Fashion Insider Reveals the Human Cost of Online Shopping in New Book “At My Limit”

Press release. The following was issued by Sasha Stoltz Publicity on behalf of Dara Fleischer and RIVKAH BOOKS and is published as received. Canada News Media did not write or edit it.

FASHION INSIDER EXPOSES THE HUMAN COST OF ONLINE SHOPPING
In At My Limit, a 20-year fashion industry veteran reveals how compulsive shopping in today’s digital world almost wiped out her savings, marriage and sense of self.

“A wonderfully honest and refreshing look at something we can never talk enough about: shopping as an addiction. Like alcohol, it is easy to hide, even easier to justify, but can lead to dire consequences.”
— Stacy London, stylist and TV personality, co-host of What Not to Wear

Toronto, On – For Dara Fleischer, Black Friday isn’t a day anymore. It is the business model for a retail culture built around flash sales, countdown clocks, influencer hauls, one-tap checkout and Buy Now, Pay Later — a constant cycle of urgency designed to make the next purchase feel irresistible.

Published November 17, just ten days before Black Friday, Fleischer’s memoir At My Limit: How I Lost My Savings & Sanity Due to Compulsive Shopping Addiction asks, what happens when that machinery meets someone especially vulnerable to its pull?

Fleischer knows the machinery from the inside. For more than 20 years, she worked in fashion media and retail as an editor, blogger, marketer, personal shopper and creator of in-store events and brand campaigns. She understood how desire was manufactured, how urgency drove sales and how fashion does not sell clothes so much as affirm a sense of identity, aspiration and reinvention. Even so, she found herself caught in the same system she had spent much of her career helping to operate.

Her breaking point came when she checked her bank account and found just $124.41, while carrying thousands more in debt. “I’d officially hit rock bottom,” she writes. “I got sucked into the destructive vortex of Instagram and online shopping.” What had once looked like a passion for fashion had become something far more consuming, threatening not only Fleischer’s financial security, but her marriage and her sense of self.

Compulsive shopping is not new. What has changed, Fleischer argues, is its delivery system. The department-store charge card has been replaced by a store that lives permanently in your pocket — one that learns what attracts you, follows you from site to site, strips away friction from payment and manufactures scarcity through an endless calendar of sales and promotions.

“You can never have enough of the things you don’t really need,” Fleischer writes. She calls compulsive shopping “the Smiled-Upon Addiction” because its consequences can remain hidden behind good taste, consumer savvy and the socially acceptable language of “retail therapy.”

For Fleischer, however, recovery began with understanding that the clothes were never really the point. Shopping had become a way to manage loneliness, grief, anxiety, questions of identity, and a need for control. Each purchase offered a fleeting sense of relief while quietly eroding her finances, her ability to be present in her own life and her trust in herself.

“Shopping wasn’t my problem,” she says. “It was the language I used to cope with everything else.”

The consequences reached far beyond her closet. Fleischer hid debt from her husband, concealed purchases and eventually liquidated retirement savings, creating what she describes as a form of financial infidelity inside her marriage. From the outside, she remained a successful fashion professional entirely at home in the world of clothes and consumption. Privately, the distance between that image and her financial reality became impossible to sustain.

That contradiction gives At My Limit its particular force. This is not simply a confession from someone who bought too much. It is an account from someone who understood how modern retail creates and rewards compulsive behavior only to then experience the dark side of that machinery firsthand.

Fleischer examines the role of social media, haul culture, frictionless payment and Buy Now, Pay Later, while resisting the easy conclusion that retailers alone are to blame.

Recovery, she argues, also meant confronting the emotional needs shopping had come to serve.

At My Limit moves beyond confession toward practical recovery. Fleischer develops a vocabulary for recognizing compulsion as it happens, including “neverworns” for clothes that never make it out of the bag, along with a “Dopamine Menu” and “Rewire Rituals” intended to create a pause between the urge to shop and the act of buying. She also writes about the organizations and communities that helped her rebuild, including Debtors Anonymous, Stopping Overshopping™, the No-Buy Movement and The Shopping Shift.

