This time the guest of the programme was a psychologist, Katarzyna Kucewicz - author of the first book in Poland dedicated to the problem of addiction to shopping - entitled Shopaholism. How to free yourself from the compulsion to buy?".

The propensity to compulsive buying was described at the beginning of the 20th century by Kraepelin (1915), while the first scientific studies on shopaholism appeared in the United States and Canada in the mid-1980s.

In Poland - according to a 2015 CBOS survey - symptoms of compulsive buying are manifested by 4.1% of the Polish population over the age of 15. Shopping addiction is fostered primarily by age and gender - young women are most at risk of it, with an increase in the phenomenon recorded among women aged up to 24.

One of the first people to speak publicly about the problem is Julia. When asked about the causes of her addiction, she says:

- It was a time when I had serious problems in my marriage, problems with my mother, problems at work... When these problems accumulated, I would escape into the world of shopping. I would buy clothes, gadgets for the house. And these didn't have to be big expenses - I just couldn't deny myself going into a shop. I shopped everywhere - either online or stationary.... There wasn't a day that went by that I didn't buy something...

It wasn't until a few years later that Julia felt she had a problem.

- I saw how many cardboard boxes I had at home in which things bought by mail order came. It was the sheer number of these cardboard boxes that gave me pause for thought - I remember starting to feel ashamed in front of the household, of what I was doing. Also, I felt it was pointless. And I decided to do something about it.-

Shopping addiction, like other addictions, develops over time and has its stages. It is difficult to recognise it straight away - and even more difficult when it is downplayed. Meanwhile, according to opinion polls, Poles attribute it exclusively to women and wealthy people; people who are "profligate", "vain" and "have too much free time" and do not treat it as a health problem.

So what should attract our attention? How does addiction develop?

As psychologist Katarzyna Kucewicz puts it:

- Initially it is buying when - for example - we are in a bad mood or have had a fight with a friend. But over time, when we feel some strong and difficult emotions - we find that we need to discharge them in the shop. Not at the gym. Not by playing with the dog, but actually in the shop. The people who come to therapy are those who have already suffered some kind of loss. The first signal is that there are financial problems. The second is that everything else has stopped giving them pleasure. The mechanism of addiction to shopping is the same as the mechanism of addiction to gambling or alcohol. - concludes Kucewicz.