesn't cure everything.
And, you know, the urge and the addiction still do linger.
Right.
So what did you do?
You went into inpatient rehab.
Is that correct?
Yes, that's right.
And what did you learn there?
I mean, how did you learn how to at least control this, even though you say it's still with you?
Well, I mean, you know, it's like anything in rehab.
I mean, for me, I shouldn't speak for others.
You know, you're trying to get to the root cause.
And, you know, it's painful to realize.
I mean for me personally.
I think this shopping was A an outgrowth of tremendous sexual repression, fear of coming to grips with who I am.
And I still don't know who I am sexually, which I think is fine.
I don't think we have to put labels.
But my life had been lived in fear and in shame.
As a child, I was terrified of my mother.
I could see her as a dominatrix.
I never felt comfortable with myself physically.
I never felt comfortable with the way I looked.
And I think for some reason buying clothing, and particularly buying iconic leather clothing because of the sexual allure of it, somehow tried to fill this need.
So I think about that now.
So when I buy something or think about buying something, I try to stop and say what is really behind this?
And are you simply feeding shame and fear?
Because you are.
As I say, you buy something and you feel, wow, this is great.
But I then realized that maybe a week, maybe a day, maybe two weeks, maybe a minute.
Terrible shame.
Yeah.
Terrible embarrassment.
Remorse.
Terrible fear.
Fear of Jesus.
Where did the money go?
How am I going to replace it?
And so I think about that all the time.
And, you know, it does help.
It does help.
Wow.
Well Buzz, I want to just say personally to you how much I admire your transparency and your honesty.
It's so helpful just to hear your truth and your voice and your struggle and your vulnerability.
And I know it's going to be really helpful to our listeners, too.
I hope so.
I mean, I wrote an article in GQ about it and sort of became...
I don't know if the word is legendary, but it's legendary.
Very much admitting to my addiction and addiction with Gucci and other brands of clothing.
And you know the tone of it was a little tongue in cheek and there were things going on in my life, but it was all honest.
I mean, I got excoriated for it.
Did you?
Yeah.
I mean, all the media, this is a joke.
This is ridiculous.
This is a spoof.
He's gone off the deep end.
He's doing this for attention. until they realized I had gone into rehab.
And then they said, well, you know what, maybe this is real.
It is real, and I commiserate with anyone who has the problem.
It's like, well, you should just control yourself.
And we seem to have come around as a culture when it comes to drug and alcohol addiction, but we're not all the way there yet with these behavioral addictions.
Hello, Finny.
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Dear Sugars, I'm writing to you because I know you'll answer my question honestly and with love, even though my own family is fed up with me and often judges or misunderstands my problem.
I'm dealing with a spending addiction.
I know that it has its roots in OCD and severe anxiety, as I've dealt with these issues unsuccessfully since I was very young.
I've tried therapy but have never connected with a therapist who i haven't felt judged or dismissed by.
Since this problem isn't life or death, my main issue is spending money with abandon, very recklessly, to the point where it's not enjoyable and is really oppressive.
Often i buy clothes or makeup or shoes or designer handbags not because i need or even really desire these things Sometimes I don't even use or open the items I purchase but because I feel an overwhelming sense that I must have them.
Once acquired, the tick goes off in my brain, and for that instant, I'm assuaged.
Sometimes I glom into a celebrity or a TV personality and I almost exclusively shop for items that they use or wear.
Even though my pay grade is substantially lower than these women.
I seek to own what they do and look the way they look.
During a period where i am into one of these people, it is as if the items serve as a sort of costume for that role.
When i find a new role or a new obsession, some of those items from the prior muse often very expensive are not used and lay dormant while the credit-card charge for those items is still on my account.
I've done a lot of analysis on why I do this and mostly I think it is a self-escape, self-soothing behavior, like any addiction.
I have a very stressful life and very little outside release.
Spending is, as one therapist called it years ago, my me-time.
My addiction doesn't send me to the hospital or get me arrested, although I also struggle somewhat with alcohol.
At least there I can stop when I need to.
With spending, I feel completely adrift.
I try cutting up credit cards only to call the company and get another sent expeditiously to me in the mail.
I have great credit.
Because of my OCD, I never miss a payment and I always eventually pay off the card with a balance transfer or a bonus from my job.
I'm binging and purging with this problem.
Six months of spending, six months of saving and scrimping to pay it off.
I'm miserable, stressed and constantly worried and obsessed about money needlessly.
