For my book, America Anonymous, I sat down a week after Christmas with a handful of women who were part of an online support group for compulsive shoplifters. The news was not good. Two had relapsed over the Holidays—one had stolen a pair of kids’ earrings from Target, and another had swiped a calendar from a kiosk at the mall. They all said that Christmas is the hardest time of the year.

“I was in a bad mood, and it’s never a good idea for me to shop when I’m in a bad mood,” said Kate, a stay-at-home mom in her thirties who shoplifted the earrings. “I was resentful that I had to be doing the shopping in the first place. I resent that women always have to be the shoppers!  If it’s Christmastime or someone’s birthday, does the guy go in the car and buy the last-second card? No, he gets his girlfriend, wife, or mother to do it. Obviously that doesn’t excuse my shoplifting, but that was the mood I was in.”

The woman at the table with the longest period of “sobriety” from shoplifting was Joan, a veterinarian in her forties who hadn’t stolen anything in three years. She credits her success to one pragmatic decision: she mostly stays out of stores. “Online shopping is my savior,” she said.

Over the course of our lunch, the women alternated between referring to their shoplifting as a problem, a moral failing, and an addiction. One young woman named Sarah—who, ironically, had been in recovery from shoplifting the shortest time—seemed the most comfortable calling it a true addiction, probably because of her experience in AA.

“This is an addiction unlike any other,” she told the group several times, although the others didn’t seem convinced.

“I don’t know,” Kate said. “I guess I sort of see it as an addiction, but mostly I still feel like it’s a bad behavior. But it’s crazy what I’m willing to risk. When I shoplift I’m risking my family. I’m risking my friends finding out. I’m risking going to jail. And I still do it.” (Kate has been arrested three times for shoplifting and has been caught and let go another eight, usually after a reprimand and an order never to come back.)

“That’s addiction,” Sarah said. “That has to be addiction.”

Joan chimed in. “There’s definitely still a feeling that I have that it’s a moral wrong.”

“I was never really comfortable calling it an addiction until I read some books about it,” Linda told us. “I mean, I am powerless over it, so in that way it feels like an addiction.”

But no one at the table seemed comfortable calling themselves a shoplifting addict. “That has such a bad connotation,” Sarah said. “I don’t mind saying I’m an alcoholic and an addict, but I don’t think I would be as comfortable saying I’m a shoplifting addict.”

Across the table, Joan nodded in agreement. “I think it’s probably true that I’m a shoplifting addict,” she told us, “but I would never call myself that in front of other people. They would probably think I was offering up an excuse for my behavior, instead of taking responsibility for the fact that it’s wrong. I don’t think that way about alcoholics, but I do think that about shoplifters. It’s amazing how hard I am on myself.”

Here is what we know about shoplifting, which costs retailers about $13 billion a year to shoplifters (and an additional $19 million to retail theft): Some shoplifters are professional thieves or drug addicts who sell the stolen goods for money. Others are thrill-seekers or occasional shoplifters who usually grow out of it or quit for good if they’re caught. But many are compulsive and longtime shoplifters who can’t seem to help themselves. About two-thirds of this group are women, says Terry Shulman, the founder of Kate’s online recovery community and the author of the book Something for Nothing: Shoplifting Addiction and Recovery. While some balk at calling the latter group addicts, Shulman argues that some shoplifters fit the criteria for addiction.

“An addiction is something a person has difficulty stopping on his or her own, one where there’s an escalation of the out-of-control behavior, and where there are feelings of withdrawal or preoccupation when not engaging in it,” he says. “That fits drug addicts, and it fits thousands of shoplifting addicts I’ve talked to.” 

But as with other behavioral compulsions, there are powerful forces lobbying against understanding shoplifting as a true addiction. Retailers, for one, don’t want people who steal from their stores to be thought of as addicts who are powerless over their actions. And judges have little patience for shoplifters who cry addiction. In one case, Shulman testified for a woman who was caught shoplifting shortly after suffering a miscarriage. The judge became apoplectic at the suggestion that the woman was suffering from an addictive compulsion. “My wife had four miscarriages, and she doesn’t go and shoplift!’” the judge fumed, according to Shulman. “And it’s because of people like you that the shirt on my back costs so much!’”

Jon Grant, a shoplifting and gambling researcher at the University of Minnesota, studies the judicial system’s ambivalence regarding addiction. “With all addictions,” he told me, “a person’s free will is greatly impaired, but the law doesn’t want to entertain that. I find that fascinating. The law entertains it with other mental illnesses, but it draws the line at addiction. I always hear, ‘Aren’t you just trying to excuse bad behavior?’ That knee-jerk reaction really goes to show that addiction is still not seen as a real or serious illness. Why shouldn’t someone’s addiction be considered as a mitigating factor, especially in sentencing?”