There is no triumphant declaration that the problem has disappeared. Fleischer describes herself simply as “Not cured”. Recovering.” Her marriage, finances and sense of self were rebuilt through honesty, accountability and learning to live with less, rather than becoming better at maintaining the appearance of having more.

Arriving at the height of the holiday shopping season, At My Limit raises a larger question about contemporary consumer culture: where does individual responsibility end, and a retail system built around psychological triggers begin?

Fleischer’s answer is that recovery requires seeing both clearly. Taking responsibility for her addiction meant understanding what she had been trying to buy emotionally. Taking back power from retailers meant recognizing the machinery designed to turn those vulnerabilities into sales.

At My Limit reveals the human cost of a widespread addiction that gets afforded the same respect as a punchline. With candor and sardonic humour, Fleisher brings together money, mental health, fashion and recovery while examining an increasingly difficult line: the difference between choosing to shop and being relentlessly encouraged to do so.

PRAISE FOR AT MY LIMIT

“A dark, riveting journey into shopping and fashion addiction — the poison of modern marketing, the crushing weight of debt, and the hard truth that the Gucci bag is never the answer.”
Paco Underhill, author of Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping

“Dara Fleischer knows firsthand how important it is to find other people who understand your experiences, especially when they feel unique or shameful. Her book is a gift to anyone who’s struggled alone and in silence with their shopping.”
Carla Sosenko, journalist and author of I’ll Look So Hot in a Coffin

“Compulsive shopping is one of the most socially acceptable addictions — and one of the least talked about. In a culture built on clicks, carts, and comparison, many women are quietly struggling while looking perfectly ‘put together.’ This memoir names what so many experience but rarely admit.”
Hannah Blass, Founder of The Shopping Shift, @TheStyleAudit

“It strips away the punchlines of ‘retail therapy’ to expose the real, human cost of shopping addiction. This book is a lifeline for anyone secretly drowning in delivery boxes and shame.”

Jennifer Rosenberg, Founder of Jennifer Reed Designs, @jenniferreeddesigns

DARA FLEISCHER is the creator and host of Serial Shopper Show. A fashion and beauty editor, blogger and founder of FashionJunkie.com, she brings more than 20 years of experience in fashion media, omni-channel retail marketing and sales. Her editorial work includes LOULOU, FASHION, InStyle, iVillage and Glam Media, along with brand collaborations with Sephora and Club Monaco. Most recently, she led brand marketing, in-store events and retail partnerships for Saks Fifth Avenue, ShopPremiumOutlets.com and SXSW (Penske Media). A recovering compulsive shopper, At My Limit is her debut memoir.

RIVKAH BOOKS publishes fiction and nonfiction written by Jewish authors, or addressing Jewish themes, lives and characters, that resonate with readers from all backgrounds.

Derived from Hebrew, “RIVKAH” means “to bind” and “to connect,” reflecting the imprint’s mission to strengthen social bonds and foster dialogue amid a global rise in antisemitism.

Pre-order “At My Limit”
https://darafleischer.com/memoir#buy

Connect With Dara Fleischer:
https://www.instagram.com/fashionjunkienyc/
https://darafleischer.com/

BOOK DETAILS

Title: At My Limit: How I Lost My Savings & Sanity Due To Compulsive Shopping Addiction

Author: Dara Fleischer

Publisher: RE / RIVKAH BOOKS

On-Sale Date: November 17, 2026

Category: Memoir / Mental Health / Money & Consumer Culture

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Dara Fleischer is available for interviews and events. Review copies of At My Limit are available upon request.

Media Inquiries for Dara Fleischer and RIVKAH BOOKS , Contact: Sasha Stoltz Publicity | [email protected] | 416-579-4804