I have a friend who will look for any opportunity to buy his friends something. He isn’t wealthy. He doesn’t make a lot of money. He just has this obsession with buying things for his friends.Not even local friends, but friends online. Steam games, alcohol, pizzas, gift cards, books, ebooks, comics, even just randomly throwing cash at you somehow. It was neat at first but it’s becoming awkward. He has even admitted to me that it’s 100% selfish and he only does it because buying things for people makes him feel good and he wants that dopamine hit. It’s like when you buy yourself some stupid shit for no reason, but he subjects his friends to it CONSTANTLY. I would not even be here asking about this if it weren’t a constant, multiple times daily occurrence. He wants to buy anyone he knows anything he can afford whether they want him to or not at any time. Having given him my address in the past was a mistake. He hoards shit FOR ME. I’ll get random shit in the mail. “HEY DID YOU GET YHE THING? DO YOU LIKE IT?” even if I do, I kind of don’t want to tell him. I don’t want to encourage him. But we have yet to find a way to make him stop, so encouragement is the least problem… we need to somehow DISCOURAGE him. which is hard. Especially when he gets drunk. Which is FREQUENT. Purchases are often made while he is drunk.
Dunno what to do or how to try and make him chill.
You don’t. You can’t solve other people’s problems for them. All you can do is provide space and support for them to solve the problems themselves.
Sad, but true.
Agree with the comments about discussion as well as not changing other people, but as you describe it as a dopamine hit, that signals addictive behavior to me.
I would suggest slowly introducing information regarding how addiction and dopamine works in humans. Allow him to learn more about it, perhaps as a reciprocal gift of books, shows, etc.
Ultimately he’ll need to wean and change his own brain chemistry, and that is not easy.
(If I get time I’ll dig up a few articles on it.)
Thanks, I appreciate the effort.
Do they have a partner or a close family member you could talk to? When I had a spending problem the only person that could help me was my partner. I put them in charge of my finances,l – gave them my cards, made sure to delete saved payment methods online – so I had to justify purchases to them first. They’d never say no to anything, it was my money after all, but having to justify my spending and taking a moment to consider really helped.
Nah, but good advice regardless.
Have you told him the things you wrote in this post? That might be a good start. You could also suggest a substitute. If it’s some sort of addiction he needs to work on, maybe he could try to donate money to a good cause or even buy a gift for someone who needs it (local charity or something like Savethechildren.org). Might provide that same feeling and not cause you worry.