I'm a lawyer and I'm well salaried.
I'm paid good bonuses for my hard work when I exceed my requirements.
But those bonuses which could have paid off my student loan three times over or been used to put a down payment on a house, have all been used to pay off needless debt.
Though I'm paid well, I live paycheck to paycheck like a pauper, so I can catch up with the spending abuse.
I know I'm destroying my financial life.
I want to be healed of this and set free.
The main concern is that I am a single mother to a young boy whom I love to the end of the earth.
I am a very good and responsible mother to him on almost all accounts, and being his mother is the most important, happiest part of my life.
I do not want him to grow up seeing me indulging my every whim, or his or, drowning in an addiction that I cannot control.
I want him to have a stable, happy home and a secure future.
I don't want to selfishly waste our resources on things that do not matter and, most importantly, do not make me happy.
My family thinks i'm a shopaholic with no self-control, which is partly true, but i'm struggling with an addiction.
I cannot master it, no matter how many good months i have or what my good intentions are.
Do you have any advice for this seemingly petty problem that is so plaguing my otherwise joyous and fulfilled life?
I'm not a materialistic person at my heart, but I do feel that my identity is being hidden or created with all of these possessions, and I cannot figure out why.
Signed, Poor Little Rich Girl.
Wow.
So, Boz, what did you think of this letter?
Having just listened to you tell your story, I imagine there are some things you relate to.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, I've read the letter several times.
The letter was pointed.
The letter was... articulate.
And the writer, we went through the same thing.
So I feel her pain.
And I think the first thing you have to do is I do have an addiction and I'm not going to let myself minimize that.
And I'm not going to let others minimize that because it's okay to say I'm not acting rationally.
But she mentioned she had been in therapy at one point, but even therapists didn't believe that she was anything more than a shopaholic.
And that's insane.
You have to find the right therapist.
They are out there and you have to go at least once a week.
And you may have to go twice a week and you may have to go to rehab, but you need someone you can talk to about this every week, who is both sympathetic to it and can get behind what the addiction symbolizes, because it does symbolize something.
And I think that's the first step you must, must take.
Yeah, I was really struck by her saying that she felt judged by her therapist, which to me all that says is okay, go find another therapist.
Because therapists, you know, they tend not to be judgmental of the people who walk into their rooms.
And Little Rich Girl, you can find that person.
Right.
In fact, when I read that I thought, okay.
So actually, poor little rich girl, you've probably seen at least two and maybe a series of therapists.
And you have to remember with addiction, there are really two things going on simultaneously.
One is the recognition.
I have a problem.
This is self-destructive and I need to cure it or confront it.
And when it's an addictive behavior pattern.
The other powerful force inside you is I need to keep doing this.
I need to conceal it.
I need to not confront whatever pain and ugliness this behavior is the manifestation of.
So maybe you weren't ready in that moment when you saw those therapists.
Maybe it wasn't so much that they were judging you and dismissing you.
Is that you needed to believe that because you weren't ready to do that work?
Right.
And there's no.
I mean, when we're ashamed of something, we often will look around and say oh, everyone else is judging me here.
And I think that that could be the case, you know, with this therapist.
And I think that that's really the first thing all three of us are saying to you, little rich girl is you obviously can't navigate this yourself.
You know, you have an addiction.
This is a serious problem.
You need to talk to somebody who takes it seriously and who can guide you if not to, you know, getting completely over this addiction to managing it better.
And that's actually not going to be your family.
And Buzz can speak to this, I'm sure.
You say your family thinks you're shopaholic.
That's both self-protective for them, but it's also because you probably haven't been as honest with them as you have with us about how deeply this is plaguing you, how much you literally are, as you describe it, living paycheck to paycheck.
And it's reached a point where it has, I think, significantly started to make you feel like I'm being irresponsible as a mom.
Look, I think why do people change behaviors?
I think therapy is essential, but I think at a certain point, you bottom out.
I may be restoring myself and that's horrible and whatnot, but in this case the letter writer is potentially destroying a relationship with someone she actually worships and loves.
And that in and of itself, although it's hard, I mean that should be the impetus to say I need to get help and I need to get help any way possible.
And I know you can.
Poor little rich girl.
Your letter is really illuminating because there is this internal argument I'm wasting resources on things that do not matter.
Well, part of your brain is saying those things don't matter, but they matter really deeply to you.
And it's not a seemingly petty problem.
It's not a petty problem at all.
