Odin has some bad experience with drinking that is he did something he would not have done if he had been sober. That story is in Snorra Edda, i.e. when Odin slept with Gunnlod to get the poetic mead. In Havamal Odin says, indirectly, that he would never have slept with Gunnlod if he had been been sober.

The only good quality to alchohol is that you always retrieve your sensibility when it wears off. In Havamal it says that you should be moderate in drinking and eating. It also says that it is not good to be too wise (it is better to be mediocre).