We have long since suspected this, and we all know that alcohol is the best social lubricant, causing your coolness level to naturally rise along with your blood alcohol, right? Well, yes and no.

This latest study confirms that as a global society we associate higher alcohol consumption with increased social status. It is a bit of a tricky web with the perception leading to people attempting to use it as a strategy to gain social prestige and then the few cases where it does in fact bolster social prestige reinforcing the perception. Simply, the unfortunate truth seems to be that at the moment, we do consider people who drink to be cooler (or at least that’s what the study tells us).

“Research already demonstrates that young people use alcohol for social means…as a way of fitting in,” Dumas tells The Daily Beast. “Our research further suggests that young people might be gaining social status benefits via their heavy drinking, or that higher social status might encourage riskier drinking practices among young people.”

The results are an important indicator of how heavier drinkers are viewed in society. “Our measure of social status in this study is somewhat akin to social power within the friend group, with higher status group members being more popular and having more control over valuable group resources, such as group decisions,” she says.

But the phenomenon did have a threshold. Participants who said they’d consumed more than 12 drinks in one sitting generally showed no more social clout—and, in some cases, less—than those who drank less.

What is really important to take away from these studies is that none of them have really, as usual, established solid causal relationships. Simply put, it is all associations and correlations: coolness is associated with heavy drinking, rather that heavy drinking being the direct cause of being cooler.

Making sense? If not, here’s the summary for you:

• we think binge drinking and hence binge-drinkers are cool – we give them more social power
• binge drinking has been shown in multiple reports to be incredibly dangerous
• have fun, be nice to each other and DRINK RESPONSIBLY.

You can only cool if you are alive and well.

The end.

You can find all the details of other studies on alcohol consumption and is social as well as physical effects here as reported by The Daily Beast.