So you have to recognize that that's actually a form of defense.
If I can say it's just petty, it's just being a shopaholic.
But what was more interesting for me in this letter is the language in which the therapist says oh, this addiction is your me time.
That's the time that you really get to devote to yourself and sort of self-care yourself.
But the actual language around how all these purchases make you feel.
You describe it as a sort of costume or a way of hiding your identity.
My identity is hidden by these things.
That's really the opposite of me time.
That's hiding from me time.
There is a real identity under a pained one underneath this behavior pattern.
And you cannot be frightened to discover that, because you're not going to get past the behavior until you get at what the darker motives are.
No, I think that's right.
And, you know, even the way it's signed, poor little Richkill, she's been dismissive of herself.
Yeah, that's right.
And you should not be.
I mean, you can feel shame.
You can feel fear.
You can feel a lot of things that may have happened in your life and in your childhood.
But don't feel shame about you having an addiction.
As my therapist says, you know what?
I guess you're lucky.
It could be drugs.
It could be alcohol.
It's this.
And it never goes away thinking about how much money I've spent.
I wake up thinking about it.
I go to bed thinking about it.
So don't be dismissive of it.
So, Buzz, can you give us maybe a couple practical tools?
Like what do you do when you have that urge to buy something that you know that you don't need or want?
When have you been successful at saying no to yourself?
I mean, practically, I don't go to a lot of stores.
I used to be obsessive about going online and looking at all sorts of online sites and all sorts of clothing.
And I've pretty much stopped doing that because then it becomes irresistible.
I do that.
I think a lot about the damage that I've done to my relationships, my wife, to myself.
I think about the incredible anxiety this has caused.
And I also think all the time, why are you really doing this?
And what does it really say about you?
And so you know I'm I'm on medication for for bipolarity and antidepressants and I just work at it.
I'm not going to lie.
Some days are better than others, but I see the damage that I've done.
Frankly, I don't want to go back into rehab.
Rehab is hard.
That's another impetus to try to stay clean and sober.
All those things kick in, and it sounds all neat and perfect, and trust me, folks, it's not.
I think it's important that you mention that bipolarity, that struggle because Poor little rich girl.
In addition to everything else, early in your letter you tell us you know, I know this has its roots in OCD and severe anxiety.
I dealt with these issues, as you say, unsuccessfully since I was very young.
So we're not just talking about something that has come along.
It's the expression of a bunch of underlying issues uh, you know, problems that aren't just behavioral, they're psychological and biophysical, and that means you got to take them that much more seriously.
They may manifest in a way that our culture has a way of either enabling or trying to dismiss when it gets out of control.
But this, as you know, just like buzz could say well, if i trace this back, it has its roots in a mood disorder that i needed to address and it's manifesting in this way.
This is your OCD and severe anxiety saying knock knock, I'm still there.
I'm still making what should be a joyous life right for you and your son, but something that you feel miserable and fraught about.
So you have to take all of it seriously and start confronting it.
Right.
Wow.
So, Buzz, thank you so much.
All right, guys.
Thank you.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
You know what I love about that?
I love how raw and honest he was.
I mean, Friday Night Lights, he's a guy who's drawn to football.
He's not, I won't say macho, but he's kind of macho.
I mean, you know, in the sense that he's interested in football sports.
He was a journalist.
Sounds like a kind of a hard-bitten guy, you know?
And I say this as, you know, this like reluctant, struggling ex-jock football fan.
It's like inside of all of that hyper-masculinity is a whole truckload of doubt about our sexuality, about our identities, about our bodies.
And it's just being expressed.
That's another costume.
Poor little rich girl, please hear that.
I think your letter to us is the moment where you realize I need to start to take this seriously.
And I need the sugars to tell me this isn't petty.
This is not meaningless, but it is making me deeply unhappy.
That costume that you're putting on doesn't fit anymore.
And it's just gotten big enough that it's time to find out what's underneath it.
And I really genuinely feel your sincerity when you say that you don't want to do wrong in your own life because you want your own joy, but you also want to be a good model to your son.
And I think that the best thing you can model to him is how to save yourself when you've hit the bottom, how to swim back up to the top.
And Buzz did that and he's still swimming.
Yep.
And you have the capacity to do that too.
Right.
So I hope you will.
Absolutely.
Good luck.
Thank you.
Dear Sugars is produced by the New York Times in partnership with WBUR.
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Our editor and managing producer is Larissa Anderson.
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