My shopping addiction hijacked my life. Now I realise what caused it

My shopping addiction hijacked my life. Now I realise what caused it Just nowShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleNoel Titheradge,Investigations correspondent andEmma Barnett,Presenter of Ready To TalkBBCSally Gardiner says she will live with the consequences of the spending for the rest of her lifeWhen children's author Sally Gardiner's career first took off, friends assumed her extravagant spending was a byproduct of her newfound success.Lavish spending sprees included a £3,000 bathtub, prints by English pop artist Peter Blake, and trips to Parisian boutiques.Sally was in her early 40s when her debut book was published, setting her on a path to sales of 2.5 million copies and major literary prizes such as the Carnegie Medal."Suddenly, I am in a different place," Sally says, "and for the first time in my life, earning really well."She says she felt "ashamed" by the amount of money she was splashing out - but was hooked on the dopamine hit.A 'drumbeat' of compulsive behaviourSally would lie to friends about her purchases and deny she was wearing new clothes."I had no idea what had happened to me. It was like, 'Who are you? What are you doing?'"Before long, she had amassed significant debts and was forced to sell her north London townhouse and move into a smaller flat.Even then, what she describes as the "drumbeat" of her compulsive behaviour didn't stop - she couldn't resist spending tens of thousands of pounds on an interior designer to decorate her new home.By this point, one of her friends was walking from shop to shop in the town where Sally lived begging staff not to sell anything to her.Sally had developed a mid-life shopping addiction she could find no explanation for - and thought she was "going mad".At the same time her literary career was taking off, Sally's doctor started prescribing her dopamine agonist drugs for Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS), a conditio...