In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

by Gabor Maté

Compulsive shoppers experience the same mental and emotional processes when engaged in their addiction. The thinking parts of the brain go on furlough. In a brain imaging study conducted at the University of Munster, Germany, scientists found “reduced activation in brain areas associated with working memory and reasoning and, on the other hand, increased activation in areas involved in processing of emotions,” when even ordinary consumers were engaged in choosing between different brand names of a given product.16 Under logo capitalism, it turns out, the vaunted “market forces” are largely unconscious—a feature of addiction that advertising agencies well understand. In previous work the electrical discharges of the brain circuits governing pleasure were also found to be in overdrive during shopping, in contrast to the rationality circuits. Neurologist Michael Deppe, the lead researcher, said that “the more expensive the product, the crazier the shoppers get. And when buying really expensive products, the part of the brain dealing with rational thought has reduced its activity to almost zero…. The stimulation of emotional centres shows that shopping is a stress relief.”17