Let’s be honest with each other, lads – and by lads I mean everyone who is reading this article, regardless of gender but still being called a lad by me, because I’m setting up a question in the next sentence that is primarily aimed at a gender often referred to in the UK as “lads”. How many times do you hang out with your mates in a group when you’re not drinking?

Well there’s midweek five-a-side isn’t there, with all the seething heat of competition, thinly veiled ignominy of loss and anywhere between eight and 16 scything, ligament-jarring tackles a game that it brings. Or there’s just hanging out playing PlayStation, with all the seething heat of competition, thinly veiled ignominy of loss and so on and so forth.

But even after, or perhaps during those, there is booze. Booze is what Lynx Africa was to the prepubescent armpits of my past: extremely counterproductive, yet essential and unavoidable. Unless it’s an unusual occasion (unusual because “special” would invariably circle back to drinking), men don’t tend to hang out that much in groups unless there is some kind of alcohol involved. But don’t just take my sweeping generalisation for it, because recent research published in the Behaviour Research and Therapy journal came to the conclusion that there is “greater alcohol reward for male groups” and so ultimately “identifies a mechanism that may support heavy drinking in male drinking contexts”.

According to the review led by the University of Pittsburgh, women can – shockingly – just hang out with each other completely sober. They just get together, maybe talk and not be afraid of silence, maybe even not try to best each other or damage each other’s ankles, just simply hang out. Men, meanwhile, are sat clutching their first pints like torches in a labyrinth, their trembling, sober smiles ready to be shattered by the simplest of social expectations, quivering with fear over the unknown awkwardness that lingers like an icy crevasse at the end of every sentence.

Men are too scared to open up, basically. The traditional gender norms men follow don’t allow for open displays of genuine affection so, according to the study, they fall back on getting pissed because getting pissed can “dis-inhibit and decrease the extent to which behaviours conform to social norms”.

We seem to enjoy hearing about these kinds of studies because ultimately they confirm that the traditional gender norms of society are somehow innate – ignoring the possibility that of course this behaviour could be as a result of these societal expectations, not the origin of them. The norm that men are uncomfortable with public emotion and women aren’t is as old the hills, and studies like this seem to reassure people that things are as simple as they’d hoped.

But, as much as I do enjoy having to hold genuine sentiment under the surface of alcohol until its panicked thrashes have turned into slurred loved-up outbursts, I don’t think it’s the healthiest gender norm to subscribe to. Although women are more likely to suffer from depression than men, men are more than three times as likely to kill themselves, according to recent statistics. The fact is, a lot of this will be down to men’s refusal to talk about how they are really feeling, of repressing their inner monologue until it’s softened enough by alcohol to be let loose, at which point any distress in it will be easily painted over by the pretence that it was just the beer talking.

But more now than ever, people in the public sphere are discussing mental heath issues more openly. This, combined by the work that organisations like Calm are doing, mean it’s becoming less awkward for men to discuss how they feel, of being afraid to open up to their mates on a day-to-day basis. It may not result in men being as effusive as women, but it could be a step in the right direction.

Although it seems harmless and everyday, it surely isn’t the healthiest trait that men need to drink to open up at a time when suicide is the leading cause of death among men aged 20-49 in England and Wales, and when alcoholism itself can so quickly lead to its own downward spiral. It can be easy to fall back on tired gender norms when attempting to explain away such damning statistics, but the more we revert lazily to type, the harder it will be to bring about meaningful change. I guess that’s how long-held yet archaic views get changed, from starting simply and working up.