Please point me to some well-designed study on the benefits of alcohol.

I find it much easier to skip my evening glass of wine than to skip my morning cup of coffee.

Yes, and it also depends on your relationship with work. For some it's more important to clearly cut from it at the end of the day than to get into it in the morning :)

Then I see a lot of people doing both.

Not to mention, those are always drowsy dinner-time drinkers managing to do research into the beneficial properties of alcohol.

An irritated coffee drinker who has been told coffee can be harmful is going to have a whole lot more energy to produce a “counter study”.

This entire thread starting from the GP is full of anecdotal unsubstantiated and glib responses, so I think that since we are not doing the typical HN due diligence of informative substantiated discussions, my theory is that coffee gives me the ability to produce more bullshit that I usually put out and perpetuate falsehood, untruthful information on the internet to stir up the pot, to make intellectual discourse an unbearable activity and my participation leaves the world worse off than it was before. Sips more coffee.