Sales, paydays and bad weeks

Some occasions are harder than others, and it helps to know them in advance.

Late evening is the obvious one. You're tired, your judgement is at its lowest, and the phone is in your hand. If most of your lift purchases happen after nine, the simplest fix is a rule about time. The list is open at night and the checkout isn't.

Payday is another. The balance looks healthy and the pain of paying is at its weakest. Move whatever you mean to save on the day it arrives, before the evening does.

Then there are the big sale weeks in November and January, and the run-up to Christmas. The timers and the low-stock warnings are everywhere, and buying for other people gives cover to buying for yourself. Go in with your list. It's the best defence you've got, and it's also the way to get real bargains on things you'd already chosen.

And there are bad weeks. After a row, a bereavement, a redundancy or a run of poor sleep, the pull will be stronger, because there's more to get a lift from. Expect that. It doesn't mean the book has stopped working. Cryder's water bottle showed the same thing on a small scale. In a bad week, be kinder to yourself and stricter with the checkout.

You'll have lapses. One night you'll buy the thing, feel the lift and remember this book on Thursday when the box arrives. That's normal and it doesn't mean you didn't understand or didn't want to change. Do three things. If the item's unwanted, send it back that week. Ask what the evening needed, since that's still worth knowing. And put the next want on the list. One lapse doesn't make it a habit again unless you decide the lapse proves something.

For some readers the difficulty is of a different size, and I'd like you to know when that's so. Black describes compulsive buying as a preoccupation with shopping, a build-up of tension or anxiety beforehand and a sense of relief on buying, to a degree that causes distress or damages the person's life. It isn't rare. A pooled analysis by Anikó Maráz and colleagues put it at about one adult in twenty. Black notes that it often goes along with depression, anxiety and other conditions. He adds that no treatment is standard yet, though group cognitive behavioural therapy has looked promising.

Talk to a GP if any of these is true.

• Thoughts of shopping take up much of most days, or you shop to get rid of a tension that keeps building.
• You hide purchases, lie about what you've spent, or have debts that someone close to you doesn't know about.
• You've tried several times to stop and couldn't, and it's harming your money, your work or your relationships.
• Your spending comes in bursts when you feel unusually high, confident and energetic and need little sleep. The NHS lists this among the signs of mania.
• You've felt low, worried or hopeless for more than a few weeks, whatever your spending is doing.

In England you can also refer yourself to NHS talking therapies without seeing a GP first. If you're taking prescribed medication, keep taking it. And if you ever feel you can't cope or that life isn't worth living, get help the same day through NHS 111, an urgent GP appointment or 999.

For debt, get free advice early. Citizens Advice, StepChange, National Debtline and MoneyHelper all help people every day who are in far more of a tangle than they like to admit. Black also mentions Debtors Anonymous and financial counselling as things that help some people. Going to any of them is nothing to be ashamed of.