Booze makes you do stupid shit, but according to science, it might actually make you smarter in the long run—or at least, one specific kind of booze does. According to a Yale scientist/fellow alcoholic, wine is a workout for your brain. I repeat: The contents of that bottle you’re hiding under your desk right now doesn’t actually kill your brain cells after all—it actually works them out. In other words, my brain cells are like, marathon runners. If a higher power exists, she’s obviously a betch.
In an upcoming book written by Yale School of Medicine professor Dr. Gordon Shephard, the neuroscientist claims he’s found a correlation between drinking wine and overall intelligence. The catch? You have to do the whole annoying sniff-and-taste thing to get the full benefits. According to the good doctor, analyzing a glass of wine before you taste it uses thousands of smell and taste receptors and it requires you to exert a bunch of fine motor control over your tongue. Ugh, don’t tell the pretentious hipsters they’re actually onto something.
Once all that information is sent to the brain, Dr. Shephard believes it requires more processing power than music or math (so my 6th grade algebra teacher can suck it). According to his theory, the taste of wine is dependent on the drinker’s brain, and formulating the whole quote-unquote “experience” takes a lot of brainpower. It’s basically the scientific way of saying wine tastes different from person to person—truly groundbreaking stuff. All this basically confirms what I was trying to tell my dad all along: skipping freshman year calc to drink Franzia in my dorm room was actually making me smarter after all.
The best part? This isn’t the first time someone has claimed alcohol makes you smarter. In 2014, research by the University of Illinois Chicago found that people who had had a little to drink were able to solve basic problems faster than sober nerds; the booze relaxed their brains and helped them think more creatively. Which is precisely the same reason why I always write my French papers a little tipsy, but until now I didn’t realize there was science behind it. A 2010 study even found that women who didn’t drink at all had lower cognitive abilities than those who drank in moderation, so nondrinkers aren’t just boring—they’re literally stupid. Honestly, anyone could have told scientists that, but I guess they had to discover it for themselves.
Also, researchers have found that alcohol doesn’t actually kill brain cells no matter how much you black out. I mean, you might wind up doing other stuff that kills your brain cells while you’re super drunk, but that’s for sober you to deal with. I’m not a doctor or anything, but don’t do a mountain of cocaine and huff glue in a single night and you should be fine.
In conclusion, I’d like to thank the region of Bordeaux for giving me the tools to be the woman I am today. Given the amount of wine I drink, I’m a genius.
