At this point, it’s both anecdotally and empirically true that booze is at the root of many terrible decisions—a vast array of bad behavior spanning from sex to food to crime to tipping and beyond.
Now, we have a pretty detailed breakdown of our worst selves, thanks to a new survey called “Bad and Boozy” (LOL or eye roll, depending on your appreciation for Migos puns) from Addictions.com, a general information site owned by rehab group Elements Behavioral Health. The survey asked 2,148 Americans, all of whom had been “intoxicated (drunk) at least one time in the last year,” a multitude of questions about their drinking habits, from their worst hangovers to the number of drunken fires they’ve lit to a whole bunch of embarrassing stuff in between.
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Based on the self-reported data, the study found that tequila has the worst reputation for hangovers, with 22.6 percent of participants saying that liquor-wise, it results in their most brutal hangovers, followed closely by vodka at 20.84 percent.
The survey also asked some pretty specific questions about drunken war stories. When it came time to fess up about nudity, about a third of respondents admitted that they “became nude in public after they drank,” with three-quarters of that group blaming beer for their naked frolicking.
READ MORE: If You’re a Garbage Person While Drunk, You’re a Garbage Person Sober
To highlight the financial cost of drinking (beyond just the emotional and physical toll), the site also tabulated the highest bar tabs reported being spent by residents of different states. Florida reigned supreme with a $279.50 spend, followed closely by Mississippi and California at $263.30 and $212.90, respectively.
But the reckless spending didn’t end there: 66 out of the 2,148 respondents reported having gotten a tattoo while inebriated. On a darker note, 174 respondents had been arrested for DUIs with wine being responsible for the most incidents among women and tequila the most common for men. One in ten had spent the night in the drunk tank, and an additional 120 respondents said they set a fire while they were drunk.
Descending from the joys of inebriated nudity into the more frightening perils of overconsumption, the report suggests that most Americans blackout nearly twice a year from alcohol consumption (1.9 times per year for women, and 2.5 for men), and people who said that vodka was their favorite drink experienced an average of nearly four blackouts each year.
Underlying all of the data, of course, is the fact that alcohol wears many masks, but usually leads to the same strange, goofy, and sometimes dark places when you hit the bottle, whether your drink of choice is made from grains, grapes, or agave.
