Well it's all entertaining stuff. Professional pilots thinking they are experts on the effects of alcohol now, that is just as ludicrous as doctors thinking they are experts on swept-wing aerodynamics.
You minority of pilots who think if somebody 'knows how to drink' they will be better pilots that the 50% who don't (I'd take real offence to that) are really giving the rest of your peer group a bad name. You need to clean up your act.
Facts are, if you turn up to work with 20mg% of alcohol you have either been drinking within eight hours, or you went to bed pretty pissed (that's drunk to our American friends). There ain't no other way.
If you turn up to work with 120mg% (that's legally drunk by the way) and claim you haven't had a drink for 12 hours you must have been staggering off to bed. Again, there ain't no other way.
Whether Binge Drinking is acceptable the day before you take the controls of a passenger jet, I'll let the layman decide. You don't need to be an expert to work that one out. And if you ever get into court and try to argue the toss like whet is happening on this web site you will find lots of expert witnesses of the medical variety who will testify that you are indeed a Binge Drinker (Royal College of Physicians says so). Judges will accept that, they like doctors, they consider us fellow professionals you see. Best thing to do is plead guilty, keep the noise level down and take it on the chin, suspect this was the good advice given by his legal team.
This is a sad story, remote's well meaning, but somewhat foolish, defence of the guy suggests there were signs of problem drinking before hand. It would have been better for his friends in the airline to do something about it before a security official was forced to. It would be really good for professional pilots to sort their mates out, because when the courts do so it isn't pretty. That's the way doctors sorted out the drink problems that existed 20 years ago, self regulation before the law stepped in. And here endeth the lesson,