They don't call it SUNY Stoner Brook for nothing

Apparently, a Ph.D. candidate somewhere at a division one research university has found that marijuana use is necessary, if not essential, for the successful completion of a doctorate.

I'm an analyst of imaginative literature instead of a producer of it. But I would lay claim to a modest form of drug-induced insight. For example, I took a demanding seminar in my first year of graduate school and wanted to impress my professor with a stellar paper.

Naturally, I came down with a bad case of writer's block shortly before the paper was due. For two hours I did nothing more than use the cut-and-paste function, treating my essay like a Rubik's Cube: "If I just move this section here, it will all make sense."

Finally I thought, "Screw this." I decided to shelve the project for a few hours and toked up instead. Of course I immediately began thinking about my paper again. But now it seemed like a privilege to consider economic globalization and its relation to British poetry. Instead of frantically rearranging sections of text, I started to imagine the theoretical basis of my essay in holistic terms, and saw a connection between arguments that I hadn't noticed before.

Now, I do remember that some of my best philosophy papers sounded as if I had dropped acid. (The first line from one of them: "Sometimes, when I'm watching television, the Gordon's Fisherman comes to visit me." I got an A.) But is marijuana really a study aid? Admittedly, the author has a point that, in some ways, his recreational drug use is perhaps less problematic than, say, binge drinking or ectsasy-fueled raves. Yet, he still seems just as neurotic:

I'm an insomniac who averages four to five hours of sleep a night. The best way to deal with a sleeping problem is with regular exercise. But it's nice to have a secret weapon to knock me out on days when I can't make it to the gym. I'm certainly better off than peers who have flirted with Xanax addictions, or who waste their stipends on genuinely worthless stuff like Ambien or Lunesta.

Is this really what it takes to "make it" in academics? If it is, doesn't that mean that academic life is somehow fundamentally broken, dysfunctional, and unhealthy? If so, what can be done to make academia more suitable for human habitation?