Depending on your answers, you may want to lock yourself in the bathroom permanently. These are a few of the questions asked in a recent study about compulsive buying, the results of which were published in the October issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. Led by Dr. Lorrin Koran, emeritus professor of psychiatry and director of the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Clinic at Stanford University, the study found that 5.8% of respondents met the criteria for "maladaptive response," which the study defined as "uncontrolled urges to buy, with resulting significant adverse consequences."

"People talk about the excitement they get from being in the mall," Koran said. "It's a way of escaping negative emotions."

And, Koran said, once these shoppers buy something, "they're not interested in it anymore. Generally only about 10% bother to return what they bought."

OK, in the last six months, I have been meaning to return two pairs of shoes, a really ugly handbag that looked much better in its online photo and Ann Coulter's book, "Godless." Also, I don't always pay my full credit card balance, I've bought things I cannot afford and, at times, I would have been horrified if others knew about my purchasing habits (at least in the case of the Coulter book). But, let's be clear, that's not because I escape negative emotions by going shopping.

If anything, stepping just one foot into a mall puts me well within the range of Diagnosis Code 300.21: panic attack with agoraphobia (essential features include trembling, fear of going crazy and anxiety about not being able to escape). So I buy stuff online. Even stuff like socks. That sometimes means spending more money on shipping than on the item itself, but, for me, it's well worth not having to walk past a Sunglass Hut.

Maybe that's the root of the problem. More of us may have excessive shopping problems than was previously thought, but it's also easier to shop than ever before. I spend upward of six hours a day in perilous proximity to the biggest mall in the world, the one inside my computer. As I wrote this column, I also browsed through antiques on EBay, trolled for used ergonomic chairs on Craigslist and clicked on more e-mail solicitations from Banana Republic and Bluefly than is necessary for a person whose closet door won't shut all the way. And although Koran says most truly compulsive buyers tend not to shop online, what's to say a clinical diagnosis, courtesy of shopping.com, might not lie in all of our futures?

As scary as that sounds, there might be an upside. Because kids diagnosed with attention deficit disorder now get more time to take the SAT, maybe compulsive shoppers will get a break on their credit card interest rates — or at least be able to cut to the front of checkout lines. In any case, I'm returning the Coulter book today.