Kaylee loves a bargain. Who doesn't? She describes it as "a game". "I love getting the best deals" she says in her story on www.creditcardaddiction.com, a site dedicated to helping people manage their obsession with plastic purchases.

Whenever Kaylee was offered a store credit card she signed up. She was hooked by the coupons, additional discounts and catalogues she received in the mail.

But her debt caught up with her. "At one point, I had 27 different store cards with interest rates ranging from 20.99%-31%. Try paying off that many monthly bills! It doesn't happen. I was trying to keep up, but I could only afford the minimum monthly payment for each card. Before long, I was in serious debt."

Kaylee has since cancelled half of her store cards, but she continues to spend on the remaining cards and still struggles with her repayments and the damage the cards are doing to her credit rating. Why? Because Kaylee is addicted to credit, and she is not alone.

Australians spent over $18 billion on credit cards in March this year and according to the Reserve Bank of Australia, the average balance is over $3,000, which suggests many of us use our credit cards to spend beyond our means.

But what defines addictive behaviour? How do you separate people who use their card for the occasional shopping splurge from the full-blown credit junkies?

G Alan Marlatt, PhD, director of the Addictive Behaviours Research Center at the University of Washington explains credit addiction in a recent article in Psychology Today. "Everyone engages in addictive behaviors to some extent because such things as eating, drinking, and sex are essential to survival and highly reinforcing".

"Everyday bad habits, compulsions, dependencies, and cravings clearly have something in common with heroin and cocaine addiction, in terms of their mechanisms and triggers".

There are certain characteristics of a behaviour which suggest it can be addictive:

• The activity that triggers the behaviour must initially cause feelings of pleasure and changes in emotion or mood.
• Withdrawing the substance or activity causes painful withdrawal symptoms.
• The activity may cause repeated behavioural problems, take a lot of a person's time and energy, be openly sanctioned by the community, and be marked by a gradual obsession with the drug or behaviour.

It's easy to see the parallels with credit card spending. Who hasn't felt the brief rush of euphoria when making a major impromptu purchase on their credit card, followed by the crushing withdrawal symptoms when they receive their credit card statement and realise they will have to start living within their means?

So what can you do if you think you're addicted to credit? Well, like most addictions you can take the cold turkey approach involving a pair of scissors. Other suggestions include freezing your credit card or giving your credit card to a friend with strict instructions to only permit you to use it in an emergency.

If you have multiple cards, you should also consider consolidating the debt into a single, low-interest card or a debt consolidation loan. A financial planner can give you more information.

What next?

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