[dhconnelly]

Re: alcohol - in my experience, it depends. For the first year or two of learning German, a beer or glass of wine helped me relax and speak more effortlessly, as suggested. But now, as a fluent speaker -- I've passed a C2 exam, i.e. "mastery" on the CEFR scale, with a good score -- I definitely notice that any amount of alcohol hurts more than it helps. In the same way that any amount of alcohol makes my English worse: I have trouble with recall of even basic words.