NORWALK, Conn. (CBS Connecticut) – Drink up! A new study finds that people feel coerced to drink on St. Patrick’s Day, whether they want to or not.

As part of his PhD at Northumbria University in England, Matthew Kearney asked 70 Irish people in their 20s and 30s to keep diaries and to analyze their feelings about their spending and attitude towards shopping, according to the Irish Independent.

Kearney then selected a third of the participants for in-depth interviews and all those participants celebrated St. Patrick’s Day.

Even the nondrinkers said they felt they were forced to drink on St. Patrick’s Day.

Guinness, whose U.S. headquarters are located in Norwalk, Conn., is a popular Irish stout. “On St. Patrick’s Day, more than 13 million pints of Guinness are consumed,” Beth Davies Ryan, global corporate relations director of Guinness, told National Geographic.

“Alcohol consumption, when placed in the context of Ireland, becomes instantly romanticized,” Kearney said.