Luka Magnotta: The Ultimate Luxaholic

Is your closet overflowing with never-worn clothing, the price tags still waving in the breeze? Is your attic bulging with boxes and boxes of shoes that have never touched pavement? Does your home come filled with the most extravigent items from around the world? If you answered yes then you might fit right in with Luka.

Luka Magnotta is a luxaholic. He has to have the latiest fashions, accesories and surrondings or he feels "uncomplete". Luka cant stop shopping.

Studies estimate that as many as 17 million Americans, better than one in 20 of us, can't control our urge to shop, even at the expense of our job, our marriage, our family and our finances.

In the land of conspicuous consumption, compulsive shopping is the smiled-upon addiction, the butt of countless sitcoms and Sunday comics, one of the few disorders that it's still OK to laugh at. Shop 'til you drop. The one who dies with the most toys wins. Heck, President Bush even called it patriotic to splurge. Where's the harm?

Not only is compulsive shopping tacitly condoned by our materialistic society, it is just as widely misunderstood.

For starters, according to Donald Black, M.D., a University of Iowa psychiatry professor who specializes in obsessive-compulsive disorder, compulsive shopping isn't a true compulsion at all, but instead an impulse control disorder.

"A compulsion is a behavior that is produced to counteract an upsetting thought; for example, I'm contaminated or dirty, therefore I will deal with that anxiety by washing my hands more," he says.

"There is no upsetting thought prompting compulsive shopping.