St. Patrick’s Day is coming up soon, giving Americans a chance to go drunk shopping on one of the most popular U.S. holidays for drinking.
Drunk shopping is exactly what it sounds like — buying something when you’re drunk. Pull out your cellphone when you’re drunk and you can buy something in a few seconds. Will it be a purchase you regret? Probably.
What are the most popular things bought during drunk shopping? Finder.com surveyed 3,123 people and found these to be the top online purchases when drunk:
- Shoes and clothes: 7.1%
- Gambling: 6.2%
- Cigarettes: 6.2%
- Movies/DVDs: 4%
- Technology: 3.3%
Of those inclined to drunken impulse buys, Millennials spend the most, the survey found. They spend 75 percent more than Gen Xers and 40 percent more than Baby Boomers.
Men spend more than four times as much as women ($233 vs. $54) on a drunken shopping session, with gambling the top splurge by intoxicated men. The average spent while drunk was $139.
Top states for alcohol purchases
The site also lists the top 10 states where people buy alcohol. Beer is the most popular type of alcohol bought — though not necessarily durning a drunk shopping spree — followed by wine and spirits.
The average person spends $796 a year on alcohol, the survey found.
Here are the site’s top 10 states for alcohol purchases, followed by the annual amount spent by a typical resident:
- Idaho: $2,747
- Alabama: $2,398
- Rhode Island: $1,577
- Arizona: $1,387
- Iowa: $1,363
- Oklahoma: $1,337
- Georgia: $1,225
- Indiana: $1,140
- Washington state: $1,103
- Louisiana: $1,068
My shameful shopping, though not drunk shopping
I don’t think I’ve ever bought something on impulse while drunk, but I have made at least one dumb late night buy while half asleep.
Before the Internet, informercials at 2 a.m. were a common way to get people to buy things they normally wouldn’t when coherent. I was watching TV one late night/early morning and was transfixed by an infomercial for the Qwik Cook Grill, which seemed to be taking Chicago by storm.
Dick Butkus was in the commercial I saw. As a newspaper reporter with tons of newspapers at my disposal, I was more than ready to own a Quick Grill. I don’t remember the exact cost, but it had to be less than $30.
I bought it and was amazed at how well it cooked using only newspapers — but only up to a point. For about eight minutes it cooked well enough if you kept feeding newspapers into it.
That worked fine for hot dogs and sausages. But for hamburgers, chicken or anything that took more time to cook, the Quick Grill wasn’t worthwhile. It’s not a purchase I’m proud of, and I felt partially ripped off because it really didn’t cook hamburgers like the ad said it would. If you look closely at the video above, the hamburgers are charred black when the cook turns them over on the grill.
The grill was a great conversation starter, however. I took it to a few Oakland A’s games, and every time I used it in the parking lot people would stop and ask me about it and how it worked.
I should have started my own infomercial on the spot and sold the Quick Grills out of the trunk of my car.
What dumb purchases have you made while drunk? Or late at night while sober?
And on top of it, everybody reads newspapers online nowadays anyway! 🙂
Good point! You can’t cook in a Quick Grill without newspapers.