Should PhD Students Drink More?

The Benefits of Alcohol

Life at my university is starting to look more and more like the before times. I see few masks these days, people are no longer wary of hugs let alone handshakes, and even the staunchest work-from-home person appreciates the real benefits of sitting in a room together. My department even re-started our post-seminar trip to a local pub, where students and faculty sit, eat, and drink together for about an hour once per week.

Back in the throes of Big 2020 Energy—you know, when white people were Venmoing their Black friends money just because—the Equity Diversity and Inclusion committee in my department drafted a document suggesting the weekly pub gathering might not be sufficiently inclusive. They didn’t cancel it, but the hint alone was enough to send faculty scattering, worried they’d be caught on the wrong side of a pint. Thankfully, more solicitous leaders reinstated our social a few years later because they saw what the rest of us did: our community was falling apart without dedicated in-person social time. I’m thrilled for these weekly social hours, and even break my self-imposed sabbatical prohibition against university events to attend.

But I noticed something odd the first few times I attended. The PhD students were not drinking. While most faculty ordered a beer or wine, our brilliant students mostly stuck to water or perhaps ordered a tea or mocktail. It marks a noticeable shift: before the world shut down, most of our students would have maybe one drink, but now it looks like they’re shunning alcohol altogether.

And I get it. Alcohol is the source of much pain—violence, addiction, broken relationships, cancer and… well, impotence. And that’s not even the worst of it. Shall I tell you how bad my hangovers are? At 52 years old, if I drink two Juicy IPAs—or whatever is being brewed in the backwoods of Oregon these days—the next morning, I will have the runs, a splitting headache, and be a dick to my wife and kids for the entire next day. So, how can I argue in defense of this demon?