Spent is a memoir about my personal struggle with shopping addiction. It follows me from my earliest shopping experience—a trip to downtown Brooklyn’s A&S with my grandmother to buy a pair of bell-bottoms—and culminates, many years later, with one of my rock bottom moments: a trip to Zara to purchase a pair of tobacco-colored cords with my last twenty dollars. In between, I rode the rollercoaster of compulsive shopping behavior. I bought things I neither wanted nor needed, and credit card debt bloomed like the ever-increasing pile of unworn shoes and clothing in the back of my cloest. At some point, I realized I was no longer consuming; I was just being consumed.

Spent is also the story of a city: New York in the 1990’s and at the turn of the millennium. It is largely set to the tom-tom beat of New York in the age of “irrational exuberance,” luxury label fever, “it” girls with “it” bags, and lots and lots of shopping. Working in the fashion industry during this time gave me opportunity to indulge in the lifestyle where: fashion was the drug at the end of the millennium and shopping its handmaiden

 I did eventually leave my shopping addiction behind... but not before I learned what was fueling it: mainly, grief over my mother’s untimely death.  When I realized that my shopping was less about that pair of black Balenciaga pants and more about trying to avoid unpleasant emotions, is when I began to get better.

Spent is a deeply personal story that chronicles my addiction, how I questioned and confronted it, and the path to recovery. It chronicles the past three decades and the rise of easy credit, mall culture, hyperconsumption, and our cultural dependence on defining ourselves by our possessions.

 In the years since I’ve tackled my shopping addiction, I am, in fact, a much happier and healthier shopper.

Spent is the story of how I got there.