When people imbibe too much alcohol, their personality tends to change. Some people become silly. Others are more threatening. Still, others may become more melancholy.
And it’s not just drunk peoples’ personalities; it’s sometimes what they do…
Drunk texters
PC: Craige Moore / flickr / CC BY-ND 2.0
Some people “drunk text.” I’m one of those. Somewhere in his archives, my husband has an entire conversation with Drunk Sharon, who insisted he would have to come to the bar where she (well, I) was because she was “too dunk to drie hom e” (hey, at least I’m a responsible drunk!). I also distinctly remember telling my friend Jodie that the room was starting to spin, and if I thought I was going to puke (and I later did), she would have to come with me to hold my hair back (and, bless her heart, she did). By the way, that memorable event happened close to 20 years ago, and it was the only time I ever threw up from drinking too much. 😉
Drunk shoppers
And then you have “drunk shoppers.” Apparently, there are LOTS of those – one in six of us, in fact – to the tune of $14 billion in a 12-month period from 2022 to 2023.
Most of the population who drunk shop buy relatively normal things. Food, clothing, cigarettes, electronics, music, more alcohol. But some wind up buying things that are a little more, shall we say, creative. A pet. Art. Furniture. A vacation package. 16% of drunk shoppers admit to having bought a new car during their drunken shopping sprees.
Want to know who’s one of the most wealthy drunk shoppers ever? American investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban. And, not surprisingly, bigger wallets mean bigger purchases.
Mark Cuban’s drunk purchase
PC: Gage Skidmore / flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0
According to Cuban, it was 1990, and he was 32 years old. He had just become a millionaire after selling his software startup, MicroSolutions, to CompuServe for $6 million.
“My buddies and I went out and just got destroyed,” the “Shark Tank” star told the “Club Shay Shay” podcast not long ago. “They’re like, ‘What do you think you’re going to do with all this money?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t care about cars or houses, but boy, you know, I fly a lot for work.'”
Cuban, now 66, admitted that he didn’t even know if lifetime flight passes existed. But he grabbed a phone and called American Airlines to see what he could find out.
“I called them up and just slurred my words, ‘Do you guys sell lifetime passes?'” Cuban said.
Turns out that, at the time (the early 1980s through 1994), they did. They were called AAirpasses.
“I got all that information, hungover as hell, and I signed up. Initially, it was $125,000 and then I upgraded it. I forget how much I paid, but it gave me almost unlimited miles for me and somebody else for the rest of my life.”
Only a small handful of airlines have ever offered unlimited air passes, and American’s was probably the most legendary (other airlines that offered their own versions in the U.S. included jetBlue, Frontier and WizzAir). Other celebs who bought an AAirpass include baseball Hall-of-Famer Willie Mays, America’s Cup skipper Dennis Conner and computer magnate Michael Dell.
In the years after buying his AAirpass, Cuban shared his flight privileges freely: “I’d be out in LA or Dallas like, ‘You want a road trip? Let’s call American Airlines.'”
He finished the story by saying he eventually transferred the AAirpass to his father. After his father passed away, Cuban transferred it to a friend.
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