“I’m gonna’ pop some tags, only got twenty dollars in my pocket…”

Retail therapy is an odd yet charming concept. The idea that one can go through a simple bad day, heartbreak, or bad news and fix it with a new pair of shoes that you can’t really afford but “to hell with it! I deserve it.” I’m one of those dangerous impulse buyers. If I’m in a bad mood I can walk around any store and spend anything from 20 to 70 quid on stuff I don’t really need nor particularly want. I find myself in toys r us after a bad breakup buying 5 boxes of Lego just to keep myself happy for the evening. I don’t know why I would think that would work. Little bits of plastic in replacement for emotion? Ridiculous. But… imagine if shops sold actual emotions? I don’t mean you pay some little old lady to tell you an uplifting anecdote from her past to liven your mood. I mean somewhere between the drug dealers in Doctor Who’s Gridlock and the ever famous ‘Drink Me’ potions from Alice in wonderland. Shelves upon shelves of ‘Happy’, ‘Sad’, ‘Love’, ‘Anger’ and so on. Would it be the cure for all humankind, or the beginning of its decline? We already have the monstrosity of date rape drugs; imagine getting drugged with ‘love’. You could even slip a bit of ‘generous’ to your mean boss who won’t give you that pay-rise.

In a time where the phrase ‘retail therapy’ is thrown around between varying levels of need, how far would people be willing to go to feel just that little bit happier?