Spending addiction

[bomalan]

I really need some advice on how to resolve my spending addiction.

I've always been bad with money. I used to get into around 3K of debt and then sort it out. As soon as I'd cleared the debt, I would get in debt again.

This has really spiralled in the last 2-3 years, and I've now got thousands of pounds of debt. I spend it all on clothes, eating out, just spending as if I earn a fortune.
It's not just simply that I like spending. If I feel a bit sad, it's like I HAVE to spend. It completely overpowers me, and I can blow hundreds on ordering clothes in one go. It makes me feel amazing straight away, then later on I will feel so disappointed in myself, and so depressed and sick.

I keep trying to break the cycle by taking out a loan to cover everything, but then I go and do it all again and it's just really spiralled recently.

I genuinely don't know how to stop doing it. It gets worse if I've had a coffee. The minute I drink one, I get this huge urge to spend and I can't control myself until I've spent loads. I've stopped drinking coffee for this reason as it just makes me ridiculously impulsive.

Has anyone got advice before this gets even more out of hand?

Addiction is addiction. You will likely need some therapy around this, to get to the root cause and to help you build in some resilience/coping mechanisms to help battle the impulses around this.

Caffeine triggers dopamine release, so when this happens the brain will seek other sources of dopamine to keep that response going. This is why you start into overspending - each purchase feeds into the same reward mechanism in the brain - and it's why addiction transfer is so pernicious. You've done well to cut out coffee OP. Have you looked at the Addiction Support threads on here?